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1TB Raspberry Pi SSD on sale now for $70
- wpm 1y agoThere's a 1TB Silicon Power SSD in 2230 form factor on sale on Amazon right now. PCIe Gen 4, far faster than I'd ever get over the wee PCIe lanes available on a Pi 5, so I can theoretically, and probably would go even cheaper. So why should I get one from the Pi Foundation?
- rovr138 1y agoMost of the things are things people have already done. This is not the first SSD connected to a Pi. The reason to get theirs is support or get something that's already tested and you know will work out of the box.
- nikp123 1y agoNot to shill for a company, but probably because it's rated to work with it. Similar experience you get with "enterprise equipment". "You could use any other drive, but our drive has been through rigorous testing" kind of situation. Ideally we wouldn't need this since standards exist, but time and time again somebody is bound to take a shortcut and break things. Be it Raspberry in their PCI-E implementation or the drive manufacturer skipping a few NVME functions to save few kilobytes of firmware. Think of it as a guaranteed "trouble-free" experience if you just want to plug it in and work. I have been boiled by these cheap SSDs once, and it was a firmware related issue too. 200USD for half-assed 4TBs of SSD storage that may or may not work depending on what you plug it into. PS: It was a Silicon Power SSD as well, so really do watch out for that stuff.
- SahAssar 1y agoI've never had a M.2 SSD not work with a proper device, but I guess that might vary.
- Moomoomoo309 1y agoI see you've never had the awfulness of dealing with the weirdly-keyed SSDs or the SATA SSDs! They're terrible! I had one of those laying around in an older mobo and I wanted to just put it in another machine, nope. I found an SSD that's the same size, got an M.2 to USB adapter that handles all of them, then just used dd to copy the data over (since they're the same size, you can just dd it directly). Not fun.
- wpm 1y agoBuying the wrong type of SSD is not the SSDs fault.
- johnklos 1y agoBecause marketing? I suppose if you're buying something for someone who is new to all of this, it might be worthwhile to have many things be RPi branded so if there are issues, there's only one party to worry about.
- gjsman-1000 1y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/z3lziq/thoughts_on_silicon_power_ssd https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/z3lziq/thoughts_o... "Silicon Power has the highest failure rate of any brand we've used." "I'm very late to this thread but I wanted to say their SSDs are garbage."
- gjsman-1000 1y agoThat's like saying there's a $25/hr. dev who knows Rust and is based in Los Angeles. So why hire better?
- wpm 1y agoWhat if there was a $50/hour Rust dev in Los Angeles but you pay $50 per hour to them and they pay another dev $25 an hour to do the work? This is a white-label SSD. It's a bad deal.
- creaturemachine 1y ago2230's are not all that common, so having another non-amazon source for them is a good thing.
- Johnny555 1y agoYou didn't include the price of the one you found on Amazon, if it's this one, it's $69.97, the same price as the one sold by Raspberry: https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KGBP44UD9007MM/dp/B0CCDBKKZY?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KG... I'd buy the one from Raspberry just because I know they've tested it and it works well. (plus I prefer to not buy from Amazon, but that's just my personal preference)
- wpm 1y agoOK what testing did they do? Does the Pi Foundation issue a QVL for SD Cards? SSDs?
- ranger207 1y agoIf I had to guess, it's so companies can order 1000s of them through the same channels they're getting the Pis from
- tzs 1y agoFrom what I've read that (assuming you mean this one [1]) has a decent reputation as a mainstream budget PCIe 4.0 SSD. It is $70. However, also on Amazon right now on sale is the 1 TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus [2], which is generally considered to be a higher-end drive with better performance and longevity which is currently $65. The Silicon Power is a 2230 and the Samsung is a 2280 so if one is using the official SSD hat the Samsung won't work. The official had only supports 2230 and 2242. However there are many 3rd party hats the do handle 2280, and I've also seen a base that goes under the RPi5 instead of on top. The 2 TB Samsung is also on sale for $120, compared to the 2 TB Silicon Power for $140. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KGBP44UD9007MM/dp/B0CCDBKKZY?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KG... [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHLFWBQ1?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHLFWBQ1?th=1
- petercooper 1y agoFurther to the technical points of a sibling comment, I imagine supporting the Pi Foundation is a motivator for many. I'd rather pay a little more for a product directly from them than not, if it helps to keep them going.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoAren't SSDs notoriously one of the most counterfeited items? I'd trust one from the Pi foundation over Amazon any day.
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoYeah, but who is the OEM supplier?
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoSilicon Power has one of the worst SSD controllers. If you value your data, you throw that away.
- proee 1y agoI wonder what the Apollo missions would have done with this much storage?
- SiempreViernes 1y agoFilled up a small portion with lookup tables and complained bitterly about being compute bounded?
- dylan604 1y agoIsn't that similar to "what would Jaws be like as a movie is the shark worked"? It's not always a good thing. Spielberg has said he believes he would have made a worse movie and included more of the shark if it wasn't so finicky. Similar to today's bloat software that doesn't do any kind of refactoring because storage/memory is cheap. If there was that much storage, they would have figured out how to do unnecessary things that were not mission critical. Sometimes, strict limitations are not a bad thing. It can be a weed out course level of filtering (since classes just started up again)
- chermi 1y agoI've never heard that anecdote about Jaws, very cool. It's almost like "necessity is the mother of invention". Maybe "Limitation is the mother of innovation"?
- fotta 1y agoI actually love the bumper. Solves a nitpick I have when tinkering.
- daemonologist 1y agoI really hope we get a Pi 6 with on-board M.2. The PCIe 2.0 x1 over FPC is a bit of a weak spot in the 5 in my opinion. (I know it allows for interchangeable "hats," but you can get PCIe out of an M.2 slot too. Or if there are enough lanes, having both might be nice.)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Lerc 1y agoI suspect selling the M.2 SSD now is establishing the product now in preparation for something with onboard support. If so maybe it means the Pi 6 is closer than I thought. I was guessing mid next year. Really the weak spot of the PI has always been the GPU though. It's always been a generation behind even cheap phone GPUs. I live in hope one day it'll get the upgrade it needs. I definitely think that the way they have been building infrastructure they might be developing the capability to provide something awesome, one day.
- gsliepen 1y agoIMO, the GPU is actually a strength. It might not be the most powerful, but it is supported by the mainline kernel and libraries. Many other phone SoCs throw some binary drivers over the wall if you are lucky, and good luck if you ever want to upgrade the OS it came with.
- Lerc 1y agoThat was the choice they made, support over performance. It was the right choice, but it doesn't change the fact that it is subpar performance. I am hoping in the future there will be options that allow them to offer both without sacrificing the other.
- gsliepen 1y agoWell, they probably didn't have a choice in which GPU to use. You choose a SoC and then you are stuck with everything it comes with. What is most amazing is that they put in the effort to make a completely open source, upstreamed driver for its GPU. I see only two possible paths for another GPU on RPis in the future: either Broadcom drops the VideoCore GPU and switches to Mali or Adreno (which I think is unlikely), or RPi stops using Broadcom SoCs and switches to something completely different. Still unlikely, but now that they have the RP1 chip taking over most of the I/O functions, it would not be too hard for them to change and still make boards that retain compatibility with existing hats. Still, the RPi is made at a certain pricepoint, which very likely precludes putting in a flagship SoC, so even if they change, I'm not sure it will do wonders for GPU performance.
- adolph 1y agoDoes anyone else find it bizarre that Raspberry Pi didn't include an M.2 connector on the bottom side to the single lane of PCIe instead of the no-power FPC on the top side?
- _mlbt 1y agoThis is why I’ve become sour on Raspberry Pi. By the time you obtain all the parts you need to turn it into a usable computer you’re spending more than you would for a used mini desktop PC that is more compatible and often more performant. Unless you really need an ARM processor for some reason, it’s hard to justify it.
- kube-system 1y agoThe Pi has ended up in a strange zone where most of their customers are using it for things it isn't even good at. It used to be positioned like an upscale microcontroller that cost a little bit more, but you could control hardware using the GPIO and you were afforded a whole linux OS where you could use higher level languages. But then people started using it just for running fat linux applications like a PC. Then of course they started demanding more power, and so we've ended up with a bad mini-pc, rather than a platform for tinkering with hardware. The old Pis made a lot of sense as an Arduino+++. But instead people are using them as a PC---
- teamonkey 1y agoI don’t think most of their customers are using it for things it isn’t good at, just that those who are are very vocal online. I imagine most of their sales are to customers who are using them for projects where a reliable, supported SBC with GPIO is useful. Raspberry Pi seem very engaged with their market and what they’re doing. They’re just not interested in making homelab media servers.
- yehat 1y agoYou seems as somebody who has inside information, or maybe you're just speculating, too? People are right to question RPI offerings because most of us still remember the core idea from the inception of that project. Luckily there're still Zero's and Pico's that make for something intriguing (and the CMs, too). The core product for the most people (yes, really for most) has become too far away from attractive.
- coffeecoders 1y agoThis is my recurring gripe with these "mini computers": Power cable? Not included. SSD adapter? Not included. Needs a mini HDMI to HDMI cable. Needs a cooling case (absolutely required for Pi 5). It feels a bit like Tesla’s "gas savings" pricing deception. The Pi looks cheap on paper, but the actual usable cost is buried under "essential extras" [1]. [1] https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-5-16gb/?src=raspberrypi https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-5-16gb/?src=raspb...
- accrual 1y agoCan confirm, I needed to buy a passive cooling case and HDMI to Mini HDMI adapter just to setup and work on my Pi 4. I already had a spare 32GB microSD laying around. Thankfully it's fully headless now and it can get power from basically any USB-C port. For my case it wasn't too bad, maybe $30-40 to get up and running on top of the Pi 4 cost. But I totally get what you mean, especially if one wants more capacity, active cooling, dedicated PSU, etc.
- kej 1y agoI feel like the Pi 4 and 5 have moved into a weird limbo area, where if you want it as a small computer there are better computers that include all the things you mentioned, and if you want it for integrating with electronics there are probably less powerful but cheaper options that would work just as well.
- ploxiln 1y agoThe Pi 3 B+ is still available for $35, it's what I still use on occasion - as an ad-hoc networked sensor, or an LED or switch controller, or an weird eeprom programmer ... Sure I could use an arduino in many cases, but the Pi running linux can be very convenient, with bash or regular python or even small unix C utilities (which I can tweak and re-compile right on the Pi!)
- ThatPlayer 1y agoYeah, the Raspberry Pi 4 is available at $35 too, and I like the less common Pi 3A+. The competitors at that price are only the rk3566 boards The Pi 5 and the RK3588 boards is when I'd get an Intel N100 miniPC instead.
- amelius 1y agoIs the RPi reliable when it comes to high speed storage?
- nfriedly 1y agoIt's only officially rated for PCIe gen 2 speeds, but you can bump it up to gen 3 speed with a configuration flag. I've done that for both of mine, combined with ~$15 256GB SSDs off of ebay, and I haven't had any trouble. It's noticeably faster, and probably a little more reliable than a microSD.
- bradfa 1y agoReliable in what way? The Raspi 5 PCIe interface to NVMe is only a single gen2 lane (5Gb/s physical, 4Gb/s data due to 8b10b encoding) but that's still plenty fast for lots of uses. I've had no problems using a Samsung NVMe with a 3rd party NVMe hat for the past few months. You can boot directly from the NVMe so you don't also need an SD card.
- madduci 1y agoI love the excerpt from the article > 20-30 AAA Games. Perhaps some years ago. Now AAA games are in the range of 70-100 GB, so hardly you can now fit 10 games in it
- sys_64738 1y agoThe Pi is all about the expansion capabilities and the support for the devices being second to none. An SSD is meh in that context as SD card can suffice. I must admit I generally only SSH into my Pi SBCs due to them always being networked.