I would like to get a 500GB NVME SSD for a Pi5, but I have availability and budget constraints.
My concern is that I've been told to stay away from NVMe 3 drives and ones that use Phison controllers (which were seen as often being unreliable depending upon the Phison controller version). I already returned Kingston unit that the Argon case manufacturer explicitly stated wouldn't work, because it was NVMe 3-based.
Fortunately; I can source the following locally.
The Lexar NM790 M.2 PCIe4x4 NVMe SSD, 512GB, Black:
Looks like a reasonable choice at ~ $160 CDN. I understand that the SSD controller is the MAP1602A Falcon Lite from MaxioTech, which I hope is less risky than a drive that uses the Phison controller. Also; it uses NVMe 2, not NVMe 3.
Is this likely to work properly with a wide variety of NVMe Me.2 cases/hats?
My concern is that I've been told to stay away from NVMe 3 drives and ones that use Phison controllers (which were seen as often being unreliable depending upon the Phison controller version). I already returned Kingston unit that the Argon case manufacturer explicitly stated wouldn't work, because it was NVMe 3-based.
Fortunately; I can source the following locally.
The Lexar NM790 M.2 PCIe4x4 NVMe SSD, 512GB, Black:
Looks like a reasonable choice at ~ $160 CDN. I understand that the SSD controller is the MAP1602A Falcon Lite from MaxioTech, which I hope is less risky than a drive that uses the Phison controller. Also; it uses NVMe 2, not NVMe 3.
Is this likely to work properly with a wide variety of NVMe Me.2 cases/hats?
Statistics: Posted by History Hunter — Fri Jan 23, 2026 8:47 pm