Having done absolutely nothing with the Pimoroni Raspberry Pi 5 NVME Kit I bought at Christmas, it seemed eminently sensible to buy it’s bigger brother – the NVMe Base Duo for Raspberry Pi 5! And I’m certain this kit will also enjoy spending the next three months on a shelf!

The packaging. It’s same overall design as the single NVME kit, however the label had an odd tackiness to it.

Inside is the m.2 breakout board, a short PCIE link cable, a set of standoffs / mounts / screws, and some self adhesive feet.

The board itself. Unlike the single NVME board, the dual NVME board contains an Asmedia ASM1182e PCIe switch. This switch allows the Raspberry Pi 5’s single PCIe Gen2*1 port to connect to the two PCIe Gen2*1 NVME ports on the expansion board.

Asmedia also product the ASM1184e – a similar single PCIe Gen2*1 port to four PCIe Gen2*1 switch. One has to wonder if, at some point, Pimoroni are planning to produce a four port NVME breakout board.

Physically the board has mounting points for 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 form form factor m.2 drives – however, the PCIe Upstream slot looks to block the use of 22110 form factor drives.

The back of the breakout board. I actually prefer this design to the design of the single NVME board.

Our PCIe flexible link cable. This will be used to link the board to the Raspberry Pi 5.

Various standoffs, screws, and other mounting paraphernalia.

Four small self-adhesive feet for the bottom of the board.

And that’s it! Let’s see if I actually manage to do something with this kit beyond leaving it on the shelf for quarter of a year!