this is one of the two new 'nano' carrier boards from the company Waveshare.
Snapped to it is the raspberry pi cm5, that itself is wearing a heat sink and fan.
The cm5 is a full raspberry pi 5 computer, without any ports.
In this case, it is snapped to the nano carrier board.
the carrier is the same size as the cm5, and has a power port, an ethernet port, a usb port, and an hdmi port.
You see a complete computer system, including a heat sink that is much larger than the other components, and a small fan. The result is only slightly larger than a match box.
you may notice the headphone jack, which is what got me all excited to try the nano b carrier board.
This thing is so packed! there is a port for a tiny pwm fan, a place to plug in a real time clock battery, 3 tiny switches, and 2 ports for a camera or a touch display.
On the back of the carrier is a holder for the micro sd card, and you can see it protruding from the upper left. there is also a place to attach the standard pci express cable, as well as headers for a second hdmi port, and an additional usb port.
the card that is inserted is a 500 gig samsung, with the latest raspberry pi OS. I have installed the samba server, so that files in my shared directory are available to any other computer on the same wireless system.
The CM5 uses the least power of any in the raspberry pi5 generation, so it is ideal for leaving on for very long periods.
This example is the model with 8 gigs of memory and wifi, so it was over 100 dollars. the nano b carrier board is 25 dollars. The heat sink is 7 dollars, and the fan is 3 dollars. I wanted the 8 gig model for running a server, but also watching youtube videos, playing old games, and downloading for days at a time. And, doubling the memory increases the processor speed and snappiness of the cm5.
As far as i know, no case exists for this baby, outside of several 3d prints that are available on line.
A great case might be a worthy project!
