Pci-e gen 3 possible?

Hi All - i’m using a Rock5c with the penta SATA hat, and the board seems to be capable of 8GT/s but is currently only using 5GT/s. I’ve found plenty of tutorials for a pi to update the config.txt file to force pciex-gen-3, but i’m not seeing anything describing how to do this on the Rock5c… is this possible?

It’s not possible, RK3588S2 or RK3582 on 5C as well as earlier RK3588S found on ROCK 5A don’t support pcie 3.0. Raspberry PI5 is not certified with 3.0 too, but that works there.
For now there is no optimal SBC choice for Penta SATA kit, which uses 2x pcie 3.0 (it’s 2GB/s), perfect board should be:

  • in matching size for hat so it makes sense to use it with metal case and top hat
  • should have at least 2.5Gbit, 10G would be awesome
  • at least two pcie 3.0 lines
  • fast, modern SoC

For now only 3 out 4 is possible with ROCK 3A - it has 2x pcie 3.0, should work with metal enclosure, 2.5G ethrnet is possible in key E slot, but has poor CPU so something like software RAID is really painful.

  • ROCK 5A, 5C - only one pcie2.1 line, only gigabit
  • ROCK 5B - too big and one m.2 slot with four pcie 3.0, that can be splitted with adapter, but makes whole thing bigger,
  • ROCK 5B+ - still too big, but already has two m.2 ports, so 10G nic can be added
  • ROCK 4 series - has 4x pcie 2.0 lanes and gigabit.

Orange Pi5 max has right size, RK3588 and 2.5G,
Maybe some day we will get something like taco, updated for RK3588 modules, for now I think that 3A is optimal choice thanks to it’s 2x pcie 3.0 support and ability to get 2.5G ethernet.

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