Radxa has updated its Taco carrier board to support the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, bringing PCIe 3.0 and USB 3.2 connectivity to a compact NAS-focused design. The board features five SATA connectors alongside dual Ethernet ports, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.2 ports, and M.2 slots for NVMe storage and wireless cards. At 11.4 cm x 8.5 cm (4.5 inches x 3.4 inches), the Taco turns a Raspberry Pi CM5 into a network-attached storage system with hardware RAID support.
The updated board includes a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, a second Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports running at 5 Gbps, and both M.2 2280 M-Key and M.2 2230 E-Key slots. Additional features include a microSD card reader, RTC battery holder, PWM-controlled fan connector, 8-pin GPIO header, and dual 12V DC power options via jack or header. The CM5 connects through dual 100-pin connectors, and a USB Type-C port handles firmware flashing.
The board supports Linux software RAID configurations (RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10) and is compatible with OpenMediaVault, the primary open-source NAS operating system for ARM-based devices. Jeff Geerling has documented the Taco in his Raspberry Pi PCIe database and tested similar Radxa SATA hardware with OpenMediaVault 7 and ZFS. The platform runs on Raspberry Pi OS and Radxa's Debian-based distributions.
Compared to the original 2022 version that supported the Raspberry Pi CM3 and CM4, the new model upgrades from PCIe 2.0 to PCIe 3.0 and from USB 2.0 to USB 3.2, delivering significantly faster storage and peripheral performance. The board is available for pre-order at $65 (€60), with users supplying their own Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 and storage drives.
