Pineboards, perhaps best known for its excellent HatDrive! Nano we recently reviewed, has a history of beating Raspberry Pi to the punch. Pineboards released the HatDrive! range of M.2 NVMe boards at the end of 2023, beating Raspberry Pi by many months, and it seems that with its new HatDrive! PoE+, it has done it again.
The €44 (approximately $47 converted) board provides up to 25 Watts (5V at 5A) of power for your Raspberry Pi 5, via Power over Ethernet (PoE), so there's no need for a separate USB-C power supply. But it doesn't end there, as the HatDrive! PoE+ also manages to cram in some space for a 2230 to 2280 M.2 NVMe SSD that can run at PCIe Gen 3 speeds. Giving us a much-needed speed boost, and just one cable for network and power.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is a rather hungry beast. It requires a special PSU in order to get the most from it. The official 27W PSU provides 5V at 5 Amps, and the Pineboards HatDrive! PoE+ is also capable of running your Raspberry Pi 5 at full speed. The PoE module is made in the United Kingdom and has passed a series of tests to ensure that it is working to spec and operates cool, even under a heavy load. The PCie cable, an FFC (Flat Flex Cable) with high-quality impedance control means that any PCie or NVMe devices connected to the M.2 connector receive all the power they require.
Looking at the images, the HatDrive! PoE+ fits on top of the Raspberry Pi, with a passthrough for the GPIO (likely requiring a header extension should you want to use a HAT). The included metal standoffs keep the board clear of the Raspberry Pi, with just the PoE header pins making contact to supply power to the Pi 5. The Raspberry Pi Active Cooler should have more than enough clearance to keep the Pi 5 cool, and hopefully the fan noise to a minimum.
If you are planning to use the new Raspberry Pi AI Camera with this kit, Pineboards has also got your back. The board has a cut-out for the dual cameras / displays that can be attached to the Pi 5. So if you need a camera in a remote location, the Pineboards HatDrive! PoE+ could be the ideal board.
For those not familiar, PoE is a means of sending power (and data) over Ethernet. You'll need PoE hardware to make it work. You can buy switches with PoE built-in, or use a PoE Injector to add the power to an existing network.
The Raspberry Pi 3B+ was the first Pi to offer PoE, with the Raspberry Pi 4 also featuring this ability. But in order to use it, one would need an add-on board that connects to the PoE header on the Raspberry Pi. For the Raspberry Pi 5, the position of the PoE header was moved, meaning that older PoE HATs were not compatible. In the Raspberry Pi 5 announcement blog post from 2023, Raspberry Pi states that it is working on its own PoE HAT+ board, but this has yet to see the light of day.
Now over a year later, it seems that Pineboards is offering an interesting alternative. We've reviewed Pineboards' products before, and they are of excellent quality; these are not just generic low-cost, high-volume products. Engineers with a passion for electronics have spent time designing a board that they would use.
We look forward to trying it out in an upcoming review.
Pineboards HatDrive! PoE+ is available for purchase now, via the Pineboards website.
