ROCK PI 4 M.2 Extension Board
One of the outstanding features of the ROCK PI 4 is the M.2 connector (M-key PCIe gen2.1 x4), a super-fast interface. The M.2 can be used to connect a variety of accessories, where at the moment the most common use case is connecting an M.2 NVME SSD. After the review of Christopher @ “EXPLAINING COMPUTERS” channel on Youtube, quite some viewers wrote comments about things that should be improved on the M.2 extension board.
Their feedback was implemented into the new version with the following Improvements:
- Reduced length of the M.2 extension board
- Cut out of the board above the GPIO pins
- Make use of the GPIO pins while having the board mounted on top of the ROCK PI 4.
The new version is still a little bit longer than the ROCK PI 4 PCB but is not longer than the board and the protruding (I hope this is the correct word ;-)) connectors.
Mounting of the FPC connector on the bottom of the board.
One positive side effect of reducing the length of the board was the necessity to move the FPC connector to the bottom of the board. Having mounted the FPC connector on the bottom of the M.2 extension board supports the assembly of the ROCK PI 4 and the M.2 board inside of a housing with a small form factor.
Here some brand new pictures to get an idea of how the board will look before and after the design changes and how it will be mounted on the ROCK PI 4.
(News Source: www.allnetchina.cn)
ROCK PI 4 Extension Card | Old (Original Design)
ROCK PI 4 | Extension Card + Heatsink (New Design)
