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SSD Upgrade for Mac Pro (black cylinder model) ADVICE NEEDED PLEASE

J

jojo8888

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 4, 2015
18
0
Hello to all out there,

Need some advice/recommendations/comments please! much appreciated. I am looking to upgrade my current Mac Pro (purchased in Dec 2014 black cylinder model partitioned with Bootcamp Windows 8 and Mac OS) (currently fitted with original 256gb ssd) with a 1TB drive as it is now very low on storage with red indicator.

These are some of the sellers I found on eBay selling the 1TB Apple-Samsung SSDs:
(1) http://www.ebay.com.sg/itm/171808350986?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649
(2) http://www.ebay.com.sg/itm/151701291455?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649
(3) http://www.ebay.com.sg/itm/281711424100?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

I found it very strange why the model numbers and part numbers do not seem to tally amongst the sellers:
As per photos from (1), "MZ-KPV1T00/0A4 655-1860F (Date 2015.02)"
(2) and (3) show "MZ-KPV1T00/0A3 655-1860D (Date 2015.03)"
According to my understanding, these are revision numbers but why is a Feb version having a much newer revision than the March version?

Also, these SSDs do not seem to have the heatsinks attached, is it crucial?

I thought Apple does not sell its SSDs, why are there so many pieces available for sale on eBay and Amazon? I am worried that are these SSDs RMA products from the factory?

Anyone has any experience with any sellers in the market which is trustable with genuine products?

All comments are welcome Please, thanks so much in advance!
 
The ebay ones are either pulls from other systems or they are new/sealed in an ESD bag from the apple repair network. make sure its the latter. And the sellers like to use each other's pictures too. Just be careful and make sure there is some kind of warranty/policy. And you'll have to pull the heatsink out from the stock one and reattach it to the new one.

imo, its a pain in the ass and its better to just pay a little extra to have one built to order
 
I expect that you are already checking this, however, just in case, I thought I should mention that if your Mac Pro motherboard for some reason does not recognize your new "Apple" SSD as an Apple SSD, you may find that TRIM support becomes disabled.

If that is the case, your drive will likely suffer write amplification and over time you will lose speed for processes that write to the SSD. You can enable TRIM Support for non Apple SSDs using https://gist.github.com/return1/4058659 however, under Yosemite, doing a parameter ram reset will result in an unbootable system. (You must boot from another drive or system and re-apply the TRIM support enabler, I believe, so it is not as bad as "bricking" your system, but it is a new risk to manage and, unfortunately, a strong incentive to purchase an Apple drive if you can manage to find one somehow.)

You may want to see if you can negotiate some sort of "no questions asked" return if your motherboard does not recognize the new SSD as an Apple SSD with your eBay seller, before you buy, if possible.

Good luck.
 
The reason there are so many on EBay and none available through through legit retail channels is that Apple doesn't support "upgrades" of any kind.

While some in the Apple Fan Club predicted a new golden era of Apple offering post sale upgrades, this has obviously not happened.

So we are left with "fell off a truck" (ie, smuggled from Factory in someone's sock). The good news is most of them are fine. EBay is pretty serious about weeding out scammers. People who ship junk don't last long.

A good way to check on an EBay seller is to look through their history. Someone who has changed names frequently or was selling bicycle parts until last week when they switched to high end computer parts should be avoided.

If they have mostly positive feedback selling similar items for at least 6 months you should be fine. Always communicate through EBay as anything via private email is disregarded in a dispute.
 
MacVidCards said:
The reason there are so many on EBay and none available through through legit retail channels is that Apple doesn't support "upgrades" of any kind.
Click to expand...

Another round of shyster sales FUD from MVC .....

Two Apple support documents covering user replaceable parts for the Mac Pro late 2013 ...

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT6054
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881

So there are support documents on Apple's web site but it isn't supported at all. Yeah OK.

While some in the Apple Fan Club predicted a new golden era of Apple offering post sale upgrades, this has obviously not happened.
Click to expand...

The world doesn't solely spin around selling other manufacturer's GPUs cards .... all the more so in a thread about SSDs.

OWC managed to get a SSD out.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura-for-Mac-Pro/

It is a bit of kludge (trades capacity for speed ) but at at least they took a stab at investing in the R&D to actually design and have a product made. Part of this is about none of the other SSD controller makers going to the same "native" PCIe controller set up that Apple did with the Samsung contracted part. The SSD's key slot is custom, but a variant of a standard. OWC solution is a kludge partially because they are wedded to Sandforce controllers and the PCIe Sandforce controller is waaaay past late. Over time number of eligible controllers are going up, but SSDs is a space where there are fewer players ( consumer space) than 4 years ago.

Why haven't some other SSD player hasn't stepped up? There is a wide range of more standard M.2 formats to construct for much larger markets. Samsung could (they make them for Apple) , they just don't want to. [ there is decent chance there is a clause in the contract that Apple asserted that says Apple gets all output. It is up to Samsung to negotiate around that if they want. ]

It is extra design work for a narrow market .... which is only made smaller by ...

So we are left with "fell off a truck" (ie, smuggled from Factory in someone's sock).
Click to expand...

folks appropriating parts that Apple doesn't officially approve for sale. Similar to the R&D ROI repression that helped stifled the Mac GPU card market for years.
 
deconstruct60 said:
Another round of shyster sales FUD from MVC .....

Two Apple support documents covering user replaceable parts for the Mac Pro late 2013 ...

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT6054
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881

So there are support documents on Apple's web site but it isn't supported at all. Yeah OK.
Click to expand...

Get off the high horse and read the question.

The OP wanted to know why he can't go to a retailer and buy the drive.

I answered him.

You spread FUD.

Congrats.

Reading "Apple Support Documents" doesn't put an SSD in his Mac Pro.

Buying one that "fell off a truck" is thus his only choice, since Apple won't sell him one.

If you want to be helpful, post the official supported link to buy the drive. Seriously, why bother posting if you have nothing to add?

EDIT: I thought for a moment and realized why I found your post so irritating. The OP never mentioned GPUs. Nor did I. He asked why he had to resort to Ebay to buy a larger SSD for his Mac.

I think we ALL wish that Apple made these parts easily available. I have put new blades in my 2012 rMBP, my nMP, my partner's 2014 rMBP, and 2 @ 2014 Minis. And each and every one I had to buy on Ebay and take my chances.

It would have been really cool to walk into the Apple store and buy these things, I would have in a heartbeat. Instead I had to buy them on Ebay, like everyone else. At which point you have to ask yourself, how did this part end up available here? Was someone mugged and had their MB stolen and that was source? Did a crate of parts "fall off a truck"? Did some starving worker smuggle a few out in their pants? It's pretty obvious that Apple isn't knowingly selling these things, and if they came from repair network, it seems like they would cost more. So buying them makes you feel a little "dirty". And myself, the OP, and many others wish they could just buy them from Apple.

I wanted to sell these. I had someone approach me about getting them in bulk. I asked for details and they went silent. My guess is I was asking questions that they couldn't answer.

The OP asked, I gave him a truthful answer related to SSDs. Somehow YOU managed to work GPUs into it. If Apple just did the decent thing and allowed us to buy these nifty blades at a reasonable price, the squirrely Ebay market would dry up in a jiffy. The nifty new world of easily purchased upgrades hasn't happened. They are as hard or harder to get as ever.

The OP asked, I answered and told him the truth.
 
Last edited:
deconstruct60 said:
Similar to the R&D ROI repression that helped stifled the Mac GPU card market for years.
Click to expand...


This is more BS that needs to be addressed. You are clearly posting about something that you have 0.0 knowledge about. And I truly mean NONE. One day an amazing thing happened, I made a discovery that led to GTX480 working as a native Mac EFI card.

When I get in rom writing mode I start seeing things in code that I couldn't see a few minutes before. And there in the EFI were all sorts of Nvidia cards. And I mean each and every GPU family. The GTX480 was already in there. It even had AGPM connection made in the EFI. Had to change 6 bytes from Quadro 4000 EFI to make it work on GTX480. But as I mentioned, the truly amazing thing was that ANY NVIDIA CARD YOU WANTED was in that EFI.

Nvidia wrote an EFI that would work on ANY one of their cards. They had already written the drivers, they had been in the OS for years. They were just waiting for someone to open that EFI up and connect the dots. The EFI was pretty obviously written to run a GTX480 and Quadro 4000. Which came first? Who knows. But they are both there, ready and waiting.

It was like I had picked up the Rosetta stone and could suddenly read Hieroglyphics that had been gibberish moments before.

Nvidia had already done 99% of the work. So all of this "R&D ROI" is non-existent. More "FUD" and "Hand waving" from an armchair expert.

Nvidia had completed the R & D. It was just sitting there, all work done, just needed someone with a brain to connect the dots. (In this case, the "connecting" was display routing) So, the PC BIOSs needed 20 or so bytes changed to mesh with the EFI. Any and every Nvidia card was ready to be a Mac card, by changing 10 bytes in EFI and 20 in the BIOS.

If Netkas and I could work this out via reverse engineering in a couple months, how long would it have taken anyone else who had help from Nvidia and/or Apple?

There was no more R & D to do, each family of cards was laid out and waiting, drivers written, EFI just waiting.

I don't post about RAID arrays because i have no direct knowledge of them. It's a wise choice.
 
MacVidCards said:
Get off the high horse and read the question.
I think we ALL wish that Apple made these parts easily available. I have put new blades in my 2012 rMBP, my nMP, my partner's 2014 rMBP, and 2 @ 2014 Minis. And each and every one I had to buy on Ebay and take my chances.
Click to expand...

No worries everyone, I'm delighted for all comments and suggestions as I have no prior experience with purchasing SSDs for apple products.

@MacVidCards you mentioned you have purchased multiple SSDs over the years from eBay? Is everything ok so far?Do you mind sharing with me the seller please?

Hearing from @markfrautschi comments, I am actually quite concerned with regards to the "suffering of write amplication over time". If there's anyone with experience of purchasing from particular sellers, please do share with me.

By the way, I have placed 3 eBay links on my original post, based on all of your experience in looking at seller's history/photos/description/returnpolicy/warranty/model,etc., any advice if these are kinda worth a buy?

"I expect that you are already checking this, however, just in case, I thought I should mention that if your Mac Pro motherboard for some reason does not recognize your new "Apple" SSD as an Apple SSD, you may find that TRIM support becomes disabled.

If that is the case, your drive will likely suffer write amplification and over time you will lose speed for processes that write to the SSD. You can enable TRIM Support for non Apple SSDs using https://gist.github.com/return1/4058659 however, under Yosemite, doing a parameter ram reset will result in an unbootable system. (You must boot from another drive or system and re-apply the TRIM support enabler, I believe, so it is not as bad as "bricking" your system, but it is a new risk to manage and, unfortunately, a strong incentive to purchase an Apple drive if you can manage to find one somehow.)

You may want to see if you can negotiate some sort of "no questions asked" return if your motherboard does not recognize the new SSD as an Apple SSD with your eBay seller, before you buy, if possible.
Click to expand...


Thanks!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ebay has great buyer protection. (not so good for sellers)

Don't worry about "not recognizing as Apple SSD", all of mine showed up fine.

I think you should decide if speed is important, if so go with one of the newer SSUBX models, but even the original SSUAX ones are fast.

The biggest worry is really that you get the right slot. Apple used to put SATA protocol drives in these slots, they had different connector and won't work.

As long as you get an actual PCIE version from recent Mac (last year) you should be fine.

As a "for instance", my 2012 rMBP uses something that looks similar, but is in fact a SATA drive. Meanwhile, the 2013 rMBP got real PCIE SSD. So just pay attention to that. Basically most Macs have switched to the PCIE connector.

My nMP (like yours) came with a 256GB drive with heatsink. I bought a 1GB version without heatsink and it works just fine. Just needed a Torx screwdriver and I was off to the races.

Mark's Taco (something like that) is where I got a couple of them, mostly because he is within driving distance so if I got a box of candles (has happened before) instead of a $700 drive I could DRIVE down and discuss with him. But I bought 2 drives from him, both exactly as described.

As far as this particular slot, it's either these clandestine Apple drives, or the VERY expensive and MUCH slower OWC model that was mentioned. The OWC model doesn't have the TRIM enabled by default and thus suffers from those things you mentioned.
 
MacVidCards said:
My nMP (like yours) came with a 256GB drive with heatsink. I bought a 1GB version without heatsink and it works just fine. Just needed a Torx screwdriver and I was off to the races.
Click to expand...

I really need to get an upgrade for my machine. 256GB just does not cut it. Too bad the blade SSDs are so much otherwise I would have had one by now. My predicament is a perfect selling point for the cheese grater but I still love the smaller footprint and quietness of the new machine.

I figure once I get one for my nMP the spare blade will go on one of those PCIe cards I ordered and into my 4,1->5,1.
 
I was told that SSUAX vs SSUBX (new generation of SSDs) have no/negligible speed performance differences when inserted into the Mac Pro, only greater speeds if inserted into Macbook Pros. Is this true?
 
isn't there an apple to m.2 adapter, like a blade adapter? (to be able to install regular m.2 SSDs in the apple slot?)
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O4CUI02

This is where I got mine.
It's the exact same 1TB SSD module Apple sells with the BTO Mac Pro.
Brand new, not pulled from any machine.
Includes the heatsink/heat shield
This seller lists a few at a time every few weeks, and they sell quickly.
$650 tax-free and Prime shipping.
Very happy with mine.
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
It seems like sales of SSUBX SSDs are very much lower than SSUAX? there are like hundreds more customers buying SSUAX than SSUBX?
 
MMcCraryNJ said:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O4CUI02

This is where I got mine.
It's the exact same 1TB SSD module Apple sells with the BTO Mac Pro.
Brand new, not pulled from any machine.
Includes the heatsink/heat shield
This seller lists a few at a time every few weeks, and they sell quickly.
$650 tax-free and Prime shipping.
Very happy with mine.
Click to expand...

Hi,
yup i saw this seller on amazon as well. it is selling the same "0A1" ssd as my current ssd in the mac pro.

Do you know what's the function of the heatsink/heat shield?
Why do the rest of the sellers on eBay not have the heatsink? E.g.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/151605593746?_trksid=p2060353.m2763.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Is it true that the newer revisions of the original SSDs fitted in Apple Mac Pro from Apple factory e.g. 2014/2015 does not come fitted with the heatsink/heatshield?

Thanks!
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Bought a new Apple/Samsung 1TB SSD on eBay from Edit Builder Store for my nMP. Plug and play install took maybe two minutes, if that. OWC sells a PCI-E card you can put your old 256 GB on and use it in a classic MP or a PC. That too was as simple as it gets. No issues at all. Even Windows immediately recognized it.
 
mbosse said:
The name should explain it, correct ;-)?



Those drives from a Macbook (Pro, Air) do not have the heatsink. As far as I can tell the drives are completely interchangeable.

Magnus
Click to expand...


Hi, so if I were to purchase a new Mac Pro from Apple online store now, the machines come with the new Samsung SSDs with no heatsink?
 
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