“This expansion board comes with all necessary components to connect and house an NVME drive to an existing Pi 5 in a Neo 5 case. It replaces the bottom cover of the original case. Connecting the PCIe cable required a high degree of fine motor skill and planning but was successful at first attempt. I did not need to detach the Pi board from the Neo 5 case. Installing the OS on the NVME drive (I used a NVME to USB adapter on my PC) and changing the boot order just worked fine as described in the manuals.
Under full load (CPU+Memory - large linear solver using OpenBLAS), the Pi 5 ran approx 5°C warmer than with the original Neo 5 case bottom (80°C -> 85°C - maybe due to the smaller air vent area), but still did not enter CPU throttling. Some minor complaints: the instructions could be clearer about how to apply the thermal conduction pad to the NVME drive + heat sink. The screws are too short, one of them does not engage at all, so the expansion is now attached with only three screws. Beyond this no obvious problems. Bottom line I do not regret getting the Neo 5 case + upgrade for my Pi, it is neat and functional.”
