When Raspberry Pi launched the Pi 500, as basically an RPi 5 built-in right into a chiclet keyboard, there have been rumors based mostly on the empty spots on the PCB that a greater model can be launched quickly. This turned out to be the case, with [Jeff Geerling] now taking the brand new RPi 500+ to bits for some experimentation and keyboard modding.
The five hundred’s case was not designed to be opened, however should you did, you’d discover that there was area allotted for a Energy-Over-Ethernet part in addition to an M.2 slot, albeit with the entire footprints unpopulated. Some hacking later and enterprising people discovered that soldering the suitable elements on the PCB does in truth allow a working M.2 slot. What the five hundred+ thus does is principally try this soldering give you the results you want, whereas sadly not providing a PoE function but with out some DIY soldering.
Maybe the obvious change is the keyboard, which now makes use of short-travel mechanical switches – with RGB – inside an enclosure that’s now thankfully simple to open, as it’s possible you’ll wish to put in a unique NVMe drive in some unspecified time in the future. Or, should you’re somebody like [Jeff] you wish to use this slot to put in an M.2 to Oculink adapter for some exterior GPU motion.
After some fighting eGPU units an AMD RX 7900 XT was put into motion, with the AMD GPU drivers posing no problem after a kernel recompile. Apart from the Oculink cable stopping the case from closing and in addition dropping the M.2 NVMe SSD possibility, it was a reasonably helpful mod to get some actual gaming and LLM motion going.
With the additions of a presoldered M.2 slot and a nicer keyboard, in addition to 16 GB RAM, it’s a must to resolve whether or not the $200 asking value is price it over the $90 RPi 500. Within the case of [Jeff] his children must make do with the RPi 500 for the foreseeable future, and the RPi 400 nonetheless finds common use round his studio.
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