The Raspberry Pi 5, a remarkable addition to the Raspberry Pi series, boasts an advanced configuration with five active PCI Express lanes. These lanes are ingeniously distributed with four dedicated to the innovative RP1 chip, which supports a variety of I/O functionalities such as USB, Ethernet, MIPI Camera and Display, and GPIO. Additionally, there’s a fifth lane that interfaces with a novel external PCIe connector.
In its default setup, the Raspberry Pi 5 operates all PCIe lanes at Gen 2.0 speeds, offering a throughput of approximately 5 GT/sec per lane. This standard setting is fixed for the internal lanes connected to the RP1 chip. However, for users seeking enhanced performance, there’s an exciting tweak available for the external PCIe connector. By simply adding a couple of lines to the /boot/config.txt file and rebooting your device, you can elevate the external connector to Gen 3.0 speeds. This upgrade boosts the data transfer rate to 8 GT/sec, nearly doubling the default speed.
To achieve this, insert the following commands in your /boot/config.txt file:
dtparam=pciex1
dtparam=pciex1_gen=3After these adjustments and a system reboot, your Raspberry Pi 5 will operate the external PCIe lane at the faster Gen 3.0 speed, unlocking new potential for your projects and applications.
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