Mac Pro 2008 SSD

Almost any propular SATA SSD can do the job well.

 

Two top-tier suggestions for the drive would be:

* Samsung 860 Evo.
* Crucial MX-500

However, the 2008 Mac Pro will not be able to use these drives at anywhere near their full speed when using the normal sleds. This is a strict hardware limitation. Therefore, even the most modest drives will be more than adequate, speed wise (data safety may be a different issue). A faster alternative would be to RAID-0 two drives, but this is still a waste as you won't get the full speed of two RAIDed drives either. I personally can not recommend SSD RAIDs (RAID 0) in this application due to some severe problems I eventually had in my old 2008.

You will need an appropriate 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. There are a lot of other options for this. In the alternative, I hear some people just slip the drive into the slot and securely tape it in.

Regardless of the inability to use full SSD speeds, you will find it to be a good upgrade.

 

If you need 1 TB and your budget can't handle a 1TB SSD - it could be.

The SSD will be much faster all around, but costs more per GB.

Perhaps both - a 1TB WD Green goes for around $50 dollars, and you could get a smaller SSD for the system and apps. A 250 GB 860 EVO is around $80.

A lot of it depends on what you're doing. Do you need fast read/write to big data, or is a fast system/app drive and slower big disk reasonable?

Don't depend too much on the BlackMagic/AJA disk tests frequently mentioned here. Those measure large sequential transfers - useful if you need to read/write huge video files in real time, but not so useful for loads that hit lots of smaller files.

 

No. The SSDs are lightyears faster.

 

Actually, they're milliseconds faster. A "light year" is a measure of distance (about 9.5 trillion kilometres).

 

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The 3,1 I have set up for my wife is running a custom Fusion drive configuration which gives you pretty much the SSD performance in real life with the economy of a larger drive. It has been stable with a 2TB spinning drive and a 250GB SSD.
I do not think the slower SATA speeds of the 3,1 have that much of an impact in real use. The overall performance improvement of an SSD is stunning.

 

I have had an Apricorn Velocity Solo x1 Sata III adapter and a 1TB Samsung 850 Evo in my 2008 Mac Pro since 2014, and it’s been fantastic.

 

Personally I prefer 3.5 inch mechanical hard drives. The 3,1 is a computer that starts, reboots or shuts down slower than others anyway. After the novelty of a slightly faster boot with an ssd has faded you are left with having a makeshift physical support for an ssd in bay #1, above the fan cage, unless you want to wait a few weeks for a thingie to adapt it to a drawer. With modern 7200 rpm and large buffer WD & Seagate hard disks, you get ample space, reliability and once the operating system has started, not much of a difference in system response. Just my thoughts. The choice is yours, of course.