X1003 PCIe to M.2 HAT NVMe SSD PIP PCIe Peripheral Board for Raspberry Pi 5& Official Active Cooler

I bought two different solutions for adding an NVMe drive to the Pi 5. This one was simple to install and worked perfectly. The only downside is that it can not handle full length M.2 cards, but that's not a problem as long as you buy the correct sized NVMe SSD m.2 drive. My RPi5 now boots fast and apps launch fast. I am currently operating my Pi 5 with no SD card installed. I used the new network installer capability to install the OS to the SSD drive and worked easy as pi! As an aside, I accidentally broke the ribbon cable clip on the Pi 5 itself. I did some googling and found a suggestion to use cardboard from a cereal box to secure the ribbon cable. This work wonderfully. The ribbon cable clip on the Geekworm HAT was undamaged. Be sure to pay attention to which side of the ribbon and insert them properly.

great item used on a raspberry pi Linux cnc controller build

Tried with recommended M2 drive and would not detect drive. I suspect that the ribbon cable is faulty. I have a Pimoroni hat and it worked as expected with the same M2 drive. This cable problem seems to be frequent with these Geekworm Hats. I don't recommend the Geekworm Hats; get a Pimoroni or Pineberry instead.

Not much to say here, but it works great. A little fiddly to install since the cable is short (as it needs to be). My RPi boots perfectly with no issues. This HAT will ONLY work with the official RPi 5 cooler. I know it is stated in the description as well, but it should be reiterated. Be careful on choice of NVMe. The Union Memory PCIe Gen3 NVMe has worked as expected. Very fast booting!

has to be used with official cooler and takes up 6 gpio pins