Best SSD for Mac Pro 2010? SATA or PCIe?

[dickie001x]

As the title says, I need to upgrade my current SSD (which sits in one of the DVD slots) as I'm getting write speeds of only 250mbs. It's an old Crucial 960GB from about ten years ago.
Your recommendations please. And how much faster would a PCIe SSD be compared to a SATA connected one?

 

[dickiedunn]

I'm relatively new here, but I made the same mistake you just did, so I'll save the experts from telling you what they told me!:

This wiki has all the info you need on putting in a PCIe SSD. Speeds are essentially ~1400 MB/s with a relatively inexpensive card, and can go up to 3,000 MB/s with a switched card (more expensive) which is quite a bit faster than your SSD.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/blade-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/

I believe you can get m.2 cards up to 2TB in size that will work.

Hope that helps.

 

[startergo]

https://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38
+
https://www.amazon.com/heatsink-dou...nvme+heatsink&qid=1560225154&s=gateway&sr=8-3
+Nvme of your choice in the above post.
for US sales

 

[dickie001x]

https://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38
+
https://www.amazon.com/heatsink-dou...nvme+heatsink&qid=1560225154&s=gateway&sr=8-3
+Nvme of your choice in the above post.
for US sales

Thanks for the information - I ordered both today. I still have a question regarding which SSD - I was gonna go with the Samsung 970 Pro but I've read mixed messages when using this with Sierra (10.12) - do you know if this SSD will work (and work as a boot drive)? If not, can you suggest another? Thanks! (I'm not planning on upgrading to High Sierra or Mojave).

 

[startergo]

Thanks for the information - I ordered both today. I still have a question regarding which SSD - I was gonna go with the Samsung 970 Pro but I've read mixed messages when using this with Sierra (10.12) - do you know if this SSD will work (and work as a boot drive)? If not, can you suggest another? Thanks! (I'm not planning on upgrading to High Sierra or Mojave).

I am not sure about Sierra, but it boots in HS, Mojave and Cat. You have to upgrade the firmware to the 144 version. Just upgrade to HS if you need to use Cuda newer than Kepler.

 

[tsialex]

Thanks for the information - I ordered both today. I still have a question regarding which SSD - I was gonna go with the Samsung 970 Pro but I've read mixed messages when using this with Sierra (10.12) - do you know if this SSD will work (and work as a boot drive)? If not, can you suggest another? Thanks! (I'm not planning on upgrading to High Sierra or Mojave).

Sierra only supports NVMe drives with 4096 bytes/sector, all Samsung consumer blades are 512 bytes/sector. Read the first post of the thread Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

 

[dickie001x]

Thanks both for your responses - much appreciated. That post which lists suitable blades for Sierra has a note attached saying "Don't use this list to buy blades for a Mac Pro, it's linked here for information purposes only." so I'm still not sure which blades to buy. Can anyone recommend one for use in Sierra (4096 bytes/sector). Thanks again.

 

[tsialex]

Thanks both for your responses - much appreciated. That post which lists suitable blades for Sierra has a note attached saying "Don't use this list to buy blades for a Mac Pro, it's linked here for information purposes only." so I'm still not sure which blades to buy. Can anyone recommend one for use in Sierra (4096 bytes/sector). Thanks again.

Why you need Sierra? Apple declared it obsolete after Catalina was released and it's not supported anymore. The last Security Update for Sierra was released in September, October Security Updates don't support it anymore.

 

[dickie001x]

I need to stay on Sierra because I use a MIDI keyboard/soundcard which for some reason stopped being recognised from 10.13.2 onwards, otherwise I would be on Mojave. I won't be able to replace the MIDI anytime soon so need to stay on Sierra for the foreseeable.

 

[dickie001x]

Guess what? Thanks to your message I re-evaluated what I was doing so have decided to upgrade my MIDI keyboard (second-hand on eBay, arriving tomorrow) so can then upgrade to High Sierra and then Mojave (when new graphics card arrives (Sapphire Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX Pulse 8 GB Gddr5 580)). I already have the adapter and heatsink, so I just now need to buy a blade. Would you recommend the SAMSUNG 970 Pro? (thanks so much!)

 

[dickie001x]

Why you need Sierra? Apple declared it obsolete after Catalina was released and it's not supported anymore. The last Security Update for Sierra was released in September, October Security Updates don't support it anymore.

Hi - I went ahead and upgraded to Mojave with a Radeon RX 580 8 GB and a Samsung 970 Pro. Everything went OK but I'm only getting half the speeds from the 970 Pro - read around 1600/write around 1100. Do you know why? Thanks.

 

[tsialex]

Hi - I went ahead and upgraded to Mojave with a Radeon RX 580 8 GB and a Samsung 970 Pro. Everything went OK but I'm only getting half the speeds from the 970 Pro - read around 1600/write around 1100. Do you know why? Thanks.

Mac Pro is PCIe 2.0. Maximum throughput possible of a PCIe 2.0 4x slot ~1500MB/s.

The only way to overcome it is using a PCIe switched adaptor like HighPoint SSD7101A-1 that convert 16x PCIe 2.0 into 4x PCIe 3.0.

Read the first post of the thread Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI.