Add GeeekPi N16 Quad M-Key Raspberry Pi 5 M.2 NVMe HAT

[geerlingguy]

GeeekPi released an updated N16 Quad M.2 M-Key NVMe SSD HAT for Raspberry Pi 5.

This is similar to the Geekworm X1011, but uses it's own USB-C PD circuit to provide enough power for all the M.2 drives and the Pi, without use of POGO pins. Might be a little more stable for some people if they use higher powered M.2 drives, but there are still some caveats with drive compatibility and overall speed being limited by the ASMedia PCIe Gen 2 switch.

The overall RAID0 speed (maximum you can get with multiple drives on here) is limited to 400-500 MB/sec, versus the 800+ MB/sec you can get with a Gen 3 switch.

[crankyoldbugger]

This is very interesting, but I have to ask, what power supply would you use here? They say it can take an input of "9V-20V PD" in what looks like a USB-C port, and they provide a USB cable to run from the M16 to the Pi5, but they don't seem to provide any sort of power supply for the N16 that I can see.

[brucetony]

Just set mine up and it runs off the official raspberry pi 5 power adapter just fine. GeeekPi includes a USB-C jumper to run between the Pi5 and the HAT, and then the HAT has a separate USB-C for power input. I ended up damaging one of the 2 included PCIe ribbon cables, but other than that, the HAT functions wonderfully and was able to setup a RAIDZ1 pool on the 4 drives I used

[crankyoldbugger]

Thanks, brucetony, that answers that question.
If you don't mind another question, are you able to get the OS to boot from the NVMe/HAT setup, or do you still need an SD card?

[brucetony]

Thanks, brucetony, that answers that question.
If you don't mind another question, are you able to get the OS to boot from the NVMe/HAT setup, or do you still need an SD card?

I don't see why not. I use a sata SSD as my boot drive (via USB 3), but one of the NVME drives should be able to be used instead

[crankyoldbugger]

Thanks, again, brucetony. I'm going to grab one of these things and start experimenting.