Actually, not many for the Studio. I have looked and many seem to sell for the M4 Mini but very hard to find Studio sales for SSD.
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Upgrading Mac Studio storage
- Thread starter gilles_polysoft
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Agreed.
I also looked and its a mess.
Now, I do wonder and I am sorry if this sounds like I'm doubting Polysoft's work. but maybe he is simply buying from one of them and they have some difficulty on their sides or their prices changed or something?
The reason I mention price is because none of the options I saw were that cheap.
Heck, some of them were just 100 or so different from Apples prices.
Hi all, my 8TB SSD upgrade kit from Polysoft for my M3 Ultra just arrived via UPS yesterday, so I'd just wanted to share a little about my own experience, and some stats on the SSD at the end.
Timeline
Lastly, the new batch of M3 SSDs are significantly cheaper at RRP compared to when I purchased it in June, and that rankles me a bit, given that prices had dropped so much and I'd still not received mine yet.
Overall, I'm very impressed with the thoughtful way @gilles_polysoft had prepared the entire package, from the supplied tools, to the extremely descriptive user guide. However, probably a victim of his own success, the lack of communications/updates is something that marred things somewhat, as I would be more than happy to wait for two months if I there had been timely updates available. I was not even aware of the delay caused by defective parts until I stumbled across this thread while randomly searching for information about Polysoft.
Timeline
- 05th June: Order placed with Polysoft
- 02nd August: Delay response received from Polysoft
- 19th August: Shipment notification received from Polysoft
- 20th August: SSD received via UPS
- Plastic pry tool and small iFixit kit was included in the parcel along with the SSD
- O-ring under Mac Studio was quite hard to remove with supplied pry tool, and I ended up using triangular picks to get it off
- Supplied iFixit kit was neat, but surface texture of the driver body made it difficult to get a good grip to remove some of the tighter Torx screws; had to resort to using my own tools
- Disassembly was straightforward, thanks to the included instruction manual that had pictures for every step
- Re-assembly was more-or-less as easy as disassembly, but re-attaching the AC cable onto the PSU was trickier, due to the angle at which the cable and socket were situated
- Used a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro running macOS 15.6.1 to perform the DFU firmware restore, along with an Apple USB-C charging cable from my MacBook to the Mac Studio
- DFU restoration process was straightforward and no hiccups noticed
- AmorphousDiskMark
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- Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
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Lastly, the new batch of M3 SSDs are significantly cheaper at RRP compared to when I purchased it in June, and that rankles me a bit, given that prices had dropped so much and I'd still not received mine yet.
Overall, I'm very impressed with the thoughtful way @gilles_polysoft had prepared the entire package, from the supplied tools, to the extremely descriptive user guide. However, probably a victim of his own success, the lack of communications/updates is something that marred things somewhat, as I would be more than happy to wait for two months if I there had been timely updates available. I was not even aware of the delay caused by defective parts until I stumbled across this thread while randomly searching for information about Polysoft.
When I compare the price from Polysoft/AliExpress to the price Apple charges for the SSD upgrade, it's wayyyy cheaper for me to buy aftermarket. Apple is ripping us off, especially in New Zealand.
Congrats. It's a bummer when you buy something and the price drops after you purchase it. I guess as demand increases, and it's out on the market the price gets cheaper. I have learnt to now wait and not buy items at launch because you bound to get a better deal after a few months. If I can do without it at the time then I wait.
Yeah, so much so, do I really want to gamble with hundreds of dollars, not knowing the quality and there's a higher risk of damaging my mac, by these devices, or by my hand?
The pricing difference between Polysoft and apple are not huge particularly on the smaller sizes, going up beyond 4TB, the pricing delta does grow. I wouldn't call apple's prices a ripoff when comparing them to polsyoft. I would when comparing them to the PC industry and how much normal SSDs cost.
The big difference between polysoft and apple is the fact that I can upgrade my mac after purchase. I'd probably pay apple their prices if I had the opportunity to upgrade my studio and have them do the work and thus have a warranty.
I'm not down on polysoft, and I hope they get their supply chain issues worked out, I am still semi-tempted to get an upgrade
I have an M2 Max Studio base with 6TB of TB4 external storage. I am thinking about the 4TB Polysoft solution to extend the life of my Studio. For those that have made the switch, does the larger storage make a difference in execution speed? I see the synthetic benchmarks, but is there any real world difference?
I don't think the speeds are so different that in real world usage that its not going to be noticeable to the human eye.
As what @maflynn has mentioned above, the performance gains are unnnoticeable to me for now.
So long as it's cheaper than what Apple offers, and is statistically better than what Apple offers, it's a win in my books.
Hello everyone,
Just a quick update: we apologize to customers who have not yet received their orders. The problem we encountered with the third batch has been a nightmare, and to be honest, it is costing me dearly on a personal level.
The soldering has been corrected at the factory and most of the cards have been shipped (almost all M1 and M3), but we have to manually reprogram all the cards that were incompletely programmed due to the soldering.
For this specific case, we are developing a device to reprogram the chips "in situ" without having to unsolder them. I never imagined we would need this.
Each customer will be contacted within the coming week.
Every customer who is willing to wait will receive their order within a few weeks.
I also note that other companies are entering the market. This is not good news for me, but it is good news for you, the users.
Just a quick update: we apologize to customers who have not yet received their orders. The problem we encountered with the third batch has been a nightmare, and to be honest, it is costing me dearly on a personal level.
The soldering has been corrected at the factory and most of the cards have been shipped (almost all M1 and M3), but we have to manually reprogram all the cards that were incompletely programmed due to the soldering.
For this specific case, we are developing a device to reprogram the chips "in situ" without having to unsolder them. I never imagined we would need this.
Each customer will be contacted within the coming week.
Every customer who is willing to wait will receive their order within a few weeks.
I also note that other companies are entering the market. This is not good news for me, but it is good news for you, the users.
That sucks to hear of course. Hope you’re doing alright personally. Can’t even imagine how annoying that issue must be.
I don’t think anyone has an issue with all of that, the only thing people would love is a little bit more transparency. After all, this doesn’t reflect too well if it feels you’re gone missing.
PolySoft is the worst. I placed my order with them for a SSD upgrade back in April 2025. I still do not have the SSD kit and the owner, Gilles, just keeps pushing me off. First he said they had some batch problem, and it would ship August 1st..Now 15+ emails later, he won't even respond and has $1500+ of my money. I would recommend no one do business with him. On top of that, there's some "batch issue" where drives are failing early and he's having problems. I wouldn't pay this kind of money to someone based out of France like this. You guys have no idea the amount of Quality Assurance or even what chips this guy even uses. Who knows how long it will last, no track record. Buyer Beware.
I think you might be overdoing it a little bit also in regard to missing track record. Polysoft has been in business for ages. Am I happy with how things are going? For sure not. However considering that they basically had to reverse engineer this thing and managed to ship some working units already that’s not bad.
In comparison, I’ve been having nothing than delays for almost 2 years on a Kickstarter project and they’re now finally starting mass production and shipping.
What I can tell you is this: If I treated my customers anything like PolySoft does to his, I'd be out of business - like 50 years ago. I've been in business 50+ years here in the US. He promises customers he'll ship on this certain date, never does, then responds 1-2 months later with "there were problems, should ship soon".
At the end of the day, your free to do business with whomever you like - its a free Country. I am simply sharing my experience so everyone else can see my experience I had with them. Good Luck to you.
At the end of the day, your free to do business with whomever you like - its a free Country. I am simply sharing my experience so everyone else can see my experience I had with them. Good Luck to you.
It is a new product in a new category of upgrades for the Mac Studio. Perhaps, Polysoft is discovering challenges it had not expected and is having to make technical and communication changes in how it operates. These are normal growing pains for even the oldest small companies with new product lines. However, I agree with you that more transparency and customer communication is needed. Based on your feedback and the information above about no performance improvements with the upgrades, I will continue to rely on external TB4 SSD drives.
One small aside - Is the USA really still a free country?
Hello Harold,
You are absolutely right, and I do agree with you that the situation cannot continue like this for much longer.
We happen to be working on PCBs that have 12 layers with a thickness of 0.8 mm, and even for the best PCB manufacturers (which we cannot find in the US neither in France !), this can sometimes be complicated.
The problem has been resolved by our supplier, but it is absolutely true that we did not anticipate this problem, including its consequences in terms of having to reprogram chips.
I apologize once again for the delay, and I would just like to remind you that the idea for this product came from a request made here. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken the risk ? In any case, I promise that no customer has been or will be disadvantaged.
whats most interesting about this thread: Gilles suddenly, at the drop of a hat, finds the time to respond on MacRumors Forum, only when he's being bashed.
Gilles: Where were you the past two months when I have been writing to you weekly for an update on my order and you were nowhere to be found? Suddenly: The door opens and Gilles appears, but only on MacForums...WAY too busy to respond back to his customers who have paid him thousands of dollars and trusted them with their hard earned cash.
All I can say is: Wow.
I ordered from AliExpress, this one. Will report back once it arrives...
I also ordered from them. They had some solid reviews. Hope it all works well but I just got tired of waiting on Polysoft with no dates for stock.
> They had some solid reviews.
Yea, I think I much rather wait for @gilles_polysoft to hopefully open up orders back again some day.
For those who might be planning to roll their own external Studio storage solution:
Today I saw that Samsung 990 EVO Plus PCIe Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2 2280 SSD's are on sale (32% off on 2 TB's).
Somewhat tempting though worth noting that these newer/cheaper DRAM-less (HMB) SSD's suffer from write speed drop-off's after the SLC cache is exhausted.
The Kingston KC3000 NVMe's that I'm using in 2x RAID-0 with my Max Studio M1 (connected to ports 1 and 4) and others (SN850X and 990 Pro, for example) with onboard DRAM perform better during sustained writes (>2.5 GB/s). I've never had issues with my external drives being recognized or performing poorly through all the macOS updates along the way.
Today I saw that Samsung 990 EVO Plus PCIe Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2 2280 SSD's are on sale (32% off on 2 TB's).
Somewhat tempting though worth noting that these newer/cheaper DRAM-less (HMB) SSD's suffer from write speed drop-off's after the SLC cache is exhausted.
The Kingston KC3000 NVMe's that I'm using in 2x RAID-0 with my Max Studio M1 (connected to ports 1 and 4) and others (SN850X and 990 Pro, for example) with onboard DRAM perform better during sustained writes (>2.5 GB/s). I've never had issues with my external drives being recognized or performing poorly through all the macOS updates along the way.
I rather deal with someone that replies to messages and gives good solid answers. I was also waiting on Polysoft but reading reviews on his post here where he ignores his customers for 4 months on end, don't respond to messages from his website( I also sent a message weeks ago without no response), does not respond to warranty claims fast to keep recurring business etc. This store on AliExpress has solid reviews and only has 3 bad reviews so far.
Hello there I followed and watch this post weekly..
Also try to found a solution like anyone here..
Surenmunoo did you know if the board have buyed on AliExpress will arrive with all components assembled??and just swapped with internal ssd??
Thanks