PCIe M.2 HAT

If you’ve upgraded to the Raspberry Pi 5 and want to take full advantage of its new PCIe capabilities, the iUniker PCIe M.2 HAT+ is the expansion board you need. It brings fast, reliable NVMe SSD storage to the Pi in a compact, well-designed form — perfect for makers, DIY server builders, or anyone using the Pi 5 as a desktop replacement. Why It’s a Game Changer: ⚡ Full NVMe SSD Support: Add an M.2 M-Key NVMe SSD (2230–2280) directly to your Pi 5. Say goodbye to slow microSD cards — this HAT+ makes booting and data transfer blazing fast. 🔧 Plug-and-Play with Minimal Fuss: Setup is straightforward. Just connect it to the PCIe FFC port on the Pi 5 and you're good to go (with a little help from the Pi 5’s firmware updates). 🌡️ Built-in Heatsink & Active Cooling: Includes a well-sized aluminum heatsink and small fan to keep both the SSD and Pi cool under load. It’s efficient and super quiet. 🔩 Stackable HAT+ Design: Keeps a low profile and integrates cleanly with official Raspberry Pi 5 cases (with minor modifications). 💡 LED Activity Light: Handy indicator for SSD activity so you know your drive is working properly. Use Cases: Perfect for Raspberry Pi NAS builds, home servers, media centers, and power users who want the performance of a full SSD setup without the size or noise of a traditional PC. Final Thoughts: The iUniker PCIe M.2 HAT+ is one of the best upgrades you can add to your Raspberry Pi 5. With its clean design, active cooling, and support for fast NVMe drives, it turns your Pi into a serious performance machine.

This HAT works exactly as expected and delivers solid PCIe Gen 3 speeds with a compatible NVMe drive. Build quality is good, installation was straightforward, and it integrates cleanly with the Raspberry Pi. Performance is a noticeable upgrade over USB-based storage and makes the system feel much more responsive. A reliable option if you want real NVMe performance on a Pi.

UPDATE: iUniker reached out to me and provided a refund outside of their return policy. That was an unexpected gesture. Thank you iUniker. Even more uplifting is that they actually read our user reviews to better their products and have shared that this hat will be revised to maintain compatibility with the more demanding peripherals that have surfaced. Great! ---- Did not work for my configuration: Raspberry Pi 5 SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive Memory Card The SSD would register with lsblk but was otherwise mute. Looking at photos in all other reviews, I obvserved that people found success with smaller SSDs, specifically at 256GB. So I switched over to a different hat that was proven to work with larger SSDs, specifically Geekworm X1001 V1.1 PCIe NVMe M.2, and voila! It worked immediately. There is one reviewer who claims that this iUniker hat does not deliver enough power to run larger or more power intensive devices and proved it by adding a capacitor to smooth things out. From my own experience, I am inclined to believe him. It is a shame that this hat requires you to confirm device compatibility beforehand. Otherwise you are just taking a chance. Fortunately, at the time of this review, there is 30-day return policy -- which I missed out on :( At the end of the day, there are already better, more compatible, future-proof hats out there, so why even bother with this one?

Great addition to my RPi 5. I plan to get more as I upgrade my cluster of Pi 4 to Pi 5. Reliable and works well. Installation is relatively easy, just be careful when handling the printed circuit flat ribbon cable that connects to the PCIe slot on the PI. This HAT fit perfectly on the PI and was low enough profile that I could place the PI and HAT in a 19" rack mount cage from UCTRONICS. So nice to have the speed and reliability of an NVMe for the PI.

Seems to work. Had to cut PCB, would have been nice if it was perfect but. Not a super amount of holes for air flow but so far enough

I own both the official Raspberry Pi PCIe Hat and this one from iUniker. To me, this model has three advantages over the official hat, and one minor downside: Advantages: (1) It can take any size NVME drive up to the most common 2280 length, while the official hat is restricted to 2230 and 2242 lengths only. It's much easier for me to swap between different builds because I have more of these longer 2280 models, which are also often a bit cheaper and more plentiful than the smaller sizes. (2) Even though this iUniker hat accommodates the longer NVME drives, it covers a bit less overall surface area than the official one. It also has some cutouts that allow more air from the fan to circulate around and upwards. (3) Additionally, there is easier access to the 40-pin connector on the Pi 5, since the board has a cutout around that area. So there is no need to buy extension pins, which are not included with the official hat. Downside: The only negative I have found is that the board extends further in the direction towards the USB and Ethernet connectors. This can cause interference with various cases. I usually use my Pi 5's with just a base, or mounted on something else, so this isn't a big deal for me, but you may want to consider it if you intend to put it into one of the standard cases. It should be easy enough to modify one with a Dremel tool or knife. Photos: As you can see in the photos, I own both models, and took these side-by-side shots so that you can compare them visually. Note that I happened to have swapped the official Raspberry Pi 256 GB 2230 NVME with another ORICO 2230 drive. I programmed the same image into both of them, so that doesn't matter. I bought the official NVME and hat from Canakit as part of a complete Pi 5 package. Here is the Amazon listing for the 256 GB ORICO drive shown in my photos. I bought it at the same time I bought this iUniker hat. This drive is a few dollars cheaper than the official Raspberry Pi NVME, but the official one does come pre-programmed. It includes a cute little metal heat dissipation plate that adds some bling to it: https://a.co/d/fDcfx7d You can also now use the Raspberry Pi SD Card Copier program included in the newer Raspbian builds to clone your SD card image to the NVME. It's located in Accessories/SD Card Copier. Just select the SD card as the "From" device, and the NVME as the "To" target. After cloning to the NVME, see the included iUniker foldout sheet that shows you the simple edits you need to use to set the bootloader to boot from the NVME instead of the SD card. Power down, remove the SD card, reboot and you're up and running on the NVME card.

Not plug and play, you need to edit the config files to make the pi work with this device. boot time and access is way faster than using an SD card. it does cause issues using a heatsink in some cases, power is pulled through the pcie and mounting is pretty easy and straight foward. the pcie ribbon cable isnt the most robust and its fairly short so you cannot mount it anywhere except directly on the top of the board, having a longer cable so you could install it on the bottom of the pi would have been useful.

A very nice well made item with everything included. It gives the Raspberry PI 5 a boost in processing speed and frees a USB port I had been using for my SSD. I would suggest connecting the FPC cable using the M.2 hat to guide it into the base 1st before mounting it to the base or it will be a hassle otherwise. Doing it this way allows you to connect it to the PI without having to touch the delicate FPC cable without use of tools.

I am using it with my RPI 5, the hat makes the combination too big for the regular case, you will have to buy the case for a hat addition. Be careful connecting the ribbon to the pi, it can be tricky to connect.

IT was as ordered