MP 14,8 Anyone here upgraded from the 7,1 to the M2 Ultra?

[realLucaR]

So I've been playing with the idea of upgrading to the M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the end of the year for a while now.

I know, technically speaking for almost 15,000$ in Germany there are possibly way better options and it probably is an insanely bad value for money, I do absolutely realize that. But the M2 Ultra is still very relevant, the M3 Ultra is not that much better for my use cases, all I need is a lot of unified memory and a big SSD. And as long as I'm able to, I wanna go nuts with the expansion options and install my 4x16TB HDDs (Promise Pegasus R4i) and maybe even get a Sonnet M.2 8x4 PCIe card.

I just love the form factor, and so far I am just not willing to give up on it just yet!

So I've been thinking of getting an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the end of the year. I wanna go for the M2 Ultra, 76-Core GPU, 192GB, 8TB + wheel kit.

However, I've now been looking into pricing recently and now I see quite a few (bit older) posts of people saying they got it for like 5000$ at Microcenter?! Unfortunately I do not live in the US (YET) and still need to pay the stupid surcharge since tech is always so much more expensive in the EU somehow, so the only option in Germany is Apple directly, which would cost me (converted with currently FX rates) around 17.341,18 USD.

And I mean, there has to be a cheaper way to get one right?! Importing one from the US is also an option. Although I cannot find any M2 Ultras on eBay unfortunately. Heck, I would even hop on a plane for the amount of money that could save me 😅

I do not care too much about the SSD size since it's upgradeable or any of the other options, it just needs to have the 76-Core GPU and 192GB of memory since those are not upgradeable. And if possible, being new or having AppleCare would also not be too bad.

Does anyone know where I can possibly look?

And also, those of you who have an M2 Ultra maybe even coming from the Intel MP, how is it compared to the Intel Mac Pro? The noice, heat etc? And why did you decide to pay the huge extra for the Mac Pro instead of the Mac Studio?

Curious to hear your guys thoughts!

 

[keksikuningas]

Promise Pegasus R4i

Isn't that MPX? There is no MPX on M2 Ultra Mac Pro

Does anyone know where I can possibly look?

If there's nothing on eBay I would try just searching for M2 Ultra on Google and see if any refurbishing stores are selling them. Also a crazy idea, but searching Facebook marketplace and setting it to search in a gigantic radius so that it picks up multiple countries could work although I seriously doubt one would pop up there

 

[throAU]

Do you know you need 192 gig? Fine if you do, but if 128 is enough an m5 or m4 max will be faster at most things

 

[MacHeritage]

The Promise Pegasus R4i is not compatible with the 2023 Mac Pro. I wish it was, since I really love the idea of it all being inside.

If you are updating by the end of the year, we will see if Apple updates it to M5 Ultra at least. No one knows yet. Pricing and specs will change if they do.

 

[keksikuningas]

Do you know you need 192 gig? Fine if you do, but if 128 is enough an m5 or m4 max will be faster at most things

M2 Ultra is faster in multicore than M4 Max but slower than M5 Max.

But there is no M5 Max studio and MBPs get quite loud and hot when running heavy workflows. I am typing this from a M3 Max with fans blasting as it works one right now 🙂

If expansion is desired , then M2U is a Mac Pro with PCIe (I am not sure if it has SATA ports like 2019, I don't think so but can be added with expansion cards I suppose) which can't really be beat, unless you use thunderbolt PCIe breakout boxes or old eGPUs

 

[D49]

So I've been playing with the idea of upgrading to the M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the end of the year for a while now.

I know, technically speaking for almost 15,000$ in Germany there are possibly way better options and it probably is an insanely bad value for money, I do absolutely realize that. But the M2 Ultra is still very relevant, the M3 Ultra is not that much better for my use cases, all I need is a lot of unified memory and a big SSD. And as long as I'm able to, I wanna go nuts with the expansion options and install my 4x16TB HDDs (Promise Pegasus R4i) and maybe even get a Sonnet M.2 8x4 PCIe card.

I just love the form factor, and so far I am just not willing to give up on it just yet!

So I've been thinking of getting an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the end of the year. I wanna go for the M2 Ultra, 76-Core GPU, 192GB, 8TB + wheel kit.

However, I've now been looking into pricing recently and now I see quite a few (bit older) posts of people saying they got it for like 5000$ at Microcenter?! Unfortunately I do not live in the US (YET) and still need to pay the stupid surcharge since tech is always so much more expensive in the EU somehow, so the only option in Germany is Apple directly, which would cost me (converted with currently FX rates) around 17.341,18 USD.

And I mean, there has to be a cheaper way to get one right?! Importing one from the US is also an option. Although I cannot find any M2 Ultras on eBay unfortunately. Heck, I would even hop on a plane for the amount of money that could save me 😅

I do not care too much about the SSD size since it's upgradeable or any of the other options, it just needs to have the 76-Core GPU and 192GB of memory since those are not upgradeable. And if possible, being new or having AppleCare would also not be too bad.

Does anyone know where I can possibly look?

And also, those of you who have an M2 Ultra maybe even coming from the Intel MP, how is it compared to the Intel Mac Pro? The noice, heat etc? And why did you decide to pay the huge extra for the Mac Pro instead of the Mac Studio?

Curious to hear your guys thoughts!

craigslist and search is New York area.

 

[deconstruct60]

And as long as I'm able to, I wanna go nuts with the expansion options and install my 4x16TB HDDs (Promise Pegasus R4i) and maybe even get a Sonnet M.2 8x4 PCIe card.

The R4i was part of Apple's 'War' on wires. It uses an MPX connector to deliver power to drive the electronics and the HDDs on the R4i.

(time 1:34 here )

The MPX connector dies with the Mac Pro 2019. Its primary reason to be was to deliver power to Apple's GPUs who were also engaged in the 'War' on wires.

The GPU cores and Thunderbolt all moved inside the SoC with Apple Silicon so that basically solved the 'problem' that MPX was trying to cover.

If Apple brought composed a "Private Compute Cloud" card to put some additional compute into the Mac Pro then maybe the MPX connector could come back. I wouldn't hold my breadth one that though. There has been some movement in general PC world on a PCIe + higher power semi-standard... but it isn't a standard. So unless there is some Apple product applying some pressure, MPX is very likely 'dead'.

More likely Apple will just point to buying 1-2 more M.2 hosting PCIe cards to cover the storage that the HDDs cover ( at a higher $/GB price). Or maybe if the internal SATA doesn't go away , two 20+ TB drives for 'slow moving' archive stuff in a J2.

And also, those of you who have an M2 Ultra maybe even coming from the Intel MP, how is it compared to the Intel Mac Pro? T

Apple has some performance comparisons with the Intel Mac Pro as a baseline here:

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

For Mac Studio Ultra ( M3 Ultra ) the baseline comparisons are also with the Intel Mac Pro .

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

 

[avro707]

Apple has some performance comparisons with the Intel Mac Pro as a baseline here:

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

I think the topic starter was after something more than Apple bench-marketing.

do not live in the US (YET) and still need to pay the stupid surcharge since tech is always so much more expensive in the EU somehow, so the only option in Germany is Apple directly, which would cost me (converted with currently FX rates) around 17.341,18 USD.

I looked on the Apple DE site and even the Euro prices seemed a bit more acceptable than that USD price you've quoted.

Personally I wouldn't buy an M2 Ultra Mac Pro unless you got it at a bargain price with AppleCare+. There is a very slight chance they may replace it, but I'd say more likely than not the Mac Pro will be dropped.

 

[dymac]

Do you know you need 192 gig? Fine if you do, but if 128 is enough an m5 or m4 max will be faster at most things

Be careful with only 128GB of Ram. I went from a 7.1 Mac Pro with 192GB plus 32GB VRAM to a M4 Max with 128GB which I now know was a huge mistake. I big problem with memory pressure in the RED and running out of application memory.

 

[MacHeritage]

Be careful with only 128GB of Ram. I went from a 7.1 Mac Pro with 192GB plus 32GB VRAM to a M4 Max with 128GB which I now know was a huge mistake. I big problem with memory pressure in the RED and running out of application memory.

Yes, when you need the memory, you need the memory.

I've been there myself, just with less memory overall because of being on the 2010. Same issue though. Therefore, I know I need more than what I think I can get by with when upgrading.

It keeps on going down the line as well. I've even helped consumers realize this, who hardly do much. They burn out their SSD every few years because they needed at least 16GB-24GB of memory instead of the 8GB Apple told them they needed. Living in the yellow is a continual issue for them, burning through swap like crazy. When I explained to them about taking swap and adding it to their built-in memory amount, they will see how much they actually need on a regular day. Max it out and then take a measure and that is what they should aim for their next purchase.

But hitting red, which I sometimes do myself, can be wild at times. LOL

I really want to see an M5 Mac Pro with either 512GB or 1TB of memory possible. But we shall see what Apple does.

 

[dymac]

Yes, when you need the memory, you need the memory.

I've been there myself, just with less memory overall because of being on the 2010. Same issue though. Therefore, I know I need more than what I think I can get by with when upgrading.

It keeps on going down the line as well. I've even helped consumers realize this, who hardly do much. They burn out their SSD every few years because they needed at least 16GB-24GB of memory instead of the 8GB Apple told them they needed. Living in the yellow is a continual issue for them, burning through swap like crazy. When I explained to them about taking swap and adding it to their built-in memory amount, they will see how much they actually need on a regular day. Max it out and then take a measure and that is what they should aim for their next purchase.

But hitting red, which I sometimes do myself, can be wild at times. LOL

I really want to see an M5 Mac Pro with either 512GB or 1TB of memory possible. But we shall see what Apple does.

Good point about burning out the SSD. I really didn't think about that. I am just waiting on the M5 Studio with at least 256GB of RAM but after this experience with M4 Max I might be more likely to go with 512GB. Not sure I need to go MacPro but no way will I ever make the mistake again of only going with a measly 128GB.

 

[MacHeritage]

Good point about burning out the SSD. I really didn't think about that. I am just waiting on the M5 Studio with at least 256GB of RAM but after this experience with M4 Max I might be more likely to go with 512GB. Not sure I need to go MacPro but no way will I ever make the mistake again of only going with a measly 128GB.

Glad I could help.

Yes, if you have replaceable SSD's it is less of an issue (if you can still find one to replace it with these days) but when it is non-replaceable, like in a MacBook, iMac etc, it renders the Mac unusable and the whole Mac has to be replaced at significant cost.

I'm hoping Apple brings back the 512GB RAM (or more) version of the Mac Studio when it updates it to M5 and hopefully, the Mac Pro M5 version.

 

[flowrider]

I sold my 7,1 Mac Pro last year and upgraded to a 14,8 M2 Ultra Mac Pro. I bought mine from the Apple refurb store, and I am a Vet, so I used that discount. As far as Microcenter, that ship sailed many months ago. And the Microcenter deal required pickup; they would not ship.

Lou

 

[SDAVE]

OP wait for Mac Studio M5 Ultra to come out so the prices on the M3 Ultra go down. Better deals.

 

[realLucaR]

Isn't that MPX? There is no MPX on M2 Ultra Mac Pro

If there's nothing on eBay I would try just searching for M2 Ultra on Google and see if any refurbishing stores are selling them. Also a crazy idea, but searching Facebook marketplace and setting it to search in a gigantic radius so that it picks up multiple countries could work although I seriously doubt one would pop up there

No way, I never realized that. I always thought they just stripped the GPU support, but now since I looked at it again - well now I'm seeing it.

Do you know you need 192 gig? Fine if you do, but if 128 is enough an m5 or m4 max will be faster at most things

M5/M4 Max will be a Mac Studio or a MacBook Pro though. I specifically want to tower for its expandability to install PCIe cards. But yes, I do need the 192GB for local LLMs, 128GB would be too close in some cases. Besides, even if I didn't I would still pick 192GB since I cannot upgrade if I needed to!

The Promise Pegasus R4i is not compatible with the 2023 Mac Pro. I wish it was, since I really love the idea of it all being inside.

If you are updating by the end of the year, we will see if Apple updates it to M5 Ultra at least. No one knows yet. Pricing and specs will change if they do.

That is a bummer. Glad I haven't bought one yet and migrated all my data to it! Will probably use the J2i then with 2x16TB drives instead.

Man, I REALLY hope they throw the M5 Ultra in the Mac Pro. It would literally cost Apple almost nothing to do so!

M2 Ultra is faster in multicore than M4 Max but slower than M5 Max.

But there is no M5 Max studio and MBPs get quite loud and hot when running heavy workflows. I am typing this from a M3 Max with fans blasting as it works one right now 🙂

If expansion is desired , then M2U is a Mac Pro with PCIe (I am not sure if it has SATA ports like 2019, I don't think so but can be added with expansion cards I suppose) which can't really be beat, unless you use thunderbolt PCIe breakout boxes or old eGPUs

Still has SATA ports from what I know! I had an M1 Max MBP for a while when my Mac Pro was away, and man this things gets loud. Yeah, no!

Thunderbolt PCIe expansion to me defeats the whole purpose. I want it all in one machine, not having to connect cables and extra power supplys and whatnot. If Apple really fully discontinues the Mac Pro, I am not sure if I will stick with an Apple Desktop, I might build a Linux machine then. Or cave and get the Studio, who knows.

craigslist and search is New York area.

Thanks, will try that!

The R4i was part of Apple's 'War' on wires. It uses an MPX connector to deliver power to drive the electronics and the HDDs on the R4i.

(time 1:34 here )

The MPX connector dies with the Mac Pro 2019. Its primary reason to be was to deliver power to Apple's GPUs who were also engaged in the 'War' on wires.

The GPU cores and Thunderbolt all moved inside the SoC with Apple Silicon so that basically solved the 'problem' that MPX was trying to cover.

If Apple brought composed a "Private Compute Cloud" card to put some additional compute into the Mac Pro then maybe the MPX connector could come back. I wouldn't hold my breadth one that though. There has been some movement in general PC world on a PCIe + higher power semi-standard... but it isn't a standard. So unless there is some Apple product applying some pressure, MPX is very likely 'dead'.

More likely Apple will just point to buying 1-2 more M.2 hosting PCIe cards to cover the storage that the HDDs cover ( at a higher $/GB price). Or maybe if the internal SATA doesn't go away , two 20+ TB drives for 'slow moving' archive stuff in a J2.




Apple has some performance comparisons with the Intel Mac Pro as a baseline here:

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

For Mac Studio Ultra ( M3 Ultra ) the baseline comparisons are also with the Intel Mac Pro .

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

Still feels like a stupid choice, because they still left the brackets on the left side from the old housing and as we can see they also made third party accessories obsolete. But I do support their MPX modules, having almost no cables in the MP is refreshing from my messy Windows workstation.

I think the topic starter was after something more than Apple bench-marketing.



I looked on the Apple DE site and even the Euro prices seemed a bit more acceptable than that USD price you've quoted.

Personally I wouldn't buy an M2 Ultra Mac Pro unless you got it at a bargain price with AppleCare+. There is a very slight chance they may replace it, but I'd say more likely than not the Mac Pro will be dropped.

That is what I am looking to find - that bargain pricing :-D

I mean, everyone said it between 2013 until the 2019 MP dropped. Who knows, maybe they'll just sleep on it a couple of years and then boom, they repurpose it or something. Who even knows what's going on with Apple these days.

Be careful with only 128GB of Ram. I went from a 7.1 Mac Pro with 192GB plus 32GB VRAM to a M4 Max with 128GB which I now know was a huge mistake. I big problem with memory pressure in the RED and running out of application memory.

Exactly. When I buy the MP, I want to fully max it out to not run into swap.

Yes, when you need the memory, you need the memory.

I've been there myself, just with less memory overall because of being on the 2010. Same issue though. Therefore, I know I need more than what I think I can get by with when upgrading.

It keeps on going down the line as well. I've even helped consumers realize this, who hardly do much. They burn out their SSD every few years because they needed at least 16GB-24GB of memory instead of the 8GB Apple told them they needed. Living in the yellow is a continual issue for them, burning through swap like crazy. When I explained to them about taking swap and adding it to their built-in memory amount, they will see how much they actually need on a regular day. Max it out and then take a measure and that is what they should aim for their next purchase.

But hitting red, which I sometimes do myself, can be wild at times. LOL

I really want to see an M5 Mac Pro with either 512GB or 1TB of memory possible. But we shall see what Apple does.

I would hold onto that dream for now, as you cannot even get the M3 Ultra with 512GB RAM right now. And if you look at the pace AI is going so far, it does not seem to be getting better anytime soon. I was using my M3 MBP with 18GB for a while now as a main Mac while my Mac Pro was away, and holy **** was it using swap. Sometimes it went up to 17GB of swap usage, which is insane. On the Mac Pro the 96GB RAM are also scarce, will upgrade soon. Although Windows 11 tends not to waste as much of the 96GB compared to macOS Tahoe. But well, that's Tahoe.

Good point about burning out the SSD. I really didn't think about that. I am just waiting on the M5 Studio with at least 256GB of RAM but after this experience with M4 Max I might be more likely to go with 512GB. Not sure I need to go MacPro but no way will I ever make the mistake again of only going with a measly 128GB.

Normal users who are perfectly fine with 8GB RAM must be thinking that we're all insane 😂

I sold my 7,1 Mac Pro last year and upgraded to a 14,8 M2 Ultra Mac Pro. I bought mine from the Apple refurb store, and I am a Vet, so I used that discount. As far as Microcenter, that ship sailed many months ago. And the Microcenter deal required pickup; they would not ship.

Lou

Interesting, that would not have been possible then either way, ****. Thank you for your service!

OP wait for Mac Studio M5 Ultra to come out so the prices on the M3 Ultra go down. Better deals.

That is true. But the M3 Ultra is unfortunately the Studio and not my beloved Mac Pro. I really hope they give it a refresh soon..

 

[SDAVE]

That is true. But the M3 Ultra is unfortunately the Studio and not my beloved Mac Pro. I really hope they give it a refresh soon..

Can you live without PCIe? If yes, Mac Studio might be a better option for you. Even if they release a M5 Ultra Mac Pro, it still has a premium $ over Mac Studio.

There are also workarounds for PCIe like the Sonnet Echo II PCIe via TB5 if you need like 2 PCIe slots. Can toss this under your desk or something.

 

[avro707]

They will of course release the M5 Ultra right after the topic starter has purchased the Mac Studio.

The worry is that if they do it a few weeks after, you are stuck with the machine.

I had a similar thing with Air Pods Max where I purchased a new set, then 3 days later they announced the "2" version. I immediately took them back and got my money refunded. Not as bad as $10K worth of computer but still a hefty chunk of money.

 

[SDAVE]

You have to be insane to buy an M3 Ultra right now at least at a retail price. Its 2-3 years old and the M3 wasn't even a good update.

What I'm personally going to do is look at Facebook marketplace and OfferUp/Craigslist and see if I can get a mint M4 Max or M3 Ultra once M5 Ultra comes out or just get the M5 Ultra outright. I will need at least 128GB of RAM.

 

[rb2112]

So I've been thinking of getting an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the end of the year. I wanna go for the M2 Ultra, 76-Core GPU, 192GB, 8TB + wheel kit.

Does anyone know where I can possibly look?

Apple Refurbished store, at the moment, has most of your desired configuration. No wheels. About $9,000 USD.

 

[keksikuningas]

Apple Refurbished store, at the moment, has most of your desired configuration. No wheels. About $9,000 USD.

OP is from Germany:

Gebraucht & Refurbished Laptop Angebote - Mac - Apple (DE)

Spare bis zu 15 % beim Kauf eines refurbished Mac. Von Apple getestet und zertifiziert, mit 1 Jahr Garantie. Kostenlose Lieferung und Rückgabe.

www.apple.com

Mac Pro option is greyed out in the german refurbished store, so none available

 

[throAU]

Yes, when you need the memory, you need the memory.

Yeah not saying "no one needs that", just "if you don't need that, a late model max will be faster at low thread counts and comparable at higher thread count".

If its needed, its needed.

 

[avro707]

OP is from Germany:

That's the problem with Apple's geo-blocked stores. Unless you are in USA you miss out on those offers.

The Australian store also never has Mac Pro available refurbished.

 

[keksikuningas]

That's the problem with Apple's geo-blocked stores. Unless you are in USA you miss out on those offers.

The Australian store also never has Mac Pro available refurbished.

We don't even have a refurbished store in Finland at all :/
Couple times I saw the button appear in the mobile Apple Store app which made me wonder if it's planned in the future
Can't imagine it would have the MP since you could probably count its owners in Finland on 1 hand

 

[realLucaR]

Can you live without PCIe? If yes, Mac Studio might be a better option for you. Even if they release a M5 Ultra Mac Pro, it still has a premium $ over Mac Studio.

There are also workarounds for PCIe like the Sonnet Echo II PCIe via TB5 if you need like 2 PCIe slots. Can toss this under your desk or something.

Do I need it? No. Is the M2 Ultra's performance enough for me for the next 4+ years? Yes. So why would I get the studio and have a bunch of cables and enclosures lying around when I can just get a Mac Pro instead? As long as the option is there I might as well take it.

Also if I buy the Sonnet enclosure (which in Germany is 1700€+ alone) that would still be an external power supply and a Thunderbolt cable to connect it all. And it still is not as integrated as just plugging in PCIe cards. Besides, Thunderbolt 4 x16 is three times as fast as Thunderbolt 5, with 32GB per second, compared to T5's 10GB per second. So my 4 NVME RAID will be much faster in there as well.

They will of course release the M5 Ultra right after the topic starter has purchased the Mac Studio.

The worry is that if they do it a few weeks after, you are stuck with the machine.

I had a similar thing with Air Pods Max where I purchased a new set, then 3 days later they announced the "2" version. I immediately took them back and got my money refunded. Not as bad as $10K worth of computer but still a hefty chunk of money.

But to be honest you would not have missed out on anything. The Apple intelligence features on the APM2 are negligible. To me at least, the APM are headphones. I do not want any of these features, so I was kind of pissed off when they released the "2nd Gen" 6 years later.

You have to be insane to buy an M3 Ultra right now at least at a retail price. Its 2-3 years old and the M3 wasn't even a good update.

What I'm personally going to do is look at Facebook marketplace and OfferUp/Craigslist and see if I can get a mint M4 Max or M3 Ultra once M5 Ultra comes out or just get the M5 Ultra outright. I will need at least 128GB of RAM.

True that! M1 Ultras for LLM are a steal right now, can get 128GB under 2k$.

Apple Refurbished store, at the moment, has most of your desired configuration. No wheels. About $9,000 USD.

Thank you very much for recommending me that. It is just about 8700 Euros, way better already! Even comes with the 8TB SSD.

The only issue I'm gonna have is getting that thing from the US to Germany. Might as well hop on a plane if I look at the prices some of these reshipping companies charge.

And suggestions what to do?!

OP is from Germany:

Gebraucht & Refurbished Laptop Angebote - Mac - Apple (DE)

Spare bis zu 15 % beim Kauf eines refurbished Mac. Von Apple getestet und zertifiziert, mit 1 Jahr Garantie. Kostenlose Lieferung und Rückgabe.

www.apple.com

Mac Pro option is greyed out in the german refurbished store, so none available

...and would not be worth it anyways, since I'm gonna pay German prices.

We don't even have a refurbished store in Finland at all :/
Couple times I saw the button appear in the mobile Apple Store app which made me wonder if it's planned in the future
Can't imagine it would have the MP since you could probably count its owners in Finland on 1 hand

Don't know since when we have it in Germany though. But the amount of devices available is still low compared to the US.

 

[deconstruct60]

Still feels like a stupid choice, because they still left the brackets on the left side from the old housing and as we can see they also made third party accessories obsolete.

Which third party accessories? In terms of a large numbers of products, no. If talking about MPX class products there was only one; so 'accessories' shouldn't even be plural. There is not much in scope they knocked. The primarily third party stuff removed was GPU cards. There are folks that are more vocal about those , but the possible cards that could be put inside a Mac Pro that is only a substantially smaller subset.

[ If look at the PCI-e compatible card list for the Thunderbolt expansion and macOS there are a bit over 3 pages of cards.

Echo II DV T5 Desktop - Tech Specs - SONNETTECH

View tech specs and videos for Echo II DV T5, check hardware and OS compatibility, and see recommended accessories for this Thunderbolt 5 PCIe expansion system.

www.sonnettech.com

versus about 7 AMD GPU cards for the 2019 in macOS. 7 is the smaller number; that wouldn't even fill up a. page. You can 'bloat' that by listing different vendors for the same card. But can essentially do the same thing to the rest of list if thrown in commodity PCI-e m.2 cards and a few card categories where Sonnet doesn't want to validate cards they offer. ]


Sonnet has a relatively new 8x m.2 card

M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe Card - SONNETTECH

Eight M.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 4.0 x16 card. Silent operation. Add your own ultra-fast SSDs for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

www.sonnettech.com

It fits in a Mac Pro 2023 just fine. So far from 'obsolete'. Apple cut down on the number 8 pin AUX power ports, but that doesn't impact most of the possible card you can put into the Mac Pro.

Apple needs to put more substantive working in growing the list of cards in the larger subset that they still support, (faster networking, more accelerators not about the display graphics stack computation ,etc. ). Also if not going to ramp out to a SoC with far higher power consumption, perhaps put some more of the AUX power options back.

But I do support their MPX modules, having almost no cables in the MP is refreshing from my messy Windows workstation.

It is 'nifty', but it is also deeply proprietary. Which makes it a dual edge sword. Apple likely 'back seat' drove Promise into doing that so that four HDD refugees with substantive spending cash from the Mac Pro 2008-2012 era would have somewhere to install the 4 HDDs they were pulling. But the APFS is skewed toward SSDs. Apple did not sell a MP 2019 with a SATA drive in it ( no configurations).

The R4i was similar to the transition stop gap as the Afterburner Card. Use it as point during the transition. It was not a long term solution. There are folks caught up on R4i cost , but that is a 'sunk cost' bias. It is not the future direction that Apple was pointing towards in 2019.

Promise is about to release an R12 that does 12 disks externally and works with all current Macs (not just Mac Pro).

PROMISE Technology - Storage Solutions for IT, Cloud, Surveillance and Rich Media

That is probably one of the 2026 solutions for HDD centric refugees.


P.S.
HP Z6 G5-a tower specs... no default SATA drive options.

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-z6-g5-a-tower-workstation-customizable-7d8b9av-mb?pStoreID=epp#techSpecs

HP Z8 Fury. tower specs .. no default SATA drive options

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-z8-fury-g5-tower-workstation-customizable-3f0p6av-mb#techSpecs

( there is optional SATA choices there, but primarily being sold as SSDs grounded workstations. )

Apple is not in the 'misguided' zone here thinking that most processing that demands high performance is primarily shifting to SSDs. The NAND/RAM pricing apocalypse may set that transition back in next year or so , but SSDs has been the future direction since before the MP 2019 appeared ( or even in 2017)