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

I just installed my new Studio Drive without any problems.

I'll be using my Mac Studio for the next few days, every day, for many hours. I hope everything goes well. I'll keep you updated.

Thank you very much to @gilles_polysoft. I really appreciate your support and concern for us, your customers, so that we have the best experience.

Best regards.
I honestly thought the 8TB would be faster. My Hackintosh seems to be way faster. This makes me reconsider. I will have to think about it now. I wonder what speeds the original Apple SSD 8TB gives.

Screenshot 2025-07-15 at 17.31.49.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: qriox
Anyone know what speeds Apple's SSDs at? I guess we'd have to look at the 1TB and if possible the 8TB. How much lower is this?
My M4 Max, unless you have a specific need for such speeds (or higher speeds), I'd say the what M4 provides is blazingly quick.
DiskSpeedTest.png
 
My Hackintosh seems to be way faster.
What is your setup and why did you think its faster? PCI 3.0 is about 3,500 mB/s, PCI 4.0 is about 7,000 and PCI 5.0 is about 15,000?

From my googling, it seems the M4 Max uses PCI 4.0 and not PCI 5.0 so that' why why seeing the speeds the speeds we're seeing.

What tasks are you needing PCI 5.0 speeds?
 
What is your setup and why did you think its faster? PCI 3.0 is about 3,500 mB/s, PCI 4.0 is about 7,000 and PCI 5.0 is about 15,000?

From my googling, it seems the M4 Max uses PCI 4.0 and not PCI 5.0 so that' why why seeing the speeds the speeds we're seeing.

What tasks are you needing PCI 5.0 speeds?
Does the M3 Ultra Studio also use PCIE 4.0? Or is that one 5?
 
@gilles_polysoft Any news on when the next pre-order wave arrives? It said 15th however that’s passed without any update.

It's delayed a few days, my fault : I asked last days the web developer to add a system to announce which batch an order belongs to and the delivery times of the batch. At the moment our production batches always sell out within a few days and then we have no stock for several weeks. We have 496 PCB ready (~250 kits) which we will divide in 2 assembly batchs.


I honestly thought the 8TB would be faster. My Hackintosh seems to be way faster. This makes me reconsider. I will have to think about it now. I wonder what speeds the original Apple SSD 8TB gives.

The Samsung 9100 Pro is a very fast and efficient SSD. That said, in some conditions (few space left, or hudge workloads) the SLC cache will be cleared and the 9100 Pro will no longer exceed 1.8 GB/s


I would love Apple to allow us to install M.2 SSDs internally, which is not possible anymore except in the Mac Pro (you can see in that thread that I wasn't the last one to help people install M.2 drives !).
 
What is your setup and why did you think its faster? PCI 3.0 is about 3,500 mB/s, PCI 4.0 is about 7,000 and PCI 5.0 is about 15,000?

From my googling, it seems the M4 Max uses PCI 4.0 and not PCI 5.0 so that' why why seeing the speeds the speeds we're seeing.

What tasks are you needing PCI 5.0 speeds?
I thought M4 would be PCIE 5 at least. I do video editing and transfer files between SSD's so a slow disk can become bothersome
 
  • Like
Reactions: maflynn
It's delayed a few days, my fault : I asked last days the web developer to add a system to announce which batch an order belongs to and the delivery times of the batch. At the moment our production batches always sell out within a few days and then we have no stock for several weeks. We have 496 PCB ready (~250 kits) which we will divide in 2 assembly batchs.




The Samsung 9100 Pro is a very fast and efficient SSD. That said, in some conditions (few space left, or hudge workloads) the SLC cache will be cleared and the 9100 Pro will no longer exceed 1.8 GB/s


I would love Apple to allow us to install M.2 SSDs internally, which is not possible anymore except in the Mac Pro (you can see in that thread that I wasn't the last one to help people install M.2 drives !).
Thanks. I may still upgrade my M2 Studio SSD if I cannot sell it and buy the M4 Studio.
 
I thought M4 would be PCIE 5 at least. I do video editing and transfer files between SSD's so a slow disk can become bothersome
Googling the M4, it seems Apple doesn't explicitly state what it uses, but it seems the general consensus is that its not PCI 5.0. People are expecting huge gains in the unannounced M5 chip family, so that might be on of the updates.

I'm not a creative type, using my Mac for video, animation, sound, etc, so my disk performance is less critical for me. Plus my PC is on PCI 3.0 as I'm getting what you would expect from that standard. So my Mac is a significant upgrade over my PC.
 
Either RAID on an M4 Mac or he's using a PC with Gen 5 PCIe and NVMe.
His AmorphousDiskMark screenshot says Samsung 9100 PRO 4TB, a single stick of it on a gen5 board can reach that speed.
He is, he mentioned its a hackintosh. I think he just posted the image just to flex
Yeah for someone knowledgeable and resourceful enough to have a hackintosh running on Tahoe, with a 4TB 9100 PRO inside, he surely knows how "low" of a disk speed to expect from a Mac Studio.
 
  • Like
Reactions: maflynn
Googling the M4, it seems Apple doesn't explicitly state what it uses, but it seems the general consensus is that its not PCI 5.0. People are expecting huge gains in the unannounced M5 chip family, so that might be on of the updates.

I'm not a creative type, using my Mac for video, animation, sound, etc, so my disk performance is less critical for me. Plus my PC is on PCI 3.0 as I'm getting what you would expect from that standard. So my Mac is a significant upgrade over my PC.

I don't need it either but the next PC build will have Gen 5 PCIe and Gen 5 NVMe. I have Gen 3 and Gen 4 sticks right now and see no need to upgrade those but I may want to at some point in the future.
 
but the next PC build
I can't promise what the future will hold, and I still use PCs, but a new PC is too far off the radar for me to even consider. And Odd as it may sound, the Apple Tax is a lot lower then the Nvidia Tax these days. I think you get more performance for less money with Apple - whodathunkit
 
I can't promise what the future will hold, and I still use PCs, but a new PC is too far off the radar for me to even consider. And Odd as it may sound, the Apple Tax is a lot lower then the Nvidia Tax these days. I think you get more performance for less money with Apple - whodathunkit

nVidia 5060s are selling below MSRP now.

I'm considering moving the stuff on the iMac Pro to the Mac Studio and running three monitors off the PC and the Studio until the fall. The iMac Pro is generating more heat on hot days than I prefer. The problem is that I love using it.
 
Anyone know what speeds Apple's SSDs at? I guess we'd have to look at the 1TB and if possible the 8TB. How much lower is this?
These are the speeds I'm getting on my Base M1 Max Mac Studio.

Original 512 GB drive
Screenshot 2024-05-31 at 18.36.52.png

and with the Upgraded 8 TB drive
Screenshot 2025-07-18 at 12.04.52.png
 
nVidia 5060s are selling below MSRP now.
Yes, but if I were to buy a new GPU, it will be a xx70 class card (or above) and basically anything above a 60 class GPU is too expensive. I don't even mean the price hike over MSRP but rather how Nvidia (and AMD to a less extent) have jacked up their prices and at the same time decreasing vram, so you need to over pay
 
Yes, but if I were to buy a new GPU, it will be a xx70 class card (or above) and basically anything above a 60 class GPU is too expensive. I don't even mean the price hike over MSRP but rather how Nvidia (and AMD to a less extent) have jacked up their prices and at the same time decreasing vram, so you need to over pay

nVidia can do that because they're making money hand over fist on $30K+ Blackwell chips. They're kind of doing the gaming market a favor by making products for this segment. With being able to sell to China again, they're going to be prioritizing fab capacity towards AI chips.
 
nVidia can do that because they're making money hand over fist
No question, but because of those shenanigans, I feel that Apple has became a more viable alternative on the pricing front.

Now if they only made their storage upgradeable by the consumer (or apple genius) and make the storage upgrade a tad less predatory in terms of their tiered pricing

While I'm really happy with the OWC Envoy (and its really quick), I still am tempted to upgrade the internal storage of my Studio.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.