2006 Mac Pro with OWC SSD drive

Discussion in 'Mac Pro' started by netnothing, Nov 17, 2010.

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  1. netnothing, Nov 17, 2010

    netnothing macrumors 68040

    netnothing

    Joined:
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    Location:
    NH
    #1
    My 2006 Mac Pro is still going strong. To increase performance and extend life until I most likely get a new machine when Lion comes out, I'm thinking of putting in a OWC 120GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD as the boot drive.

    I'll be moving my iTunes library, iPhoto library, Dropbox and Movies to another internal drive in my Mac, keeping my home folder on the boot drive. After I do that, right now I'm only using about 39GB. Figure the 120GB is good enough.

    Couple of questions:

    1. Is the 2006 Mac Pro limited SATA bus wise on performance using an SSD?
    2. Do most people recommend the Icy Dock to mount it, since I don't have the extra internal SATA cable?
    3. Without TRIM in OS X, how long are people getting on the OWC before they see any performance hits?
    4. Any recommendations on 2TB hard drives for the other bays? Best performance for general file access, read/write saves, etc.

    I'm a Web Developer, so this machine really isn't used for any heavy Video Editing or anything, and most all files, docs, client work is all stored on the other internal drives.

    Thanks for any help!

    -Kevin
     
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  2. Rad, Nov 17, 2010

    Rad macrumors regular

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    #2
    Owc ssd

    I have a 2006 Mac Pro Quad 3.0 with a 200 GB OWC Pro SSD in an Icy dock adapter. Performance is great, no slowdowns and no problems. The other drive bays (and one from a SATA cable off the motherboard) are WD 2 TB Black drives, which seem pretty good too.

    Probably will get a 5870 graphics card since apparently there are now reports that it works fine in this machine.

    Not back for a machine more than four years old!
     
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  3. netnothing, Nov 18, 2010

    netnothing thread starter macrumors 68040

    netnothing

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    NH
    #3
    Great to hear thanks. Yeah, this was my first Mac and I love that fact that it runs just as good as the day I got it. Just looking to extend it's life a bit to wait for new machines to put Lion on at some point.

    How long have you had the SSD and have you seen any performance slowdowns as time has gone on?

    -Kevin
     
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  4. Caesar_091, Nov 18, 2010

    Caesar_091 macrumors regular

    Caesar_091

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    #4
    I can confirm every single word (take a look at my previous post for a few speed test on my 240GB OWC SSD drive).

    Me too... still waiting for more reports from 2006's dual 3GHz users otherwise I'll go for a 5770.
     
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  5. khollister, Nov 18, 2010

    khollister macrumors 6502a

    khollister

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    Location:
    Orlando, FL
    #5
    The OWC drives and the OCZ Vertex 2's that have the Sandforce 1200 controller do not appears to suffer from performance issues due to lack of TRIM support in OS X.

    My experience (which mirrors most other's) on HDD's is
    * WD Caviar Black 2 TB is the fastest non-enterprise drive right now ($175)
    * The Hitachi 7K2000 is close behind, but hard to find in stock right now ($140)
    * The Samsung F4 (a 5400 RPM drive) is remarkable close in speed and runs very cool. Newegg is about the only place that has them right now, but they are cheap - $99 today (I have bought them as low as $79 a couple weeks ago). They have very high density platters (only 2 platters) and sophisticated electronics to offset the 5400 RPM rotational speed.

    If cost is no object (as far as SATA desktop drives), the WD Blacks are the way to go. For anything that is not ultra-performance critical, the Samsung is a great drive at a great price. I have 3, waiting on the 4th to arrive shortly.

    The current Seagate's aren't particularly attractive in performance or price and appear to potentially have some above-average failure rates lately. I have some older 1 TB ones that are still going, but I have held off purchasing any new ones this year.
     
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  6. karsten, Nov 18, 2010

    karsten macrumors 6502a

    karsten

    Joined:
    Sep 3, 2010
    #6
    for mounting the ssd you could try a 22 pin sata extension cable. i'm going to try that on my 2009 with the included 2.5" to 3.5" adapter with the intel ssd. i'll let you know how it goes:) it was $10 for the cable versus 20-40 for the icydock and 45 for a maxconnect. i was leery of the extra connection on the icydock too. the direct connection of the cable seemed appealing.

    this is the cable i got: http://www.cooldrives.com/index.php/sainexca22ex.html
     
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