MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[zedex]

I wonder, IOcrest with 2 1TB EVO 970, can they boot in Raid in 10.13.6 HS.

On this - I'm going to post shortly about my High Sierra RAID in a Lycom DT-130 (with ASM2824 switch like a IOCrest/SYBA). It's eye-opening in all the right ways HOWEVER don't get an EVO 970 NVME. Anything less that a Samsung 970 Pro will give you burst of 2500 MB/s and then complete the transfer at 50% of the advertised speed (1200-1300 MB/s).

I am a very price sensitive buyer and I only ponied up the extra cash because of the *SUSTAINED* performance of the Samsung 970 Pro. Testing results to follow..

 

[AndreeOnline]

I'm turning to the expertise of this thread after bumping my head for most of the day.

I've tried to post this in the proper section: iMac, but I feel this more of a general MacOS-SSD-protocol issue.

Long story shot: have late 2015 iMac (17.1) with 24GB Apple SSD and 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD configured as a Fusion drive (bought a used iMac that came in this config). Want to break Fusion drive and install new 1TB drive in 24GB SSD NVMe connector, to end up with two separate drives, without 'Fusion'.

Reached for OWC's Aura Pro X2 that on the fist page lists as compatible. But just before pulling the trigger saw this:

My iMac is the one bottom left with the fat, red X. Both older AND newer iMacs list as compatible.

Called OWC technical support (not sales) and they took the time to investigate and replied later via email: "won't work". This baffles me.

The physical connector is the same: 12+16 Apple style. The 17.1 iMac used an AHCI drive originally. Is this the issue? OWC didn't even mention this—they didn't know why the chart above looks like that, but they don't have confidence to go against it.

Found a great resource at Beetstech, but they also only list AHCI as compatible and they sell used Apple drives for $$$.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on what's possible here. A fallback that seems 100% is a used SSUBX from Beetstech, but I'll get a faster, larger and cheaper from OWC if the Aura Pro X2 actually works.

Thanks
A

 

[tsialex]

I'm turning to the expertise of this thread after bumping my head for most of the day.

I've tried to post this in the proper section: iMac, but I feel this more of a general MacOS-SSD-protocol issue.

Long story shot: have late 2015 iMac (17.1) with 24GB Apple SSD and 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD configured as a Fusion drive (bought a used iMac that came in this config). Want to break Fusion drive and install new 1TB drive in 24GB SSD NVMe connector, to end up with two separate drives, without 'Fusion'.

Reached for OWC's Aura Pro X2 that on the fist page lists as compatible. But just before pulling the trigger saw this:

View attachment 866482

My iMac is the one bottom left with the fat, red X. Both older AND newer iMacs list as compatible.

Called OWC technical support (not sales) and they took the time to investigate and replied later via email: "won't work". This baffles me.

The physical connector is the same: 12+16 Apple style. The 17.1 iMac used an AHCI drive originally. Is this the issue? OWC didn't even mention this—they didn't know why the chart above looks like that, but they don't have confidence to go against it.

Found a great resource at Beetstech, but they also only list AHCI as compatible and they sell used Apple drives for $$$.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on what's possible here. A fallback that seems 100% is a used SSUBX from Beetstech, but I'll get a faster, larger and cheaper from OWC if the Aura Pro X2 actually works.

Thanks
A

This thread is about Mac Pro and the iMac needs are very different, you should go to the iMac forum and ask your question on the SSD upgrades thread.

Apple added NVMe EFI support to the whole line of Macs with High Sierra firmware upgrades, so won't be AHCI versus NVMe.

Btw, please check if your iMac can have firmware upgrades with the OWC SSD, MP6,1 and some of the MBPs can't and is a big nuisance to replace the blade to do the firmware upgrades with the trashcan or rMBP, with an iMac will be a nightmare.

 

[zedex]

I thought I'd read something about this issue in my endless education on the Mac implementation of PCIe SSDs....

You were really close (see this section on the Beetstech website): https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades

exceptional explanation of the anomolies (by model) needed to navigate this space for success..

[you can save 20% by sourcing it from eBay rather than BT]

 

[zedex]

I know why other well computing are saying that it is completely unsupported solid state drive. Don't make the mistake of purchasing that AURA X.

You need a specific type of NVMe SSD that can be formatted in 4Kn

The good news is that they are cheaper and faster than the SSD that you are presently contemplating purchasing. We might need to migrate this discussion to another forum to keep other members happy.

 

[AndreeOnline]

You need a specific type of NVMe SSD that can be formatted in 4Kn

The good news is that they are cheaper and faster than the SSD that you are presently contemplating purchasing. We might need to migrate this discussion to another forum to keep other members happy.

I'm all for order and discipline regarding the forum structure.

Appreciate your input! I have a thread already in the iMac section, if you care to move there!

Help solve mystery of: iMac Fusion drive SSD slot

Guys: I bought a used 27 iMac late 2015 with an 4GHz i7. As it turns out it has been configured with a Fusion drive, but not your vanilla kind. It has a 24GB Intel SSD (I guess that's stock) for the 'fast' SSD part and then it has a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO for the 'large' part. All well and good...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[AlexMaximus]

This thread is about Mac Pro and the iMac needs are very different, you should go to the iMac forum and ask your question on the SSD upgrades thread.

Apple added NVMe EFI support to the whole line of Macs with High Sierra firmware upgrades, so won't be AHCI versus NVMe.

Btw, please check if your iMac can have firmware upgrades with the OWC SSD, MP6,1 and some of the MBPs can't and is a big nuisance to replace the blade to do the firmware upgrades with the trashcan or rMBP, with an iMac will be a nightmare.

Hi Alex,

Very short question here, maybe you can give me an educated guess:

Do you think most of the PCI adapter cards for NVME or AHCI blades that do work in Mojave inside the 5.1 towers will work also in new 7.1 towers? What do you think about it, chances 50/50% ?
Of course, as we know, the new non-Windows bootable Sonnet Fusion card will work as in the keynote pictured, but what is with all the other cards, especially the IO Crest.
I am very happy with this card, even loaded with two older AHCI drives. Quiet and cool, it would be great if those ASM2824
powered switch cards would work in the all-new 7.1. It would be certainly an additional incentive if I could move most of my expensive expansion cards over. After all, they work with Mojave (USB cards, PCIe SSDs, Vega7,IO-Crest, Bluray box ...)
The question will be relevant because moving all this stuff into external boxes in an iMac scenario costs me upwards of 1000 $ - so all of sudden the 7.1 becomes (kind of) 1000 bucks cheaper if I can move over this stuff. I am sure all the Pixlas Macs feel the same... I appreciate your expert opinion on this.

 

[tsialex]

Hi Alex,

Very short question here, maybe you can give me an educated guess:

Do you think most of the PCI adapter cards for NVME or AHCI blades that do work in Mojave inside the 5.1 towers will work also in new 7.1 towers? What do you think about it, chances 50/50% ?
Of course, as we know, the new non-Windows bootable Sonnet Fusion card will work as in the keynote pictured, but what is with all the other cards, especially the IO Crest.
I am very happy with this card, even loaded with two older AHCI drives. Quiet and cool, it would be great if those ASM2824
powered switch cards would work in the all-new 7.1. It would be certainly an additional incentive if I could move most of my expensive expansion cards over. After all, they work with Mojave (USB cards, PCIe SSDs, Vega7,IO-Crest, Bluray box ...)
The question will be relevant because moving all this stuff into external boxes in an iMac scenario costs me upwards of 1000 $ - so all of sudden the 7.1 becomes (kind of) 1000 bucks cheaper if I can move over this stuff. I am sure all the Pixlas Macs feel the same... I appreciate your expert opinion on this.

No one can say for sure yet, but will probably work.

We just need to see how the T2 security will interact with the NVMe bootable cards. If Apple still injects the NVMe EFI module and permits the usage when T2 security is relaxed like with 2018 Macs that have T2, probably all PCIe switched adapters will work.

 

[PetteriKiller]

Syba SI-PEX40129 works fine.

Edited

 

[bsbeamer]

Syba SI-PEX40129 works fine:
..but maybe blocks the GPU´s blower too much.

You started a thread dedicated to this particular issue, please do not hijack this thread as well.

5.1. Random Shutdown problems!

Edit: I changed the topic to match the following discussion better Hi-ho folks! I have a Frankenstein-Mac Pro 5.1 2009 which has 2 x Intel Xeon X5690 3.46GHz processors in it. (Mojave on NVMe PCI-e disk and the boot ROM naturally 144.0.0.0.0) I did have some random and shudden shutdowns -...

forums.macrumors.com

Make sure you're using heatsinks with your NVMe blades.

 

[solaris8x86]

I'm planning to get and to install a NVMe SSD to my Mac Pro 2010 as a boot drive. After a comprehensive research. It turns out that the Samsung SM961 (2016 model, use MLC) is the most ideal candidate for such an upgrade. In terms of read and write performance is more balancing for enterprise application. It seems that those latest 970 Evo or Pro model is only useful when the application would use sequential I/O. Such as backup. Not that useful to me in the real world....

As much as I learnt of, NVMe cannot improve much performance in video post-processing applications comparing to enterprise SAS SSD RAID drive array. It's my primary concern because of my work. So my purpose is just to use to NVMe to house the macOS only. And leaving my existing SAS RAID storage for FCPX. Separating the I/O workload. Because NVMe has no major advantage in terms of random I/O over traditional SAS RAID storage. So even if switching my entire storage to NVMe. My FCPX performance could just degrade but not upgrade. Because NVMe SSD is not really that fast on video post-processing applications which these kinds of application heavily rely on random I/O performance. Not the sequential I/O. Which is disappointing.

 

[AidenShaw]

Because NVMe SSD is not really that fast on video post-processing applications which these kinds of application heavily rely on random I/O performance. Not the sequential I/O. Which is disappointing.

That's odd - I've always heard that NVMe is outstanding at deep random I/O loads (and deep sequential I/O loads), and not too much better than AHCI/SAS on shallow loads. NVMe's strength is massive parallelism.

 

[Rezblah]

On this - I'm going to post shortly about my High Sierra RAID in a Lycom DT-130 (with ASM2824 switch like a IOCrest/SYBA). It's eye-opening in all the right ways HOWEVER don't get an EVO 970 NVME. Anything less that a Samsung 970 Pro will give you burst of 2500 MB/s and then complete the transfer at 50% of the advertised speed (1200-1300 MB/s).

I am a very price sensitive buyer and I only ponied up the extra cash because of the *SUSTAINED* performance of the Samsung 970 Pro. Testing results to follow..

Hi, any chance you can help out with a definitive answer on the dt 130?

Definitely bootable with nvme drives? (I have 2 970pros sitting idly by)
Not capped at 1500mb/s?

Many thanks!
r

 

[zedex]

Hi, any chance you can help out with a definitive answer on the dt 130?

Definitely bootable with nvme drives? (I have 2 970pros sitting idly by)
Not capped at 1500mb/s?

Many thanks!
r

Sure, I meant to get some facts and information out to the forum prior to now. It's a really nice little device and when you install it in slot 2 with a Samsung pro 970 it will do sustained transfers of 2700 Mbps. I really don't get that much satisfaction from seeing benchmark tests report on the disk transfer capability - so all of my tests have been performed to using a 400Gb Apple movies folder. I'm both astonished and impressed at the average speed of 2700-- it never falls below 2100 and intermittently peaks at 3300 - insane. I'll post pictures and add more information in a follow up post

 

[Rezblah]

Sure, I meant to get some facts and information out to the forum prior to now. It's a really nice little device and when you install it in slot 2 with a Samsung pro 970 it will do sustained transfers of 2700 Mbps. I really don't get that much satisfaction from seeing benchmark tests report on the disk transfer capability - so all of my tests have been performed to using a 400Gb Apple movies folder. I'm both astonished and impressed at the average speed of 2700-- it never falls below 2100 and intermittently peaks at 3300 - insane. I'll post pictures and add more information in a follow up post

Awesome thanks for the great info

Sorry if I’ve missed the obvious, but is this on a bootable drive on this card? The web details scream not bootable on ram city’s site but they all say that... I’ll be grabbing one if it’s bootable that’s for sure!

 

[tsialex]

Awesome thanks for the great info

Sorry if I’ve missed the obvious, but is this on a bootable drive on this card? The web details scream not bootable on ram city’s site but they all say that... I’ll be grabbing one if it’s bootable that’s for sure!

It's the MP5,1 firmware that makes all NVMe adaptors bootable, even the ones that are not bootable with Windows.

If the PCIe switch expose the blade as a normal PCIe device, the BootROM will boot from the M.2/U.2 drive.

 

[Rezblah]

Cheers Alex that’s what I figured but I haven’t found any official confirmation on this anywhere, even the ram city dudes couldn’t tell me, so just wanted to double check with someone who’s done it before I drop any more money on this set up - i ran into a wall with my syba/crest I/O, my machine couldn’t detect the 970pro drives after successful firmware update to 144 and mojave up and running on a 2.5” ssd, so it’s been rma’d And this is plan b... I prefer the idea of no fan noise so would rather go with the lycom anyway...

 

[solaris8x86]

KryoM.2 EVO arrived. Germany thing. USD $50.37 only (inclusive shipping).
Now, waiting Samsung SM961 1TB (MLC) to arrive. Need more days... only MLC can suit the FCPX needs (sustain write/read performance are important.)

 

[goodfidelity]

Did anyone try this one from eBay for the spare SSD blade from upgrade in Macbook pro 2014?
Apple SSD -> PCI bridge card

Happy to hear your ideas, i was thinking to put new in my Macbook, and just swap over the old one to the Mac Pro.

//GF

 

[cannfoddr]

KryoM.2 EVO arrived. Germany thing. USD $50.37 only (inclusive shipping).
Now, waiting Samsung SM961 1TB (MLC) to arrive. Need more days... only MLC can suit the FCPX needs (sustain write/read performance are important.)

View attachment 871308

This looks very nice - does it do NVME? I have a cheap 512GB NvMe from Amazon Prime day that i would like to use for Catalina on my 5,1

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Yes, it would, if it's Mac compatible.

Lou

 

[lowendlinux]

This looks very nice - does it do NVME? I have a cheap 512GB NvMe from Amazon Prime day that i would like to use for Catalina on my 5,1

Yes..I have my 970 Evo Plus in one..

 

[cannfoddr]

Thanks to everyone I just booted Catalina on my 5,1 using the VMWare approach. Hardest bit was downloading an installer image - ended up using the MacAdmins script on an existing Catalina install.

Had to do the boot-args twice - didn't take first time.

I am now looking for a simple cheap blade recommendation so I can install a name M2 disk and do it for real. The KryoM.2 Evo above looks interesting at a reasonable price - I am in the UK if anyone has recommendations.

 

[solaris8x86]

This looks very nice - does it do NVME? I have a cheap 512GB NvMe from Amazon Prime day that i would like to use for Catalina on my 5,1

It is a NVMe blade...

 

[flyingmanatee]

Unsure if it's been mentioned HP EX950 works fine without any hitches under macOS 10.13+. Using a KryoM.2 so it hits 1450ish MB/s limits