RaspberryPi Compute Modules

Photo of the front and back of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5). This particular variant was the CM5116032 - 16 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC.

CM5 MINIMA

The CM5 MINIMA is a compact carrier board for the Compute Module 5 (CM5) by Seeed Studio¹. It measures 61 x 61 mm. It contains:

• USB-C power delivery
• Gigabit Ethernet
• HDMI port
• M.2 M key slot with 2230 and 2242 size support
• CSI/DSI connector
• LIS3DH STM32 accelerometer
• I2C connector
• SPI connector
• Fan connector
• Status LEDs
• nRPI boot switch

Photo of the front and back of the Seeed Studio CM5 MINIMA carrier board. The CM5 goes on the bottom side of the carrier and pushed into the two high-density board-to-board connectors. The CM5 is retained with two screws that can be seen on the right-hand side of the bottom image (only 2 of the four possible screw mounts on the CM5 are used by the MINIMA).

The CM5 MINIMA is powered from the USB Type C port labelled “USB-PD”. When plugged into the official 27 W Rapsberry Pi power supply, it does not negogiate any higher voltage — it uses the default 5.1 V. The other USB Type C port is labelled “USB2.0” and is a standard USB 2.0 port that can be used for connecting peripherals with the RaspberryPi CM5 acting as the host. Note that when you bootload the OS, you must connect the computer to the CM5 via the “USB-PD” port, not the “USB2.0” port.

Installing the OS

The CM5 provides a nRPI_BOOT net over the high-density connectors. This is designed to be controlled from the carrier board. When set to the “on” position, it allows the CM5 to appear as a mass-storage device (not by default — drivers also need to be installed, see below) when connected to a host computer via USB. This allows you to flash the OS onto the CM5’s eMMC storage using the Raspberry Pi Imager or other tools.

On Windows download the latest version of rpiboot from the GitHub releases page (the repo is called usbboot but the program is called rpiboot).

Installing rpiboot on Windows.

Once it’s installed, add C:\Program Files (x86)\Raspberry Pi to your PATH so you can run rpiboot from the command line.

Note

For some reason the Windows install instructions did not work for me. I got a device popping up in Device Manager that looked like this:

BCM2712D0 Boot showing up in Windows devices but not working.

I had to also run the following from an elevated command prompt to get the drivers installed (run this once you’ve installed rpiboot):

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Raspberry Pi\redist"
.\wdi-simple.exe --vid 0x0A5C --pid 0x2712 --type 0 --name "BCM2712D0 Boot"

Even then, I still could not get rpiboot working on Windows (this was in August 2026). I had to switch to Linux to get it working.

To install on Linux:

sudo apt install rpiboot
Installing:
  rpiboot

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 1, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 163
  Download size: 25.9 MB
  Space needed: 37.3 MB / 49.1 GB available

Get:1 http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian trixie/main arm64 rpiboot arm64 20260603~182203 [25.9 MB]
Fetched 25.9 MB in 8s (3,139 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package rpiboot.
(Reading database ... 121030 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../rpiboot_20260603~182203_arm64.deb ...
Unpacking rpiboot (20260603~182203) ...
Setting up rpiboot (20260603~182203) ...

Then connect your CM5 to your computer. On the MINIMA, connect the port labelled USB-PD to your computer, not the port labelled USB2.0.

To run (prefix with sudo on Linux):

rpiboot

You should get output similar to the following:

RPIBOOT: build-date 2026/06/03 pkg-version 20260603~182203

Please fit the EMMC_DISABLE / nRPIBOOT jumper before connecting the power and USB cables to the target device.
If the device fails to connect then please see https://rpltd.co/rpiboot for debugging tips.

Waiting for BCM2835/6/7/2711/2712...

Directory not specified - trying default /usr/share/rpiboot/mass-storage-gadget64/
Sending bootcode.bin
Successful read 4 bytes
Waiting for BCM2835/6/7/2711/2712...

Second stage boot server
File read: mcb.bin
File read: memsys00.bin
File read: memsys01.bin
File read: rp1c0fw1.bin
File read: memsys02.bin
File read: rp1c0fw2.bin
File read: memsys03.bin
File read: bootmain
Second stage boot server done

Thermal Management

The Raspberry Pi CM5 has an official passive heatsink that can be attached to the top of the CM5.

Photo of the official passive heatsink for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5).

Footnotes

1. Seeed Studio. CM5 MINIMA - Compact Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, M.2 Hailo AI/SSD, CSI/DSI, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, USB-C PD [product page]. Retrieved 2026-08-10, from https://www.seeedstudio.com/CM5-MINIMA-p-6485.html. ↩