Is that m2 extender looks right!?

[William_Wong]

Hi,

I bought an m2 extender from an authorized resellers in china. However, it does not look like the one shown in radar blog. On the radar blog (https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/hardware/M2_extend)

, it should have a blue side.

But what I got is

It is a bit fragile. I tried to push the rock pi and the m2 extender to a box bought from the reseller. The cable almost broken. The box is not big enough. The box is not big enough to carry the rock pi when the extender is installed…

I felt a bit disappointed on what I got…

Best regards,
William

[William_Wong]

Another big issue about the cable is. The cable showing on the blog could be unlocked easily without taking away the heatsink… but I cannot do so right now as the lock of the cable is on the other side (inner part). Even I don’t put everything into the so little box, I still cannot get the SD card easily… unless I take away the heatsink…

[William_Wong]

They are the lock of the cable. Once it is locked, the direction is inward… that means we cannot unlock it easily.

It is another photos of once it is completely installed. The lock is inward, I cannot unlock it easily.

The design is very different from what I can see from the blog page. The lock showing up on the blog can be unlock much more easily…

[William_Wong]

To be fair, if we don’t need a case, or the case is bigger. The new cable lock is better as it holds the cable in a better way.

But, given the case size, if we cannot unlock the cable ( like the one showing on the blog ) from outside of the case, we have to take out the rock pi from the case (if we can install it properly) to just replace a SD card. This is a mandatory step for making ssd connected bootable…

Maybe the case and cable design assumes we cannot use a SD card with the SSD. However, it seems that rockpi is not able to boot via every ssd.

[aaditya]

Hi, the cable and M2 extender looks legit, its v2 of the original design. Its less flexible than before but has a better connection.

One way to access the SD card slot is to flip over and install the M2 board under the big heatsink. You would need 4 x M2.5 standoffs. I used the ones from my Acrylic case.

[William_Wong]

Hi @aaditya, appreciate your suggestion. Yes, the cable looks better if we don’t consider the case. Reseller now suggests me to not use the SD card, but buy eMMC instead…

If I knew all the trouble in advance, I won’t buy that case with the big heatsink… now, I am a bit regret and thinking of returning the case, cable, etc if they accept this.

[adzio]

@William_Wong I have the same extender for my 4C. If you look closely at the extender board, the silkscreen says V1.6 (also on your photo #2), which is a rev higher compared to the version specified on the radxa site.

I did check before that this connector is a legit electronic part sold by electronic retailers. It did look flimsy to me. I don’t mind lack of easy access to the SD but I do not appreciate the fact that with the SD card inserted it creates a slight imprint in the cable; there should be more clearance.

Another gripe is if you only buy the extender kit the provided screws are incomplete: the optional case adds the remaining screws so you’re forced to buy their case separately for everything to come together or else provide your own screws.

Lastly, when I had the IMX219 camera attached I saw a decrease in PCIe speed with this extender, even when not capturing video. I never dug deeper to figure out if it was an interference caused by the use of this FFC cable or a resource management issue in the software with the camera attached. When the camera was disconnected the PCIe data speed returned to normal.