CEO Eben Upton explains in a new blog post that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has the first SSD kits ready for purchase. It's not all-new hardware, though. The kits are bundles consisting of a 2230 format M.2 SSD along with the existing M.2 HAT+ add-on.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new official storage product for the Raspberry Pi 5. The new NVMe SSD comes in 256GB and 512GB capacities, though the larger won't be available until November.

Following hot on the heels of the recent branded A2 micro SD cards, Raspberry Pi are working with Biwin to produce branded 256GB and 512GB NVMe SSDs.

In terms of performance, Raspberry Pi claims that the 256GB NVMe drive offers 40,000 IOPS for 4kB random reads and 70,000 IOPS for 4kB random writes, while the 512GB model is said to deliver 50,000 IOPS for 4kB random reads and 90,000 IOPS for 4kB random writes.

Since version 5 of the Raspi, it has been able to handle a PCIe SSD. Now there is one with Raspi branding and up to 512 GB of storage space.

The new Raspberry Pi SSDs are available in two capacities: 256GB and 512GB. The entry-level 256GB drive is priced at $30 individually or $40 as a kit, while the 512GB option is priced at $45 individually or $55 as a kit. Both capacities have a minimum 4KB random read and write performance of 40k IOPS and 70k IOPS, respectively.

You can now get a 256GB or 512GB drive with official Raspberry Pi branding, and even bundle it with a HAT+ module.

Raspberry Pi now sells SSD storage and SSD kits for its Raspberry Pi 5 single board computers (SBCs) in 256 and 512 GB configurations.

The thing that surprised me the most about Raspberry Pi 5 when it launched in 2023 was that it supports PCIe drives. Naturally, the first thing that came to my mind upon learning this was the possibility of turning it into a veritable desktop PC capable of gaming.