General discussion • Re: how much would it have cost per pi500 to fit the M.2 components?

My recommendation is not to bother with an NVME drive on the Pi 500 (the soldering is properly hard to do, the case is difficult to open, you'll lose the warranty). The SD card interface is fast enough for the vast majority of people. If you NEED the extra storage speed, then you probably should go for the Pi 5 + active cooler + NVME HAT. Or maybe a USB SSD on the 500? Not sure how the speeds compare though.

I believe everyone will agree with you on this, but I believe you also know it's in the nature of a huge number of you customers to go for the cool risky thing instead of sticking with the "right" one

I would question the "huge number". Yes, there are people with varying level of insistence that the Pi500 should have, or have the ability to have, a NVMe SSD in it. What I think we have here is the "squeaky wheel" effect. It is those that vehemently want the feature that are making the most noise.

For myself, I think that an upgraded (and, I expect, significant;y more expensive) version of the Pi500 that permits the addition of an NVMe SSD would be a useful and desirable product. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over the lack of such a product. And just to make it plain, I have bought a Pi500, so I'm not stamping my feet and making demands. The Pi500 is what is. If it doesn't meet any of your use cases, then don't buy one.

So given the choices of:

1) Pi500 without nvme parts in for $90
2) Pi500 with nvme parts in it for $90 + $2

You would pick the one for two bucks less, just because it's 2 bucks cheaper and not care at all that for $2 more you could, if you had/wanted to, upgrade to an nvme you could instead of having to buy a whole new Pi?

For that small price difference it makes no sense to save the $2, except maybe if you simply did not have the $2 right now, and even then you could probably get buy until your next paycheck.

For the businesses buying large quantities of boards, the $2/board savings makes sense. For a one off, it does not.

But again, this is "given the choice". It's not a requirement I have to run a pi500 with nvme in it, but if they did come with the bits in it, whether I needed the nvme or not, the one with the parts already in is the one I'd purchase, every time.

Statistics: Posted by memjr — Thu Jan 02, 2025 6:08 pm

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