2010 Mac Pro 6-core, need more SSD speed, Which is the best PCIe solution?

[pierre1610]

As tilte says, i currently have 2x 200GB SATA2 OWC SSDs on RAID 0 as my boot drive. I get a steady 400MB/s but that's not enough anymore. I recently upgraded to 48GB ram and the system still struggles.

I'd like to install roughly 1TB of storage and want the fastest IO possible, i've read multiple posts about various solutions but am yet to reach a decision.

Options in order of preference so far:

1 - RocketRAID 2721 and 3 or 4 SATA3 SSDs
2 - Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro and 2 SATA3 SSDs
3 - OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 PCIe SSD

Possible others:
MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i - seems to get good speed on 06-08 Mac Pro, Not seen anything on a 2010
Areca ARC-1882 - Read on a hackintosh site it works well, not sure about on a genuine Mac Pro.

I have 1 ATI Radeon HD 5870 in slot-1
An Orico PFU3 USB3 card in slot-4

Any advice appreciated, i'd like to hit 1500MB/s read/write.

Thanks

 

[Boomhowler]

Raid 0 of 2 accelsiors will get you to 1200-1300MBps.

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury-Accelsior-speed-fill-volume-480GB.html

There's also a test of a raid 0 of three of those. Nasty.

 

[Executor]

Raid 0 of 2 accelsiors will get you to 1200-1300MBps.

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury-Accelsior-speed-fill-volume-480GB.html

There's also a test of a raid 0 of three of those. Nasty.

I actually would not recommend the Accelsior. I had 2 and while fast in raid 0. Using them would not allow the Mac Pro to run windows at all from any drive, even regular hard drives would not boot windows if 2 accelsior cards were present. After contacting OWC I was told it was a limitation of the firmware and yet OWC charged me a restocking fee since using 2 accelsiors in raid was not a typical use scenario. Just my 2 cents. I now use a Sonnet PCI SSD and a velocity x2 card and they are fast and allow me to upgrade to other SSDs in the future.

 

[phpmaven]

As tilte says, i currently have 2x 200GB SATA2 OWC SSDs on RAID 0 as my boot drive. I get a steady 400MB/s but that's not enough anymore. I recently upgraded to 48GB ram and the system still struggles.

I'd like to install roughly 1TB of storage and want the fastest IO possible, i've read multiple posts about various solutions but am yet to reach a decision.

Options in order of preference so far:

1 - RocketRAID 2721 and 3 or 4 SATA3 SSDs
2 - Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro and 2 SATA3 SSDs
3 - OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 PCIe SSD

Possible others:
MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i - seems to get good speed on 06-08 Mac Pro, Not seen anything on a 2010
Areca ARC-1882 - Read on a hackintosh site it works well, not sure about on a genuine Mac Pro.

I have 1 ATI Radeon HD 5870 in slot-1
An Orico PFU3 USB3 card in slot-4

Any advice appreciated, i'd like to hit 1500MB/s read/write.

Thanks

I have the Accelsior in 2008 Mac Pro and it's incredibly fast. Although on paper getting a second and putting in a raid config will give you much better throughput, it would be ridiculously expensive and I don't think you will really see that much of a perceptible difference.

What do mean by "the system still struggles" but you aren't going to see any incredible change in performance. Going from HDD to SSD will give you incredible performance gains, but going from SSD to faster SSD will not make a whole lot of difference in overall performance. It may give you benchmark bragging rights if you are into that kind of thing.

 

[VirtualRain]

Options in order of preference so far:

1 - RocketRAID 2721 and 3 or 4 SATA3 SSDs
2 - Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro and 2 SATA3 SSDs
3 - OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 PCIe SSD

4 - New Mac Pro

Seriously, I would wait and asses that as another possible option.

I currently have a 2721SGL running three SSDs in RAID0 that can hit 1300MB/s in slot 2. Slot 3 and 4 seem limited to 1GB/s. However, it's not bootable. I use a standalone SSD for OS/Apps. My thread is here.

The Sonnet Tempo is probably your best bootable option. If you're considering the OWC that says to me that money is no object and you probably have enough money to burn to consider the new Mac Pro.

 

[666sheep]

I presume that you need such speed for storage/work files, not for the boot drive?
2x Sonnet Tempo with 2x 256GB SSDs on each in RAID 0 and you should hit 1800MB/s – if money aren't a limit OFC.

 

[pierre1610]

Thanks for your replies

I'm tempted by the new mac pro but am a little worries about what the price will be, plus i have these issues on projects i'm working on now.

VirtualRain - I've been through your thread a few times, why did you got for 3 SSDs and not 4?

My work is mainly Photoshop based with files up to 20GB saved down (thats 8bit not 16bit uncompressed) I need the fast storage for space to save down quicker to and for scratch disk. My current 400GB SSD RAID0 is 50% full and fills up constantly when doing certain tasks.

My worry is the New Mac Pro when it finally comes out will be £8,000 at the spec i'd need and right now i can't justify that.

I'm leaning toward 4 SSDs, not sure if i should go for 2x Sonnet Tempo Pro's or the RocketRAID 2721. I don't mind if its bootable or not as i don't plan on putting my OS on it.

 

[VirtualRain]

Thanks for your replies

I'm tempted by the new mac pro but am a little worries about what the price will be, plus i have these issues on projects i'm working on now.

VirtualRain - I've been through your thread a few times, why did you got for 3 SSDs and not 4?

My work is mainly Photoshop based with files up to 20GB saved down (thats 8bit not 16bit uncompressed) I need the fast storage for space to save down quicker to and for scratch disk. My current 400GB SSD RAID0 is 50% full and fills up constantly when doing certain tasks.

My worry is the New Mac Pro when it finally comes out will be £8,000 at the spec i'd need and right now i can't justify that.

I'm leaning toward 4 SSDs, not sure if i should go for 2x Sonnet Tempo Pro's or the RocketRAID 2721. I don't mind if its bootable or not as i don't plan on putting my OS on it.

I went for 3 only because I didn't really need that much (only really needed 2).

I would wait and see what the new Mac Pro costs especially considering how much you're looking at pouring into this old machine.