Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacPro 4,1 Backplane to SATA III 6GB/s

Dolphins1972

Dolphins1972

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 1, 2017
142
57
MaxConnect offers Direct Backplane Ready Attachment for 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SAS/SATA Hard Drives or SSD Disk Drives
Click to expand...
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=189

Okay I think I'm having a senior moment? Does this upgrade the backplane from SATA II to SATA III thereby eliminating the need for custom outward facing drive sleds and additional SATA III cabling?

My current setup:

Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) flashed to 5,1
2.66 Xeon Quad Core
High Sierra 10.13.6
16GB DDR3 ECC 1066Mhz RAM

Bay 0 Upper: Superdrive DVD/RW
Bay 0-1 Lower: Hatachi HDD SATA II 3GB/s (Replacing with SATA III HDD)

Bay 1: WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD 6GB/s
Bay 2: WD Caviar Black HDD SATA III 6GB/s
Bay 3: WD Caviar Black HDD SATA III 6GB/s
Bay 4: WD Caviar Green HDD SATA II 3GB/s (Replacing with SATA III HDD)

I may go all SSD but for now this is the cheapest option. I still have to upgrade the GPU and have it flashed with MAC EFI or go with a dual GPU setup and possibly dual monitors, haven't settled on anything yet.
 
Last edited:
Dolphins1972 said:
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=189

Okay I think I'm having a senior moment? Does this upgrade the backplane from SATA II to SATA III thereby eliminating the need for custom outward facing drive sleds and additional SATA III cabling?

My current setup:

Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to 5,1
High Sierra 10.13.6
16GB DDR3 ECC 1066Mhz RAM

Bay 0 Upper: Superdrive DVD/RW
Bay 0-1 Lower: Hatachi HDD SATA II 3GB/s (Replacing with SATA III HDD)

Bay 1: WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD 6GB/s
Bay 2: WD Caviar Black HDD SATA III 6GB/s
Bay 3: WD Caviar Black HDD SATA III 6GB/s
Bay 4: WD Caviar Green HDD SATA II 3GB/s (Replacing with SATA III HDD)

I may go all SSD but for now this is the cheapest option. I still have to upgrade the GPU and have it flashed with MAC EFI or go with a dual GPU setup and possibly dual monitors, haven't settled on anything yet.
Click to expand...
It's a SAS RAID card, forget that. Apple kills support for 3rd party RAID cards at every new macOS release.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dolphins1972
tsialex said:
Honestly, just stay with SATAII speeds with your hard disk and invest into a NVMe PCIe SSD. You will get much more throughput from your money.
Click to expand...
I was trying to avoid PCIe SSD due to the 300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slots. I still have to upgrade the GPU and was thinking about a dual setup so I can boot from GT 120. If I go that route all 3 PCIe slots will be filled.
 
Dolphins1972 said:
I was trying to avoid PCIe SSD due to the 300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slots. I still have to upgrade the GPU and was thinking about a dual setup so I can boot from GT 120. If I go that route all 3 PCIe slots will be filled.
Click to expand...
If you use a PCIe SAS RAID card, you will use 10 times more energy than a PCIe NVMe SSD, maybe much more.

BTW, every way you will use to improve disk throughput, will need a PCIe card…
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dolphins1972
pl1984 said:
What issue are you experiencing that you need to solve? Are you experiencing a performance problem which SATA-III will address?
Click to expand...
Yes, all my drives will be SATA III but operating on a SATA II interface. I'm getting better than expected speeds on the SATA SSD but when transferring files between the HDDs it's like driving with the emergency brake on.
 
Dolphins1972 said:
Yes, all my drives will be SATA III but operating on a SATA II interface. I'm getting better than expected speeds on the SATA SSD but when transferring files between the HDDs it's like driving with the emergency brake on.
Click to expand...
Even with a PCIe RAID SAS card, you will not get much improvement from single drives, only with a RAID array.

What your main application? Maybe we can suggest something that will improve.
 
Dolphins1972 said:
Yes, all my drives will be SATA III but operating on a SATA II interface. I'm getting better than expected speeds on the SATA SSD but when transferring files between the HDDs it's like driving with the emergency brake on.
Click to expand...
I understand you'd prefer SATA-III because your device are SATA-III but that doesn't answer the question of what issue are you trying to solve (unless the issue is you do not like running SATA-III devices off of a SATA-II bus)? What do you expect to achieve by using SATA-III?
 
tsialex said:
Even with a PCIe RAID SAS card, you will not get much improvement from single drives, only with a RAID array.

What your main application? Maybe we can suggest something that will improve.
Click to expand...
Web design, graphic design, video editing

Main apps:

Photoshop
Illustrator
Final Cut Pro
Blender
Lightworks
 
Forget the RAID arrays, just buy a 1TB NVMe SSD drive like Samsung 970EVO and a Angelbirds Wings PX1 adapter.

When you have both at hand, do a BootROM dump, compress and PM me it. I'll insert the NVMe EFI driver on your firmware and you will boot from the NVMe drive like you boot from your hard disks.

You can get this speeds with a NVMe drive plus a HighPoint SSD7101A card: #1068
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dolphins1972
tsialex said:
Forget the RAID arrays, just buy a 1TB NVMe SSD drive like Samsung 970EVO and a Angelbirds Wings PX1 adapter.

When you have both at hand, do a BootROM dump, compress and PM me it. I'll insert the NVMe EFI driver on your firmware and you will boot from the NVMe drive like you boot from your hard disks.

You can get this speeds with a NVMe drive plus a HighPoint SSD7701a card: #1068
Click to expand...
You da man! When I get everything squared away I'll send you a PM.

Thank you.
SATA SSD.png
Caviar Green SATA II HDD.png
Caviar Black SATA III HDD.png

Hmmm... My old Caviar Green SATA II is out performing my newer Caviar Black SATA III? The WD Blue SATA SSD seems to be right on par with SATA II bus.
 
Last edited:
Dolphins1972 said:
You da man! When I get everything squared away I'll send you a PM.

Thank you.
Click to expand...
If you want to buy Angelbird Wings PX1, Adorama store on eBay has the best price, $59 with shipping. Amazon had a HighPoint SSD7101A promo, $275 each.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: crjackson2134
tsialex said:
If you want to buy Angelbird Wings PX1, Adorama store on eBay has the best price, $59 with shipping. Amazon had HighPoint SSD7701a promo, $275 each.
Click to expand...
Looks like the HighPoint SSD7701a is PCIe 3.0

My specs:

Three open full-length PCI Express expansion slots5

One PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
Two PCI Express 2.0 x4 slots

All slots provide mechanical support for 16-lane cards
300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slot

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp506?locale=en_US
[doublepost=1537057742][/doublepost]
pl1984 said:
While the benchmarks look impressive I have to ask: How do you expect they will increase your productivity?
Click to expand...
Are you here to interrogate me or will you be adding something helpful to the discussion? Your line of questioning from the start has been a bit Gestapo-ish.
 
Dolphins1972 said:
Looks like the HighPoint SSD7701a is PCIe 3.0.
Click to expand...

HighPoint SSD7101A has a PLX bridge that uses the 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes to combine all into 4 PCIe 3.0 4x connections for M2 SSDs, that's how people who have this card can get double throughput from SSDs than the common adapters. The magic is all done by the PLX chip.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: handheldgames, Matty_TypeR, crjackson2134 and 1 other person
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back