I can see there is still this square component below the nvme. Is it still blocking ‘thick’ nvmes from beeing mounted correctly? Could you take a picture from the side to see how much space is between nvme and this component?
News about the ROCK 5B Plus! ;)
Now I only need to wait for it to be available, so I will be able to use NC550SFP (or maybe ConnectX-4) + PCIe switch for multiple SATA boards 
Khadas has their oowoow, others also experiment with such software to allow users easily flash several things and play with them. This is business and marketing decision rather than tech. As we can see here on forum there are problems over and over again about wrong thing tested by users. On the other hand I bet that most of You don’t use eMMC socket for anything (I’m using it as much better SD card).
I expected that 5B+ will get some speed advantage over 5B as key feature on this board. As @tkaiser noted (and many others confirmed) right now RK3588 with DDR4 and DDR5 have same performance. This may change in future, maybe we will also see DDR5 cheaper, especially with big capacities. For now it’s nothing to take into account when choosing between 5B and 5B+.
For double m.2 slot, we already could have that in 5B thanks to @seni, who shared design of his board. It’s small, cheap, without active element. This should be official radxa accessory allowing users to decide if they need 4x or 2x+2x.
Built in wifi6 will be great for many uses and this will perfectly work with roobi. It’s rather good move, not for me because I’d prefer eMMC socket
I will miss the EMMC socket too. Should be 32 GB to be at least useful (which would still be not much). 256GB EMMC via module + M.2 Sata ports + M.2 Nic would be really nice to do
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Re: For double m.2 slot, we already could have that in 5B thanks to @seni, who shared design of his board.
Do you have a link with information to dual m.2 board? I searched the forum and didn’t find any info.
I am sure your search is not deep enough 
I’ve included the information from @Semi in my OMV post
[NAS Image] - OMV7 image for Rock 5B with ZFS, PCIe Bifurcation and 10G NIC - ROCK 5 Series - Radxa Community
The link for atrium still works,
the only thing that You need to take care about is to choose 0,8 thick PCB. Board does not contain any active elements, it’s cheap to make and works great. Also You can choose if You need 4x pcie lanes or 2x2 so in this case it’s just better than ROCK 5B+ with bit thicker design.
I still think that this should be official radxa accessory.
For now ROCK 5B vs 5B+
- usb-c with video so it’s possible to connect and power board via one cable vs separate video
- m.2 e slot for wifi card of choice (or ssd, 2.5G ethernet, native sata) vs build in wifi6
- eMMC slot vs built in Roobi OS on soldered eMMC (not accessible)
- no sim card slot (need m.2 card with that) vs slot on board
- 4x lanes on one m.2 pcie or 2x2 with @Semi i board vs only this option on plus board
- DDR4 vs DDR5 with same performance
Probably many users will be happy about most of those on 5B+, mainly because of wifi6 already on board, some will love roobi os so they can quickly start and flash something. Even better version could have 64G eMMC with option to flash beyond 16GB so it’s possible to get board running without anything else and with faster than any sd card built in memory. I expected promised speed improvement with ddr5 and so far it’s not the case, so I have no reason to upgrade even there when two m.2 are in use
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It turns out that searching “seni m.2” (as spelled by dominik) does not yield the same results as “semi m.2”.
I found the altium link. Thanks to you and domink for the info
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Is it final, that Rock5b+ only supports 2x2 and not 1x4 with disabled port? Thats indeed a good argument. Also: Is it 100 % sure that it’s not optionally possible to power via “Data-usb” port?
I see the sockets for external antennas. Very nice. MHF4?
i am happy with the add-on pcie bifurcation board, until i got both of the slots populated with nvme SSD 
The power supply from both of the slots on this board are coming from the single m2 slot on Rock 5B. When you try to write them simutaneoously, in my case, the disks drop out.
Therefore, Rock5B+ would be good to explore with some more power hungry application.
As the add-on board solution, I think we need to think a way to provide additional power to mitigate this problem…
Sorry, I misspelled that nick, I already edited that for others to easily find right person.
Rock 5B+ is not yet released, devs got their samples, and of course it may be changed (like 5B was completely redesigned, all elements moved). For details ask @jack
I suggested that some may need full 4x 3.0 pcie lane and it would be great to do some switching mechanism, maybe even very simple, jumper based. Probably most users will be interested in just single nvme and most of them are using all lanes at full speed. For NAS and 10G obviously two m.2 are better.
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This is indeed a problem.
But still You can try to replace those with more power efficient nvme drives like SK Hynix P31 Gold. Maybe this will help in this case, for sure there are few nvme rated as move power hungry than others.
I’m testing now several pro MLC ssd, when I disassembled one I found out that they have many chips, controller with big heatsink, takes whole 2.5 case. Simple consumer ssd was way smaller, has only two memory chips and much smaller controllers. Probably they will need different power.
Of course 5B+ may be better at providing more power to those m.2 slots and radxa may be prepared for two nvme use case. There is also chance to modify Seni board for power connector for at least one of m.2, this is not that hard, all that needs to be done is to lift m.2 connector legs for power and gnd. Still trying to use power efficient nvme should be easier
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I agree that more flexibility to user would be favourable!
But I doubt if there would be technical issues for getting the pcie signal jumped (the signal length may need to be paired for example.) or a PCIe switch chip would be required?
For the add-on board I think having additional power input would great!
The nvme draw different power during read/write/idle.
In my previous test case, the disk / rock5b itself would drop out if I try to write them simultaneously, One case is for a twin-nvme RAID-1 arrangement as NAS, another is for copying data from one nvme to another nvme. The Rock 5B+ can ride through this.
RAM benchmark added.
Active pcie switch is needed when You need to get different upstream/downstream lines count also being able tu fully saturate upstream lines bandwidth, examples:
https://www.asmedia.com.tw/products-list/aDcYq0BxZfuH9Nz5/7c5YQ79xz8urEGr1
For bifurcation it’s as easy as switching electric signal for few lines so they end up in 1st or 2nd slot. It’s cheap solution without any active elements, even dip/sip switch should be ok and should not destroy differential pair setup. Of course we already saw several things switched from one socket to another with modern microcontrollers. For final effect probably dtb will do the job and will not increase price that much.
Good active 3.0 switch cost significantly more, probably around $100. Pi5 pcie2 switch boards are priced about $40-60. Ok for additional board, but not for sbc itself. On the other hand - on my photo there are two 6x sata cards. both with 2x pcie 3.0 upstream. This will not run better on pcie switch than with cheap bifurcation.
m.2 to pcie card has additional 12V input (needed for this port):
so probably full pcie cards will get most of power from it and something like this (on ASM2812) should work:
https://kayfreesm.pics/product_details/43032896.html
(first google link)
same thing should be possible with this card and may be needed for two nvme. Have You tried to plug in dummy 12V to usb-c? Maybe the problem is with pd negotiation?
It’s not my use case, I don’t see a point to use two nvme with half of their speeds instead of one 2 times bigger and also 2 times faster For NAS You also need to take care about network speed, with all pcie 3.0 gone You will not be able to push anything from/to such NAS even with extra 2.5G link on top E slot. So nvme + 10Gbit is some solution. For larger capacities still sata is way cheaper.
So it’s interesting idea to test power dependency of such setup, but nothing to run for longer time. On the other hand there are some people that connect 4x nvme via one pcie 2.0 lane to pi5 using 1/8 of each drive
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Does the presence of a SIM card slot imply we’ll be able to have 4G/5G if we install a proper cellular modem? I’m extremely interested in that functionality because, well, drones and stuff :>
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I just found out about the rtl8126 and it’s now generally available and cheap. I think it would be really great if Rock 5B Plus could have the 5GbE Nic instead of the 2.5GbE for future proofing and being the first
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rtl8126 recommends PCIe 3.0x1 while rk3588 only has 2.0x1 (except 3.0x4 for NVMe). This can result in compromised peak performance.
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