MP 1,1-5,1 Syba I/O Crest SI-PEX40129 usage?

[MIKX]

I think that my technique may be different to your's , I always know how my drives are formatted.

Also, I don't think that you have done a 100% clean, FULL install and then re-installed your favourite programs. But do whatever you feel. You'll learn.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

I think that my technique may be different to your's , I always know how my drives are formatted.

Also, I don't think that you have done a 100% clean, FULL install and then re-installed your favourite programs. But do whatever you feel. You'll learn.

That wasn't me having a dig at your advice, or questioning it. I was just pointing out that I already had the latest Mojave installation and it looked like I would be replicating the installation.

Then I questioned whether the emphasis of your advice was on a fresh install and not just simply having the right build of Mojave.

Currently I'm trying to fresh install Mojave to the NVMe drive, then I'll add my programs.

I'll use my old drive for the time being until the new one is up to date (if it doesn't crash on me again).

 

[MIKX]

Did you use / download the FULL Mojave 10.4.6 6.05gb installer ?

 

[flowrider]

I'd forgotten that you can get the trial of CCC (5.1.15).

Any other suggestions?

I use SuperDuper, the paid version. But, a slimed down version is available for free. It works for me

Lou

 

[Rossthephotographer]

Did you use / download the FULL Mojave 10.4.6 6.05gb installer ?

Yes I think so.

It has loaded successfully onto the NVMe drive, so I'll start slowly adding programs back again. I'm just a little paranoid that I'll get lots of my programs back on and then it will crash on me again.

Let's hope not!!

This has been about the most frustrating update ever! So many dead ends And SOOO much wasted time trying to get the computer to play nice.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

Well I've already run into problems. I was processing some photos and the fans started to spin up fast. A couple minutes later the computer shut down.

I started it up again and carried on, but blew a hair dryer at it on the cold setting, and it seemed to hold up.

I'm not sure if it is the NVMe SSD is faulty or the I/O Crest SI-PEX40129 has bad thermals. Either way it's not good!

 

[MIKX]

Yes I think so.

" I think so" ? . . . the FULL Mojave 10.14.6 download is 6.05 gb. I would definitely remember that

Did you follow ALL the steps in my post #47 ? If not then you wasted your time.

If you have a single blade M.2 NVME PCIe adapter . . . put the 970 EVO Plus on that in PCIe slot 3 or slot 4. Remove any other PCIe cards except your GPU then go through the steps in Post #47.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

" I think so" ? . . . the FULL Mojave 10.14.6 download is 6.05 gb. I would definitely remember that

Did you follow ALL the steps in my post #47 ? If not then you wasted your time.

If you have a single blade M.2 NVME PCIe adapter . . . put the 970 EVO Plus on that in PCIe slot 3 or slot 4. Remove any other PCIe cards except your GPU then go through the steps in Post #47.

I clicked your link for the Mojave download and put it straight on the NVMe drive. It took a little while to download.

I don't have a single adaptor only the I/O Crest dual adaptor.

You said about putting the drive in slot 3 or 4, you mean one of the top two right? What is the reason for this, airflow?

Am I right in saying that the top two slots are 4 lane instead of 16 and won't take full advantage of the card?

 

[MIKX]

EDIT :

PCIe slots from bottom up.
Slot 1 ( GPU ) = x 16 = Your GPU
Slot 2 = x 16 = Your Syba 2 blade PCIe adapter
Slot 3 = x 4 = Single blade PCIe NVMe adapter ( or x 8 PCIe cards )
Slot 4 = x 4 = Single blade PCie NVMe adapter. (or x 8 PCIe cards )

I'm surprised that you didn't already know this considering that you bought the Syba 2 blade adapter.

======================================

Single blade M Type NVMe PCIe adapters are so cheap on Amazon now.

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter, M.2 NVME SSD to PCI-e 3.0 x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card, Supports 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230 Solid State Drives

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter, M.2 NVME SSD to PCI-e 3.0 x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card, Supports 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230 Solid State Drives

www.amazon.com

You can probably get an adapter even cheaper in your local PC shop.

Do you really want to diagnose your problem ?

If so then you have to RULE OUT the causes.

I have a feeling that you did not 100% follow the steps in Post #47.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

PCIe slots from bottom up;

Slot 1 ( GPU ) = x 16
Slot 2 = x 16
Slot 3 = x 4
Slot 4 = x 4

I'm surprised that you didn't already know this considering that you bought the Syba 2 blade adapter.

======================================

Single blade M Type NVMe PCIe adapters are so cheap on Amazon now.

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter, M.2 NVME SSD to PCI-e 3.0 x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card, Supports 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230 Solid State Drives

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter, M.2 NVME SSD to PCI-e 3.0 x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card, Supports 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230 Solid State Drives

www.amazon.com

You can probably get an adapter even cheaper in your local PC shop.

Do you really want to diagnose your problem ?

If so then you have to RULE OUT the causes.

I have a feeling that you did not 100% follow the steps in Post #47.

I didn't understand why I needed to install to a spare drive when I can install straight on the NVMe.

I thought the PCIe slots were as you say, but wasn't sure. I also wasn't 100% sure if the Syba needed to be in slot 2, but that is where it is. So again, are you suggesting to put it in slot 3 due to better airflow?

Yesterday I took the card out and took off the heatsink and noticed I had missed a peel off film. I'd taken the one off for the NVMe ssd, but not one over I think it was a processing chip. I don't know how much of a problem that could have caused.

 

[MIKX]

You didn't 100& read post #47.

I give up.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

Apart from not using another drive, what is it you are saying I haven't done right? And if you could explain (without talking to me like I am 8 years old) why you suggested to install to another drive rather than directly onto the NVMe SSD.

 

[MIKX]

Re-read post #47 & post #49 ; point 6 100%

 

[Rossthephotographer]

I didn't use another drive and install all my programs on it because if it did all that which would take a long time, I could try and clone it to the NVMe SSD only to find it doesn't work. I already have another drive with my OS and all the programs on it and that one failed to clone (using ccc).

My aim was to find out if the NVMe drive would work at all before investing lots of time creating an entirely new drive to clone from.

I'm wondering if the file format was a red herring and in actual fact the problem is a thermal one.

Perhaps when I was trying to clone the drive before, it was getting too hot like last night, and that's why the system shut down.

So I'll ask again, why do you want me to put the NVMe drive in slot 3 or 4, is it for better airflow?

And would this limit is speed as it isn't a x16 slot, or are you aware of this, but this is purely a temporary measure to rule out a thermal problem?

 

[MIKX]

This is not about thermals or airflow ( yet ).

It's about proving whether you stuffed something up in your initial installation. Using a fresh, clean, APFS formatted drive to install final Mojave 10.14.6 to ensure that you will end up with a faultless, clean Mojave installation. You don't seem to understand this.
=============================================
PCIe slots from bottom up;

Slot 1 ( GPU ) = x 16 = Your GPU
Slot 2 = x 16 = Your Syba 2 blade PCIe adapter
Slot 3 = x 4 = Single blade PCIe NVMe adapter ( or x 8 PCIe cards )
Slot 4 = x 4 = Single blade PCie NVMe adapter. (or x 8 PCIe cards )

The point of installing the FULL 6.05gb Mojave 10.14.6 installer to a separate freshly APFS formatted SSD or HDD is that Mojave can only be installed to APFS drives.

================================================

1. Format a separate SSD /HDD drive to APFS. Name this drive Mojave10.14.6BK
THIS DRIVE WILL NOW BE CLEAN and APFS. It will be the drive that you will
CLONE FROM - TO your Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

===============================================

If you don't do this step then there is no point on proceeding further​

2. Download the FULL 6.05 gb Mojave 10.14.6 installer here
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

Hit the GET button until it starts the download = it will take a while depending on your internet speed.

3. The Mojave FULL installer will NOW be in your Applications folder.
IMPORTANT : COPY the installer to a safe place for future Mojave installations.

================================================

4. Now install ( the newly downloaded ) Mojave 10.14.6 installer to the newly APFS formatted drive.

5. Boot into the new Mojave install install Carbon Copy Cloner to it ONLY

6. You can now CCC clone it to your Samsung 970 EVO Plus which
will be on your Syba in PCIe slot 1 above your GPU.

7. After Carbon Copy Cloner has finished cloning you should now set your BOOT drive to the 970 EVO Plus
in System Preferences / "Start-up Drive " and restart the cMP whilst doing the THREE CONSECUTIVE
CHIME NVRAM re-set.

==================================================
8. Now you can test whether the 970 EVO Plus is performing properly.

9. Now you can start installing your usual apps.

10. DONE.

Please reply that you performed ALL the 1 ~ 7 above steps.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

How was when I installed Mojave to the NVMe SSD not a clean installation?

When I installed Mojave before on the NVMe SSD I used your link, and I can see in my applications folder I have the 6GB install macOS Mojave file.

Ok so let's say that despite the fact I now have Mojave installed and working on the NVMe SSD, there is a problem with it, what does the RVRAM reset do and how do you do that reset?

Now that the NVMe SSD is working (apart from yesterday) I am more prepared to invest a bit of time in it, but I wasn't before as the problem could be any number of things, and it would have been a lot of wasted time for nothing if the problem had absolutely nothing to do with a bad install (eg overheating, or it was a faulty component).

 

[MIKX]

I have done all I can for you.

You didn't confirm that you did steps 1 ~ 7.

Good Luck

 

[Rossthephotographer]

I have done all I can for you.

You didn't confirm that you did steps 1 ~ 7.

Good Luck

?????

I told you quite clearly what I did and why, and I also said that I was more prepared to look at your way now that the NVMe SSD appears to be working.

I'm not quite sure why you are throwing your toys out of the pram over this.

 

[Rossthephotographer]

Well I think I have finally got this Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD working. I had tried many things and I did try a clean install of all my programs which took 2 days to do! That was a massive waste of time as my system still crashed.

I think the problem was actually nothing to do with the SSD and everything to do with the Syba I/O Crest SI-PEX40129. I had it mounted above the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8G GPU I have installed in the bottom slot of my 2009 Mac Pro. It's a very tight fit, so I had some foam spacers to give a bit of airflow like others have done in this thread.

However I think it was such a tight fit that that was the problem. I initially thought it was the mac fans that were spinning up fast and the Mac shutting down due to overheating. I hadn't realised that it was actually the GPU fans. If you aren't doing anything very intensive then the GPU fans probably won't spin up much, but when I exported photos after editing they spun up fast and then shortly after the system would just shut down.

I sent back the Syba, as at the time I thought the SSD was causing me the issues, and as I was sending that back I had no use for the Syba. Some other things happened after that and I found myself in the position of having another identical Samsung 970 EVO Plus, but for free. This time though I got a: 'Aqua Computer kryoM.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x 4, adapter for M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD, M-Key with passive cooler.'

I also put it in the second slot down rather than the 3rd. The GPU hasn't spun up as fast and the system seems to now be stable. So I think this whole massive headache was simply because of not enough airflow to the GPU! 🙄🙄

 

[AidenShaw]

a slimed down version is available for free

Wonderful typo! 👍

 

[kanepes]

Reading this section of the forum, I understand that there are the right persons to ask some questions. I understand that we are all busy people, so I will try to explain my problem briefly.
I am a master of video processing and my work so far has been 4.1 > 5.1 Mac Pro 2009, which has the specifications below. Until now, I was satisfied with working with this machine, but with the advent of technology, cameras were purchased that produce much larger files, and now my computer refuses to work with them. I understand that one of the main problems is that I have too slow disks and to increase the read / write speed I have bought 3 pieces of Samsung evo 970 discs - one for material, one for software and a third for scratch etc. But now the question arises - which M.2 NVMe adapter for PCle should I buy? I would also like to ask if any special steps are required to install this adapter. I assume it will be necessary to switch to one graphics card and think about the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580. What is your opinion on all this? Thank you in advance for your answer. Sorry, for my bad English.

 

[atonaldenim]

Reading this section of the forum, I understand that there are the right persons to ask some questions. I understand that we are all busy people, so I will try to explain my problem briefly.
I am a master of video processing and my work so far has been 4.1 > 5.1 Mac Pro 2009, which has the specifications below. Until now, I was satisfied with working with this machine, but with the advent of technology, cameras were purchased that produce much larger files, and now my computer refuses to work with them. I understand that one of the main problems is that I have too slow disks and to increase the read / write speed I have bought 3 pieces of Samsung evo 970 discs - one for material, one for software and a third for scratch etc. But now the question arises - which M.2 NVMe adapter for PCle should I buy? I would also like to ask if any special steps are required to install this adapter. I assume it will be necessary to switch to one graphics card and think about the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580. What is your opinion on all this? Thank you in advance for your answer. Sorry, for my bad English.

Hi @kanepes, your English is excellent, don't worry. Next time it would probably be better to start a new thread for your unique situation. I'm a video editor so I have some advice, I'll try to answer quickly.

What kind of footage are you having problems with? It's possible some high end professional codecs are just too much for a Mac Pro 5,1.

Since you've got a GTX 1070, I don't know if you'll see any benefit from an RX 580 GPU. The 1070 is already a very powerful GPU. The only benefit from a Radeon card would be Metal support to run Mojave. If you want to upgrade your GPU beyond what you have now, look at Vega 56 (which you can run carefully without a power supply mod) or Radeon VII which is the best GPU you can buy, but it requires an additional power supply or Pixlas mod.

Edit: try removing the GT 120 and see if your performance improves. It's possible your software might be ignoring the GTX 1070 when the GT 120 is installed. Also, consider using Davinci Resolve for your work, it is much more GPU-accelerated than Premiere or Avid. Final Cut Pro X is also very GPU accelerated, but it uses Metal, so may not see as much acceleration with an Nvidia card. Although Premiere is a good choice with your GTX 1070 with its CUDA support. Newer versions of Premiere have more GPU acceleration I believe, so try to get on the latest version you can.

Regarding the SSDs, first thing to note is, do you have the 970 Evo PLUS? If so, you need to confirm that the drives' firmware is upgraded to the latest version. The 970 Plus NVMe blades were not compatible with Mac Pro until Samsung later released a firmware update fix. Search the forums for info on that.

Second thing, you probably don't need 3 separate SSDs to do video work. Having a boot disk, scratch disk, media disk was a smart thing in the age of spinning hard drives when each drive was slow, and would only be capable of 200MB/sec or less. However one NVMe disk is now capable of 2,500MB/sec or more, so even having one NVMe SSD is already SO fast, there's not much additional benefit from separating your work onto multiple SSDs. The downside to SSDs is their limited capacity compared to traditional HDDs, and pro video codecs take up a lot of space. Maybe you'd even want to RAID 0 two SSDs together for a higher capacity media storage volume.

The best PCIe cards that can put all 3 SSDs in one PCIe slot at full speed are the HighPoint SSD7101A-1 (less expensive) and the Amfeltec Squid (more expensive). You could also use the IO Crest IO-PCE2824-TM2 (the subject of this thread) which holds 2 NVMe blades, and then use a basic $20 4x PCIe NVMe adapter with heatsink for the 3rd SSD. Post #1 in this thread lists the best NVMe adapter options, refer to that for more details: PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

Before investing in a 4-blade NVMe adapter card like the HighPoint, you might want to start with a basic $20 adapter for one SSD blade, and see how much benefit you get out of using a SSD. Does it make your difficult videos play back smoother than before? If you see a benefit, then it makes sense to invest more money in SSDs. If you don't see any benefit from one SSD, it probably won't help things to install two more SSDs. Maybe that money would be better spent toward a newer machine for handling current high end video formats.

From personal experience, most of the footage I work with is Arri Alexa / Amira, Sony FS5 / FS7, a mix of 1080, 2K, 4K, and my Mac Pro handles that well enough. RX 580 and one Sabrent Rocket 1TB SSD in an IO Crest IO-PCE2824-TM2, and a RAID 0 of two 6TB WD Red HDDs. I do assistant editor work and most of the editors I've worked with are cutting on Mac Pro 2013s or iMacs with limited upgrade options. So I still live in a proxy workflow world, typically on my Mac Pro I'll generate ProRes Proxy or DNxHR LB proxy media for the editors to offline edit, and hand off to someone else to online with the high res original media.

 

[kanepes]

Hi @kanepes, your English is excellent, don't worry. Next time it would probably be better to start a new thread for your unique situation. I'm a video editor so I have some advice, I'll try to answer quickly.

What kind of footage are you having problems with? It's possible some high end professional codecs are just too much for a Mac Pro 5,1.

Since you've got a GTX 1070, I don't know if you'll see any benefit from an RX 580 GPU. The 1070 is already a very powerful GPU. The only benefit from a Radeon card would be Metal support to run Mojave. If you want to upgrade your GPU beyond what you have now, look at Vega 56 (which you can run carefully without a power supply mod) or Radeon VII which is the best GPU you can buy, but it requires an additional power supply or Pixlas mod.

Edit: try removing the GT 120 and see if your performance improves. It's possible your software might be ignoring the GTX 1070 when the GT 120 is installed. Also, consider using Davinci Resolve for your work, it is much more GPU-accelerated than Premiere or Avid. Final Cut Pro X is also very GPU accelerated, but it uses Metal, so may not see as much acceleration with an Nvidia card. Although Premiere is a good choice with your GTX 1070 with its CUDA support. Newer versions of Premiere have more GPU acceleration I believe, so try to get on the latest version you can.

Regarding the SSDs, first thing to note is, do you have the 970 Evo PLUS? If so, you need to confirm that the drives' firmware is upgraded to the latest version. The 970 Plus NVMe blades were not compatible with Mac Pro until Samsung later released a firmware update fix. Search the forums for info on that.

Second thing, you probably don't need 3 separate SSDs to do video work. Having a boot disk, scratch disk, media disk was a smart thing in the age of spinning hard drives when each drive was slow, and would only be capable of 200MB/sec or less. However one NVMe disk is now capable of 2,500MB/sec or more, so even having one NVMe SSD is already SO fast, there's not much additional benefit from separating your work onto multiple SSDs. The downside to SSDs is their limited capacity compared to traditional HDDs, and pro video codecs take up a lot of space. Maybe you'd even want to RAID 0 two SSDs together for a higher capacity media storage volume.

The best PCIe cards that can put all 3 SSDs in one PCIe slot at full speed are the HighPoint SSD7101A-1 (less expensive) and the Amfeltec Squid (more expensive). You could also use the IO Crest IO-PCE2824-TM2 (the subject of this thread) which holds 2 NVMe blades, and then use a basic $20 4x PCIe NVMe adapter with heatsink for the 3rd SSD. Post #1 in this thread lists the best NVMe adapter options, refer to that for more details: PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

Before investing in a 4-blade NVMe adapter card like the HighPoint, you might want to start with a basic $20 adapter for one SSD blade, and see how much benefit you get out of using a SSD. Does it make your difficult videos play back smoother than before? If you see a benefit, then it makes sense to invest more money in SSDs. If you don't see any benefit from one SSD, it probably won't help things to install two more SSDs. Maybe that money would be better spent toward a newer machine for handling current high end video formats.

From personal experience, most of the footage I work with is Arri Alexa / Amira, Sony FS5 / FS7, a mix of 1080, 2K, 4K, and my Mac Pro handles that well enough. RX 580 and one Sabrent Rocket 1TB SSD in an IO Crest IO-PCE2824-TM2, and a RAID 0 of two 6TB WD Red HDDs. I do assistant editor work and most of the editors I've worked with are cutting on Mac Pro 2013s or iMacs with limited upgrade options. So I still live in a proxy workflow world, typically on my Mac Pro I'll generate ProRes Proxy or DNxHR LB proxy media for the editors to offline edit, and hand off to someone else to online with the high res original media.

Thanks for the reply! I'll start with the video card - my 1070 card works great and there are no problems with it. The GT 120 card is left in the computer because it starts the system and then does not participate in video processing. The only reason I want to change it is because I need to free up space for the NVMe card adapter. Therefore, you should try to optimize the space for all the required implements. I have purchased 970 EVO cards. Not PLUS versions. All the problems started when we switched to new cameras that offer files in 4K 10 bit 422 color mode. So now my plan is to insert a Radeon RX 580 card, an NVMe card adapter and work with proxy files. As we know, NVIDIA and MAC are no longer friends and no CUDA upgrades are possible for my video card.

 

[atonaldenim]

Thanks for the reply! I'll start with the video card - my 1070 card works great and there are no problems with it. The GT 120 card is left in the computer because it starts the system and then does not participate in video processing. The only reason I want to change it is because I need to free up space for the NVMe card adapter. Therefore, you should try to optimize the space for all the required implements. I have purchased 970 EVO cards. Not PLUS versions. All the problems started when we switched to new cameras that offer files in 4K 10 bit 422 color mode. So now my plan is to insert a Radeon RX 580 card, an NVMe card adapter and work with proxy files. As we know, NVIDIA and MAC are no longer friends and no CUDA upgrades are possible for my video card.

Good luck, let us know how it goes.

It sounds like the Highpoint 7101-A is the best NVMe adapter for you to get 3 SSDs in one PCIe slot.

I would definitely advise testing your current system with the GT 120 removed. I know it’s for boot screen support, but that’s probably not essential. Do a test and see if your footage plays back better with the GT 120 removed. Your software might be using the GT 120 for video decoding instead of the GTX 1070 without you realizing it.

Also, be aware that even though the RX 580 is Metal supported and Apple recommended, Mac OS doesn't enable full video acceleration on an RX 580 (or other new Radeon cards) in a Mac Pro 5,1. Mac OS has a whitelist of supported machines for enabling AMD hardware video acceleration, and the older Mac Pro is not on the list. So the 580 in a Mac Pro won't give as smooth video playback as a 580 in an iMac, for example. When rendering H.264 videos in Adobe Media Encoder you can only choose Software Encoding, not Hardware Encoding. You can hack the driver to make Mac OS think you have an iMac Pro to enable hardware video acceleration, or you can look into replacing your EFI boot loader with OpenCore. (I haven't tried either of these personally.) This thread has more info on that: Activate AMD hardware acceleration

I have an RX 580 with boot screen from MacVidCards and I'm happy with it. If you do get an RX 580 then the MacVidCards Europe version is the version I'd recommend for you!

 

[VCMSound]

Before - After ...

It feels better and faster, even by loosing one slot..


View attachment 884835

I'm real late to this party, but I'm looking at getting the Syba card for my 5,1.
No difference running the video card in slot 2?
(It looks like it's the better solution all around.)