Are you shopping for a new MicroSD card to power your Raspberry Pi and don’t know where to start with all the choices? This post is for you! We have the MicroSD card you need to set up: OctoPi, MainsailOS, OctoPrint, Klipper, or Raspbian.
Over the years, multiple versions of the MicroSD card have been developed, some faster and some with more memory. This can be quite confusing when shopping for that particular component.
Getting the right capacity and speed is important for the Raspberry Pi to run smoothly and quickly. Follow this guide to learn what you need!
Things to look for when buying a MicroSD card for a Raspberry Pi:
Fake MicroSD Cards
One major thing to watch is to make sure the seller is reliable. Many fake micro SD cards are sold all over the internet, even on major online shopping websites that people use every day.
Because of that, I recommend choosing a reliable SD card brand such as SanDisk, Samsung or LeXar.
MicroSD Card Speed
Speed is a major factor when choosing a Raspberry Pi that’ll run OctoPi or Mainsail OS. You don’t want to have a bottleneck there, as the controller is going to compute a lot of information. The recommended speed to run smoothly is at least 10Mb/s. Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 can handle a maximum speed of around 50Mb/s. If you have a Raspberry Pi 3 or older, it’s around 20Mb/s.
You can differencate between MicroSD card speeds by using the icons on the card. For a full break down, see this page from Kingston. For OctoPri, MainsailOS, or any other Raspberry Pi setup, you will want U3, or V30, V60, or V90. Here’s how they break down:
- U3 & V30 – Max 30MB / second
- V60 – Max 60MB / second
- V90 – Max 90MB / second
MicroSD Card Memory
The last important thing to look for is memory. Having a lot of memory is quite useful if you plan to print only from the Raspberry Pi. This space will be directly available to store your G codes. I recommend going with a 128 GB card. It’ll do well for a long time, and the price difference is not big compared with a smaller micro SD card.
Take your time to shop for your future micro SD card.
For the price and the wide availability, I recommend this one from SanDisk.
This is my personal favorite, and I have never had an issue in years of using this brand for OctoPi.
All purchases made through the links in this post will contribute to support my work as a writer and any upcoming project or demo I will do!
Jérôme
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