KKSB Case for Raspberry Pi 5 with Space for Hats, Add-on Boards, Cooler, and NVMe Hats

Picked this case for a Raspberry Pi 5 with an AI Hat+ installed on it. There are no instructions, so you have to figure it out on your own. If you have a lot of electronics experience, it’s fairly straight forward. If not, maybe the following will help you out. This is what I had to do with the AI Hat+. Other Hats may be different. The case comes with two different length standoffs with a stud end. One set of 4 must be used to hold the Pi board to the bottom of the case. The 4 mounts inside the case are threaded and not through holes. So the Pi must be mounted from above. If your Hat is installed with the nylon standoffs it came with, you have to remove those and use the longer metal standoffs that come from the case. I did not use the shorter stand offs at all. The case also comes with a header pin extension. For the AI Hat, you have to remove the longer extension that it came with, place the shorter extension that came with the case, and then add the longer extension back on top of it. They won’t fit if you stack them the other way around. Getting the ribbon cable attached between the Pi and the Hat is tricky. Disconnect the cable from the Hat, but leave it attached to the Pi. Mount the Pi with the longer stand offs, and install the stacked header extensions. Next start the Hat onto the header pins while keeping the ribbon cable against the front of the case. Before pressing the Hat down onto the pins, get the ribbon started into the socket on the Hat. As you press the Hat down onto headers, feed the ribbon into the socket. It may take 3 hands to get things lined up during this process. After the Hat is in place, use the 4 metal screws to secure it to the top of the standoffs. Note that the AI Hat is a bit higher that the stock configuration, but that only gives it more space for air cooling. There is still a lot of space over the top of the Hat once the top of the case is installed. There are 4 stick-on rubber feet for the bottom of the case. There are 4 threaded mounting holes on the bottom and 2 on one end of the top. The bottom also has 2 plus-shaped slots that appear to be for blind mounting on a vertical surface with small pan-head screws. Overall, it’s an excellent case that looks great for my set up. Very functional addition to a Pi 5 for your project.

I had my Pi in the official case, but the case top didn’t fit properly with the M.2 hat. I bought this case due to the extra space. This is a very sturdy case and the fitment was perfect. I had no issues removing any of the screws to disassemble the case. To assemble, I slid the M.2 hat just enough to expose the standoffs below, then tightened them with a 4.5mm socket. It was then a simple matter to screw the hat to the standoffs and reassemble the case. I never had to remove the ribbon cable between the Pi and the M.2 hat to install. I’m very happy with this case.

Edited after getting a refund for my first case that had non-removable screws. It's could have been a truly great case, but the pre-assembly seems to be messing them up. Cons: * Two of the screws were in there so tight they could not be removed. I used a good quality and correctly sized PH0 bit from iFixit. I braced it and slowly ramped up the pressure until the screws stripped out. Fortunately I was able to awkwardly get everything inside anyway, but it was a huge damper on an otherwise great product. -2 stars. Update: The company reached out to me and offered a refund, which I took and reordered the case. This time I used an ancient AtomixRC screwdriver, better for gently ramping up torque. All the screws came out this time (+1 star), but they were still in there way too tight and one of the screws was driven in at an angle so the side of the screw sticks out. Between the two cases I had enough parts for one perfect case. Whoever is doing the assembly on these needs torque limited or less powerful tools. If a company rep is reading this, maybe ship the cases unassembled? * Not compatible with NVMe boards that sit under the Pi. I don't think anyone would expect that to work, but FYI. Pros: * Great aesthetics * Plenty of room for a hat (I stuffed a Waveshare POE hat in mine), you could probably get two normal-ish sized hats in there. * Knockouts for connectors on your hats. * Power button is easy to press, probably the easiest of any of the RPi5 cases I've used. * Comes with a header extension so you can install a hat with an active cooler. * Wifi might work! I didn't really expect it to work at all in a metal case. I only tested that I could connect to a line of site access point, no actual testing.

Pi cases come in many sizes and options, and it really depends on what you need as to what will work best. That said - I wanted to have add on boards plus access to the GPIO pins, and have a bit of room for air to circulate and an active cooling system. And this does just that. I've got an AI + PCIe SSD, and still have room for another hat or two. This is a container - it has knockouts for cable or GPIO access, but you'll need something else for any local screen.

I like the design concept, but the execution left a lot to be desired. It came fully assembled (not including the camera mount), so a full disassembly was necessary to put the board inside. The main problem with that was the screws were very poor quality and the threads of many (4 to be precise) stripped off despite using the supplied screwdriver and the only option was to use force to shear them off (which warped the metal). I also had an M2 NVMe HAT that made it nearly impossible to screw the board into the case let alone access the pcie port to ensure proper attachment of the ribbon. Eventually I just left one entire side of the case removed and (utilizing a surprising amount of force) pulled the tabs on the opposite side out so the GPIO pins were accessible. Only problem with that was my accessible working area was so small that I couldn't immediately tell the HAT was only sitting on one row of GPIO pins. By the time I realized my error, the time and aggravation it would have taken to fix it just wasn't worth the effort. The camera attachment pictured came weeks late and wasn't compatible with the camera I had (though the description led me to believe otherwise), so I had to get creative. Although it theoretically swivels, the provided ribbon cable was too short for any position but straight forward and even then it proved to be too taut/kinked to actually function. All in all, it looks pretty cool, but looks can be deceiving. It was primarily a source of extreme frustration and eventually demoralization.

Works great to fit a M.2 hat with an accelerator card. Easy to assemble and seems to have plenty of ventilation. Good for the price!

First off, this case is a nightmare to get the pi installed into. I am trying to use the AI HAT 2, but the standoffs provided aren't quite tall enough. The instructions reference two different length standoffs, though I only received one size. Either way, this thing is super tight to build with and getting the standoffs screwed in (or removed) and attaching the PCI ribbon cable are an absolute nightmare. However; once it's done it does have nice build quality and seems pretty durable. Also, my environment is currently extremely dry and as a result I've been frequently getting shocked on the case almost every time I touch it when the pi is running. This problem is avoidable if I remember to ground myself by touching something else metal before touching the case, but in practice I always forget. Every time I get shocked the pi gets a fault immediately (the status light turns to a constant orange) and it needs to be rebooted. Fortunately the pi continues to work fine, but I'm worried about this eventually causing permanent damage. The only fix for me here is to either use a plastic nonconductive case or to somehow constantly ground the case to something. I don't consider this an aspect to be held against the manufacturer because maybe my environment is just extra-staticky, but its worth considering if a metal case makes sense considering that the Raspberry Pi 5 power supply is ungrounded by design.

Overall I feel like the case is well made, the outputs fit snuggle inside the cutouts of the case, etc. However, it was a nightmare to connect PCIe. Because of how the Raspberry Pi bolts down to the bottom of the case, and there are no screw holes on the underside, you can't easily preassemble the NVMe hat before putting it into the case. What I had to do was connect the PCIe ribbon before putting it into the case, then hold the NVMe board up at a 90 degree angle and try to get in 3 of the standoffs to secure the Pi down. Even that was a nightmare that took probably a half hour because for one of the standoffs I only had about 5 degrees to tighten it. I know that screws on the outside of the case are not aesthetically pleasing but if they had screws from the bottom this would have been 90% easier. I'm still giving it 3 stars because I think other HAT types or no hat at all would not be an issue. It's specifically PCIe that I would not recommend this case for. Unfortunately this is one of the few cases with plenty of room for NVMe hats so I suspect a lot of people will find it for that purpose.

I have a Raspberry Pi 5 and bought the recommended plastic case, which was perfect. However, I decided to increase the storage capacity and bought a board for an M2 solid state memory to fit on top of the motherboard. With the HAT, it wouldn't fit in the plastic case and I had to get a new case. I looked at several cases and bought the KKSB case. I also bought a second Ri Pi 5 and a second KKSB case because I was so pleased with the result. I liked the case and, being metal, I assumed it would dissipate the extra heat of the M2 memory better than plastic. Morever, the reset switch activator worked well ... a previous case simply had a hole that you had to poke something through to do a reset ... a dreadful omission. I was was very happy with the result. My only niggle was that getting the motherboard plus HAT into the case was a very tight fit because the tiny screw holding the M2 memory in place jutted out a little and it took a little pushing to get the HAT in the case. This was not a significant problem. Note that I did not use the GPIO and its extender, so I can't comment on that. For my application, which is learning ARM AArch64 programming, I am hoppy with this case because it is effective, low cost, and robust.

I was not able to properly close the box with an nvme top, it was a useless order for me. It doesn't properly fit with a rasberry pi and a hat added. the screw and poles are not providing a good solution to attach a nice top.

Ein gutes, stabiles Gehäuse für den Raspberry Pi 5, wenn man auch eine ssd unterbringen will. Man muss sich allerdings klar sein, dass man viel schrauben muss.

An excellent case for the Pi, my only beef was that I already had the HAT mounted and had to pull the pi apart to fiddle around with the screws to get it mounted properly in the case. The standoff screws that came with and are needed to mount into this case properly are a touch too long for the HAT that I have, and the ribbon between the Pi and the HAT was a little shorter than it needed to be for the standoffs. The HAT is a tiny bit longer than the case allows for, so I can't screw the top of the case closed on the side where the M2 screws down - which is OK for me because I swap out the M2 drive regularly and it just means less screwing to worry about.

Actualización del comentario con ventilador de 1cm de altura: Le he instalado el ventilador Noctua NF-A4x10 5V PWM que es de 1cm de altura y 4cm de lado y queda más espacio para ventilar y mejoran las temperaturas comparado con el noctua de 2cm de altura que quedaba muy ajustado con poco espacio para tomar aire. Ver fotos. Los 48mm de altura usables para hats son desde la base del PCB de la rpi5 hasta el techo interno de la caja KKSB. Fijaros en la foto donde van los tornillos del frontal y el trasero ya que la caída del frontal y trasero no es recta en toda su longitud dentro de la caja. Tenedlo en cuenta a la hora de instalar hats del mismo tamaño que la rpi5 y caigan a esa altura de los rebordes hacia adentro de la caja. El logotipo K en el frontal lo hubiera hecho cortado con laser simulando el logo lo que favorecería la ventilación y el wifi ya que queda justo la antena wifi de la rpi5 detrás del logo de KKSB. Excelente caja. Muy contento con la compra. Comentario inicial: Caja de KKSB con 14 rendijas verticales y 9 rendijas horizontales en 3 grupos de 3 en cada lateral. La caja está muy bien construída y luce fantástica. He conseguido meter milagrosamente la siguiente receta: 1) Ventilador Noctua NF-A4x20 (4x4cm y 2cm de altura) con los cables adaptados al conector fan de la rpi5. 2) 40mm Active Cooler for Raspberry Pi 5.No es el active-cooler oficial si no uno adaptado a ventiladores de 4cm. 3) 52Pi Raspberry Pi 5 N04 M.2 2280 PCIe a NVMe. 4) Cable Raspberry Pi 5 PCIE FPC con diferencial 90R Mcuzone de 5cm. 5) NVME 2280 con disipador Thermalright M.2 2280 PRO. Sobra menos de 1mm. Toda una suerte. Ver fotos. Yo le hubiera dado a la caja dos rendijas más en la parte trasera una encima de los puertos de conexión y otra un poco más arriba para mejorar la circulación del aire y poder pasar cables desde dentro de la caja hacia atrás. También hubiera puesto 2 agujeros más en el techo para poder poner accesorios en el trasero del techo también. Y lo más importante, 4 mm más de altura sería perfecto y los milagros no serían necesarios. Una obra de arte. 48mm de altura usable dentro de la caja. Excelente caja para la rpi5. 19 euros a fecha de abril del 2024.