MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[tsialex]

Alex, since you have experience in those different SSD blade specs, I would need your opinion on an upgrade question.
At the moment I run two older AHCI blades in the I/O crest dual switch card (the one I just noised down a bit).
Since I have already the fastest CPU and GPU in my system, the only upgrade that I can do, is to change these AHCI blades with two Samsung NVMe 970 Pro 1TB blades. Would you do that, and would it make a difference for me in my current 5.1 machine setup? In Europe this change would cost me about 450 Euros and two good AHCI SSD blades that I somehow need to sell on eBay. Don't know, would you change those out to finally have NVMe speeds?

I wouldn't do it if the blades are XP941, yes if the blades are SM951-AHCI or Kingston Predator AHCI. I did the same some time ago after I got tired of the constant SM951 TRIM slowdown problems.

970 EVO+ will work practically the same as a 970 PRO with your ASM2824 card, you will never get throughput over 2800~2900 with a x8 card.

BTW, 980 PRO was released at CES.

 

[waimtrp]

It's a recent family of switches that need special handling, there are lots of patches needed:

Linux Switchtec Support

[PATCH v2 0/2] PCI Quirk Patchset for Microsemi Switchtec NTB

MicroSemi Switchtec management interface driver

switchtec: Fix potential Spectre v1

thanks , so they are basically for Linux , right ?

and i saw Microsemi not a small company , and this Switchtec PFX-L Gen 3 PCIe Switches release around 2018 fall , it may not familiar to me(us) like PLX / Asmedia or other brand , but its not " New " to PCIe Switches market , and there's Gen 4 switches are coming too .
https://www.microsemi.com/blog/2018...ec-pfx-pfx-i-pfx-l-gen3-fanout-pcie-switches/

[automerge]1579060754[/automerge]

Sounds like someone will have to order one and try to know... I would do it but it’s not available on Amazon in the uk.

i wanna try too

 

[Mikis]

thanks , so they are basically for Linux , right ?

and i saw Microsemi not a small company , and this Switchtec PFX-L Gen 3 PCIe Switches release around 2018 fall , it may not familiar to me(us) like PLX / Asmedia or other brand , but its not " New " to PCIe Switches market , and there's Gen 4 switches are coming too .
https://www.microsemi.com/blog/2018...ec-pfx-pfx-i-pfx-l-gen3-fanout-pcie-switches/

[automerge]1579060754[/automerge]

i wanna try too

Got this reply from Syba who distribute the card in the USA.


“Dear Mikis:

Thank you for your inquiry. The mentioned controller is indeed compliant with Mac Pro 5.1.

SYBA (USA)
Sales Team

On 1/14/2020 4:09 PM, Mikis wrote:

Quad M.2 NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller
Hi.

Do you think this unit will work on a Mac Pro 5.1?

There are some eBay listings that claim it does but I’d prefer something more official.

Thanks kindly.”

Still not available in the uk. Anyone in the USA prepared to test this??

thanks. M

 

[tsialex]

To say the least; they probably want to keep the firmware in their "own ball park" Sounds a bit paranoid ... lol. btw, did a speedtest with the 970 EVO Plus and the values are slightly higer then with 970 Pro. I thought that, because the 970 Pro is MLC, that would be higher?
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970EVO throughput downgrades rapidly after the SLC buffer is full.

 

[X-Housed]

Hi,

i have a Mac Pro with the latest 144.0.0.0 Firmware running. I bought a Micon 2200 NVMe 512GB Blade but the Mac can’t recognize it. Another Crucial NVMe is working fine. I attached the Micron Blade with an adapter to a USB then it is recognized. In the system report the PCIe NVMe Adapter is recognized but the NVMe driver was not loaded!
Is this a blade that is not compatible to Macs?

Regards

 

[tsialex]

Hi,

i have a Mac Pro with the latest 144.0.0.0 Firmware running. I bought a Micon 2200 NVMe 512GB Blade but the Mac can’t recognize it. Another Crucial NVMe is working fine. I attached the Micron Blade with an adapter to a USB then it is recognized. In the system report the PCIe NVMe Adapter is recognized but the NVMe driver was not loaded!
Is this a blade that is not compatible to Macs?

Regards

There are some rare blades that are really incompatible, like Samsung 950 Pro or some Plextor models, but for most cases it's just an incompatible firmware, like what happened with Samsung 970 EVO+.

Check if Micron have an update for your blade, with a rapid web search I saw that Dell and other OEMs issued firmware updates to OEM Micron 2200 blades in December.

 

[bsbeamer]

Might be helpful to keep an eye on Sonnet's support document for blade compatibility before purchasing and cross-reference all blades against that. Document was last updated 1/6/2020 and they seem to be adding blades to the list over time.

https://sonnettech.com/support/downloads/manuals/M2_compatibility.pdf

 

[X-Housed]

Thank you @tsialex for the firmware hint and @bsbeamer for the reference.
The Firmware update from Dell fix some power state issues, no specific notes for mac. I contacted Micron and wait for a statement.

 

[s.m.t.]

I pulled the fan out today. Running without it at the moment and the sound difference is immediate.

What it looks like for anyone interested:

I have the PCI fan locked at 2000rpm and it is still quieter. I think it would be fine without it, I reached out to SYBA about getting a replacement and they were pretty quick to respond.

Happy to report that after several months without the fan in place, system is stable and NVMe temps staying below 35c...

 

[kittiyut]

Amazon just increased the price of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus from $399.99 to $495.99 and they are on backorder!

 

[avatar1349]

Amazon just increased the price of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus from $399.99 to $495.99 and they are on backorder!

What!!! Really? Thats absolute highway robbery!!! Here in the Netherlands they're just $133 (€120) (500 GB) How can they justify that price?

 

[waimtrp]

in fact, all Type of SSD's price will/are raise everywhere this year

 

[Bradleyone]

I'm in need of some affirmation...

I'm putting together a fast 4TB RAID drive for inside a Mac Pro 7,1. It will be a general purpose drive, potentially used by multiple people with tasks including:

• Final Cut Pro project libraries, mostly 4K ProRes
• Lightroom (hundreds of RAW) and Photos (thousands of JPEG), 60GB-100GB libraries, often duplicated between volumes internal and external
• Xcode compilation with lots of small text files access
• General Mac use, shuffling files around, frequent wipes and backups

The RAID will be made up of a HighPoint SSD7101A with either:

4x Samsung 970 Pro 1TB, or
4x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB

I'm 95% decided I should go with the Pro, but I'm also a sucker for later technology and the Evo Plus's 96L NAND and 4K block optimisations make me think it will actually be faster most of the time.

Although, for the occasional big transfers, the Pro's MLC will sustain the copy without halving the speed to the Evo Plus's TLC. It will also cost 40% more.

The Pro is the right choice, isn't it?

 

[kittiyut]

Forgot to mention that it was only the 2TB version that the price was raised.

 

[MarkC426]

in fact, all Type of SSD's price will/are raise everywhere this year

Why?
Last I heard all SSD’s would get bigger and cheaper....!
5 years ago a 1tb was probably double the price today.
Are you referring to newer technologies.

 

[majus]

Amazon just increased the price of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus from $399.99 to $495.99 and they are on backorder!

That's the 2TB. They were just on a 20% Off sale price for a limited time, even directly from Samsung. Apparently that sale has ended.

At this time Samsung still shows the $399.99 sale price but doesn't have any stock on the 2TB. They are available from a few retailers at prices anywhere from $399.99 (Dell) to $566.99 (Zones).

 

[bsbeamer]

At least the 980 PRO are on their way soon.

Wouldn’t read much into prices from 3rd party. You can find older SATA Samsung SSD models at well over inflated price as well.

 

[MarkC426]

Have always bought mine from Amazon at good prices....

 

[flowrider]

Forgot to mention that it was only the 2TB version that the price was raised.

Ya you did. But, check out the 2TB 570 EVO, that's now $599.

Lou

 

[thomast0001]

Please add the following to the low cost section:

Micro Connectors M.2 NVMe 80mm SSD PCIe x4 Adapter with Covered Heat Sink

I bought two of them. They also are bootable, at least with Mac OS.

I've installed a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB blade in each. According to Blackmagic with default settings I'm getting about 3114 MB/s writes and 3032 MB/s reads. (Actually the read and write speeds are about the same. The values hop up and down a little during the stress test.) Temps are pretty reasonable, leveling off at about 43C under stress. Ambient is around 28C, with a start from sleep temperature for the blades around 32C which rises to about 37C at idle. So the heatsinks are definitely doing their job!

I bought my Mac Pro 2019 with 1TB of storage. My intentions are to use one of the Samsungs as my boot drive (I've enabled "external boot") and the other for data. I'm not trying to RAID them. I just want to get off Apple's SSD so I can preserve it.

In the future (hopefully when multi-M.2 cards come down in price) I can swap these out. However, did i mention how cheap the Micro Connectors adapters are, and that they include a heatsink? They are dirt simple cards with practically no electronics on them (except for a little bit of LED lighting -- go figure!), so they serve as a good backup plan in the future if some other more "sophisticated" card flies South. I highly recommend them for basic storage expansion.

A couple of tips to those buying this card. Be sure to peel the transparent film from both sides of the included thermal pad. (It doesn't mention that in the instructions.) Also, for the EVO Plus (single sided) blades, use the thick pads on top and bottom. (The kit also includes thin pads. My guess is you could use a thin one on the bottom for a double-sided blade.)

 

[flowrider]

^^^^The fitst post is a WIKI post, you can add the information you posted yourself.

Lou

 

[thomast0001]

^^^^The fitst post is a WIKI post, you can add the information you posted yourself.

Lou

Only if you are permitted. For example, I'm not. I'm going to hazard a guess that people can only edit a wikipost once they've posted a certain number of entries on the forums. I'm new here.

 

[Itconnects]

Anyone have experience with sabrent rocket, gen4 or inland nvme?

 

[atonaldenim]

Please add the following to the low cost section:

Micro Connectors M.2 NVMe 80mm SSD PCIe x4 Adapter with Covered Heat Sink

I bought two of them. They also are bootable, at least with Mac OS.

I've installed a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB blade in each. According to Blackmagic with default settings I'm getting about 3114 MB/s writes and 3032 MB/s reads. (Actually the read and write speeds are about the same. The values hop up and down a little during the stress test.) Temps are pretty reasonable, leveling off at about 43C under stress. Ambient is around 28C, with a start from sleep temperature for the blades around 32C which rises to about 37C at idle. So the heatsinks are definitely doing their job!

I bought my Mac Pro 2019 with 1TB of storage. My intentions are to use one of the Samsungs as my boot drive (I've enabled "external boot") and the other for data. I'm not trying to RAID them. I just want to get off Apple's SSD so I can preserve it.

In the future (hopefully when multi-M.2 cards come down in price) I can swap these out. However, did i mention how cheap the Micro Connectors adapters are, and that they include a heatsink? They are dirt simple cards with practically no electronics on them (except for a little bit of LED lighting -- go figure!), so they serve as a good backup plan in the future if some other more "sophisticated" card flies South. I highly recommend them for basic storage expansion.

A couple of tips to those buying this card. Be sure to peel the transparent film from both sides of the included thermal pad. (It doesn't mention that in the instructions.) Also, for the EVO Plus (single sided) blades, use the thick pads on top and bottom. (The kit also includes thin pads. My guess is you could use a thin one on the bottom for a double-sided blade.)

That’s a cool looking one. FYI there are a hundred similar adapters that also work fine, so it wouldn’t really be worth noting each variation by name. These kind of adapters don’t have any kind of controller chips onboard, all they do is wire the pins on the NVMe blade directly into the pins on a PCIe x4 slot. So except in unusual circumstances any basic ~$20 adapter like this should work in a Mac that supports NVMe. This is basically the same as the Lycom DT-120 card mentioned in the first post, plus a heatsink, which is a good thing! Enjoy your new Mac Pro!

 

[robert91303]

Bought Highpoint 7101A - PCIe 3.0 SSD and 4 1TB Inland SSD from MicroCenter for $119 a piece. The people in Microcenter were kind of confused why it said The Inland SSD only supported Windows on the site. I did no driver installs & no updates it works incredibly well.

Spoke to soon. Fan on the 7101 is super loud Jet Engine, and I noticed the logic board is a bit bowed/curved not straight. Going to return, see if replacement is any better. High Point says they have a new driver and software for the Mac pro 2019 coming out on Monday, so hopefully in the new unit, and these updates will remedy my issues, will update

Hi Tim,

I've had two HighPoint cards in the last couple weeks. I send the first one into HighPoint (here in California), and they flashed the new firmware. However, I got it back and started having issues with it. I thought it was the card, and so frustrated, I just returned the card to Amazon, and got sent a replacement card from Amazon the same day.

Both cards had the "bowed/curved" boards issue you describe. I think it's because both cards came with this thick square thermal pad that is too thick, and frankly, too bulky for the design (IMO). Maybe on some drives it works correctly, but the result with my drives was a deformation of the card when you tightened down the screws on the back plate.

Anyways, it turns out my other issue was not the HighPoint card, but one of the 4 new NVMe drives. I did attempt to test each drive individually, but I guess I screwed up my testing because I concluded it was the card by mistake.

Well, the second card I got today from Amazon seems to have the new firmware already, and with the new firmware you can turn the fan speed down (or completely off) in the HighPoint driver management software. I should get a replacement NVMe drive tomorrow. I've been testing it with an array of only 3 drives. I will hopefully have all four drives installed and working then.

I am using custom thermal pads for my drives, instead of that sandwich meat that came with it. They are very high quality pads left over from years of building water cooled gaming PCs. After swapping out the pad, the drive temps are noticeably lower. More to the point, using thinner pads makes the card and back plate go together without any bowing.

Cheers,
Robert