I found this for $409 on NewEgg and its an NVMe drive which is good. I also found an sm951 on newegg for $240 (plus the expansion card on amazon for $30). I dont really need over 1k writes so thats not an issue. Right now im looking at it like this Intel 400GB NVMe (2k Read 900M Write) = $409 Sm951 256GB ACHI (2k Read 1.5k Write) = 240+ $30 (adapter) = $270. So for $139 more i get an extra 144GB of space which would be perfect to split with bootcamp. I searched but couldnt find the answer. Does anyone know if this intel SSD (SSDPEDMW400G4R5) will be able to boot osx?
Ok good to know, now i just need to decide what to buy. edit: I went ahead and got the sm951 256gb. I figured id save some cash and get the cheaper sm951 since i needed two drives for 2 computers i came out to saving a few hundred in the end. Thanks for the help.
i just received two of these and chucked one of them in my mac pro, lights up the LEDs on the back, but doesn't appear to the system at all.. I'm running 10.10.3 and the nvme section in system profiler is blank.. if theres some kinda trick I'm missing, then its not obvious. bit gutted actually. will probably have to return them.
Oh wow. This makes me glad that I changed my mind at the last minute. I almost bought it from newegg on eBay but the lack of being able to return it to newegg made me change my mind. I would have tried it if Amazon had it in stock but they had a 3 week wait before they got it in stock.
NVMe requires specific chips in the motherboard to work. Even most hackintoshes can't use it except for a couple of specific motherboard versions. NVMe is supported in the most recent Yosemite update, but perhaps only the newest MacBook Pro 13" retina can run it.
thats it then. cMP doesn't support these cards. I can return one of them I guess, the other one I opened and tested so all I can do is sell it.
Plain & simple.. You need this, btw the best mac option at the moment http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempopciessd.html
What makes this "the best mac option"? For roughly $470 you can get (basically) the same thing with a Samsung SM951 and a Lycom PCI-e adapter card. This thing? $799??? I don't see any advantages of the Sonnet card over anything else, except for draining my wallet faster. Also, the SM951 is about 1400MB/s vs. 1100MB/s for the Sonnet.
No, far away from being the best mac option, you can have the same noticeable cheaper: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20418109#post20418109 Or you can buy an original Apple PCI Express SSD on eBay using this adapter: http://eshop.sintech.cn/2013-macbook-pro-air-ssd-to-pcie-4x-adapter-card-p-1026.html
I just bought an Intel 750 400GB SSD with a Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box Unfortunately, It doesn't work under OS X 10.10.3, 10.10.4 (Beta) and 10.11 (EI Capitan). But,,,, OS X can recognize this NVMe SSD in its System Profiler and IORegistryExploper. It marked this device as NVMe Controller and showed the status as Driver NOT Installed. As we know from OS X 10.10.3, Apple added a IONVMeFamily.kext for its own implementation in NMB, so, I think Apple will (not for long) add support for those generic NVMe SSD Controllers. BTW, I bought a SAMSUNG m951 (AHCI) with a M.2 to PCIe card today, I will test it then I will come and update this thread.
Well, I'm Back with Samsung SM951 SSD in a Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box It works like a charm. Apparently, the new MacBook Pro Retina 2015 also use this SSD, a "traditional" AHCI Controller SSD. The main limitation are the PCIe 2.0 x4 Interface in the Box and Thunderbolt 2, this SSD is originally designed for PCIe 3.0 x4.
I have a 512GB Samsung SM951 mounted in a Lycom PCI-e adapter card in slot 3 of my 5,1 Mac Pro. See this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sata-express-meets-the-09-macpro-bootable-ngff-pcie-ssd.1685821/ Lou