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MP 1,1-5,1 Aqua Computer kryoM.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x 4, adapter

Matty_TypeR

Matty_TypeR

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 1, 2016
641
555
UK
I just installed this PCIe card with a 970 pro NVMe to boot from ( big thanks to TSIALEX for modding my boot rom's top man )

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0742LW4WB/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this adapter card is very very nice, and as I have the PX1 angel wings to compare its very well made and weighs about 3 times as much, real heavy heatsink and a heatsink both sides of the card.











so far all is working very well, have to do an update to beta 8 but iam very pleased with not only the PCIe card but also being able to boot NVMe Tsialex also sorted out my boot rooms as they had some junk in there, plus he said I had a very long 17 digit number on my logic board on one Mac Pro he had never seen before, so will take a pic when I next have a good clean.
 
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Matty_TypeR said:
I just installed this PCIe card with a 970 pro NVMe to boot from ( big thanks to TSIALEX for modding my boot rom's top man )

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0742LW4WB/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this adapter card is very very nice, and as I have the PX1 angel wings to compare its very well made and weighs about 3 times as much, real heavy heatsink and a heatsink both sides of the card.











so far all is working very well, have to do an update to beta 8 but iam very pleased with not only the PCIe card but also being able to boot NVMe Tsialex also sorted out my boot rooms as they had some junk in there, plus he said I had a very long 17 digit number on my logic board on one Mac Pro he had never seen before, so will take a pic when I next have a good clean.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing. What king of temp drop are you seeing with and without the fan you will be adding?
 
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handheldgames said:
Thanks for sharing. What king of temp drop are you seeing with and without the fan you will be adding?
Click to expand...

I don't have any fans on the PCIe cards so can't say what temps are, and Mac fan control doesn't read the PCIe devices. but going by the nice heatsink and the heatsink on the back it should stay nice and cool.
 
Matty_TypeR said:
I had a very long 17 digit number on my logic board on one Mac Pro he had never seen before, so will take a pic when I next have a good clean.
Click to expand...

It's the LogicBoardSerialNumber, you will need to take a picture of the label at the left of the male CPU tray connector on the logic board, you will need to take out the CPU tray cage.

Your BootROM is working as is with iMessage, but it's better to have the correct LBSN on your BootROM. Apple change the requirements of iMessage validation frequently, trying to stop the hackintosh crowd. Last time they changed it, I lost the ability of login with Fusion VMs even with all the ids correctly defined into the VMX file, iCloud even thinks the VM is a Mac Pro (I use the data of a defective logic board that I have).
 
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tsialex said:
It's the LogicBoardSerialNumber, you will need to take a picture of the label at the left of the male CPU tray connector on the logic board, you will need to take out the CPU tray cage.

Your BootROM is working as is with iMessage, but it's better to have the correct LBSN on your BootROM. Apple change the requirements of iMessage validation frequently, trying to stop the hackintosh crowd. Last time they changed it, I lost the ability of login with Fusion VMs even with all the ids correctly defined into the VMX file, iCloud even thinks the VM is a Mac Pro (I use the data of a defective logic board that I have).
Click to expand...

All is working 100% thank you, and yea that's kinda cool from a defective logic board, I wonder if the Hackintosh boys will be able to fiddle all in the future, seems apple is clamping down there.
 
gallery-img-PX1-9-lg.jpg


I've noticed something with the kryoM.2, where is the SPI-flash with the PCIe id data/option ROM? I can't see any flash memory in the pictures.

It's a totally dumb card?

1) About the chip:

Angelbirds Wings PX1 has an integrated circuit that other cards don't have. Initially I thought that this chip was a SPI flash memory, it's a SOJ-8 like almost all SPI flash memories, to do the PCIe ID and identify/differentiate multiple cards. This was my first idea.

Recently I tried to read the contents of that chip and didn't succeed, this intrigued me and I started to analyse the circuit from the chip to the PCIe slot and saw that this SOJ-8 don't connect to PCIe data lines, just to the power ones. So, can't be a PCIe ID.

Days later, I bought another PX1 and with this one the markings on the SOJ was readable with an USB microscope. It's an oscillator and it's used to control the card illumination. So my first hypothesis was totally wrong, sorry for that, and PX1 is a dumb card too.
 
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I can't see anything like that on it, when I take it out I will look and see, but if its a dumb card, it sure does work well, and keeps it cool:)
 
Matty_TypeR said:
I can't see anything like that on it, when I take it out I will look and see, but if its a dumb card, it sure does work well, and keeps it cool:)
Click to expand...
PCIe SSDs work without the option ROM, but it's a problem when you have lot's of cards or a PCIe switch/bifurcation - you can't use two dumb cards together.

For the everyone using it to install only one PCIe SSD/only one card on a system, will work nicely.
 
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tsialex said:
PCIe SSDs work without the option ROM, but it's a problem when you have lot's of cards or a PCIe switch/bifurcation - you can't use two dumb cards together.

For the everyone using it to install only one PCIe SSD/only one card on a system, will work nicely.
Click to expand...

That explains it, so a good thing I use it with my angel wings PX1 then, but as a single card offering exceptional cooling, it works very well.
 
tsialex said:
PCIe SSDs work without the option ROM, but it's a problem when you have lot's of cards or a PCIe switch/bifurcation - you can't use two dumb cards together.

For the everyone using it to install only one PCIe SSD/only one card on a system, will work nicely.
Click to expand...

Does the Lycom DT-120 have this problem too? I will test one at the end of the week, and if all is good I would love to get a second one, i'm slowly removing all the hds from my macpro... easier to move it around :)
 
itadampf said:
Does the Lycom DT-120 have this problem too? I will test one at the end of the week, and if all is good I would love to get a second one, i'm slowly removing all the hds from my macpro... easier to move it around :)
Click to expand...
I never had one and the photos of the site are horrible. Look for the SOIC/SOP SPI flash, it's the 8-pin chip that I showed on the Angelbird Wings PX1 and it's the same SPI flash as your Mac Pro.

If you want to test, install one on the slot 2 and another on the slot 3 or 4. Do not install both on the 3 or 4 slots.
 
itadampf said:
Does the Lycom DT-120 have this problem too? I will test one at the end of the week, and if all is good I would love to get a second one, i'm slowly removing all the hds from my macpro... easier to move it around :)
Click to expand...

The Lycom DT-120 is also a dumb card, it has no SPI flash on it. I have one in front of me now.
 
tsialex said:
View attachment 779639

I've noticed something with the kryoM.2, where is the SPI-flash with the PCIe id data/option ROM? I can't see any flash memory in the pictures.

It's a totally dumb card?
Click to expand...

interesting this is something iv been mentioning in places for a long time

that someone should try make an M.2 card with an EEPROM we can stuff the Apple NVMe driver into as an option ROM so we would not have to worry about editing BootROMs and the risks and issues that editing BootROMs can entail.

I wonder what can be done with that card if that is indeed an EEPROM. :)
 
LightBulbFun said:
interesting this is something iv been mentioning in places for a long time

that someone should try make an M.2 card with an EEPROM we can stuff the Apple NVMe driver into as an option ROM so we would not have to worry about editing BootROMs and the risks and issues that editing BootROMs can entail.

I wonder what can be done with that card if that is indeed an EEPROM. :)
Click to expand...
Angelbird Wings PX1 has a option ROM, maybe we just need to change it to a bigger one and do the magic EFI trick with the NVMe DXE.

About the chip:

Angelbirds Wings PX1 has an integrated circuit that other cards don't have. Initially I thought that this chip was a SPI flash memory, it's a SOJ-8 like almost all SPI flash memories, to do the PCIe ID and identify/differentiate multiple cards. This was my first idea.

Recently I tried to read the contents of that chip and didn't succeed, this intrigued me and I started to analyse the circuit from the chip to the PCIe slot and saw that this SOJ-8 don't connect to PCIe data lines, just to the power ones. So, can't be a PCIe ID.

Days later, I bought another PX1 and with this one the markings on the SOJ was readable with an USB microscope. It's an oscillator and it's used to control the card illumination. So my first hypothesis was totally wrong, sorry for that, and PX1 is a dumb card too.
 
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Since I doubt I can ever afford a HighPoint 7101A, I picked this up from Amazon US.

It has heat sinks and thermal pads for both sides of the M.2 chip. Carefully cleaned the sinks with 99% alcohol pads before applying the putty-like thermal pads.

With a 512 GB Samsung 970 Pro, My temps were averaging 47-51C with the Lycom DT-120 and no heat sinks I was using before.

With the Kryo, after waiting for 8 hours or so, temps were now averaging 37-39C.

Temps were courtesy of DriveDX v.1.8.1, updated to latest device definitions.

I left the LED switch on the card on "SSD" so the area under my desk gets lit up like a radioactive chamber from an Irwin Allen TV show.

Very high quality build for a 'dumb' carrier card.

PCI bracket is vented to allow air to flow directly over heatsinks to the outside of the computer.
 
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Earl Urley said:
Since I doubt I can ever afford a HighPoint 7101A, I picked this up from Amazon US.

It has heat sinks and thermal pads for both sides of the M.2 chip. Carefully cleaned the sinks with 99% alcohol pads before applying the putty-like thermal pads.

With a 512 GB Samsung 970 Pro, My temps were averaging 47-51C with the Lycom DT-120 and no heat sinks I was using before.

With the Kryo, after waiting for 8 hours or so, temps were now averaging 37-39C.

Temps were courtesy of DriveDX v.1.8.1, updated to latest device definitions.

I left the LED switch on the card on "SSD" so the area under my desk gets lit up like a radioactive chamber from an Irwin Allen TV show.

Very high quality build for a 'dumb' carrier card.

PCI bracket is vented to allow air to flow directly over heatsinks to the outside of the computer.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing some rock-solid stats. This elevates the product beyond just looking cool to a great solution.

+1 on drive DX. The developer behind the app is very responsive.
 
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itadampf said:
Does the Lycom DT-120 have this problem too? I will test one at the end of the week, and if all is good I would love to get a second one, i'm slowly removing all the hds from my macpro... easier to move it around :)
Click to expand...

I ran two Lycom DT-120 with sm961 cards in MacPro4,1->5,1 slots 3 and 4. Those slots share 4 PCIe lanes via PCIe switch on the motherboard. No problems. Using both at the same time, though, limits combined throughput.
 
crjackson2134 said:
I was planning on doing the same after your post. It looks like it costs $5 to unlock the bundle and another $5 for the App itself. Is that correct? What other apps do you feel are worth adding to the bundle?
Click to expand...

I chose to buy it direct from binary fruit because they give you a key good for up to three installs, and I have at least three Macs I would want to run it on.

The bundle at $10 is half the price, but the license expressly allows only installing on one machine. I have no idea if binaryfruit's back-end actively enforces this (i.e. won't allow more than one activation with the same SN) but I didn't want to take the risk, plus as everyone has said it's good software worth supporting.
 
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