Amfeltec x16 PCIe with 4 SSDs: 5900+ MB/s

[zedsdeadbaby]

The HyperX is ok as in the other thread, my 480GB variant while slower than a SM951 is still best option available at reasonable price.

Glad to hear you're happy with yours... I've had one as my boot drive for a month or two and it's great so far. Not only are the samsungs nearly impossible to find, buying a used SSD is questionable... Unless the seller's can show you the drive "health" using something like Drive DX who knows how much mileage has been put on a used one... I think for my purposes these will hold up fine... As long as the thing lasts as long as my cMP I'll be a happy camper.
[doublepost=1482782563][/doublepost]BTW for those running a gen 2, does anyone know if there's a way to install a generic fan inside the cMP and if so where I might power it from? (Guessing not but who knows... these machines have been full of easter egss from the get go )

 

[PhotoGUY73]

Hello everyone,

Been reading this forum for sometime now.

I am considering buying the Amfeltec. I was wondering if anyone have used the following with the card.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computing...-drives/ssd-850-evo-m2-1tb-mz-n5e1t0bw/#specs
[doublepost=1482812865][/doublepost]

I'm running this setup and it works as the Barefeats test suggests. I haven't had issues so far *knocks on wood*.

I ordered direct from Amfeltec. But yes, you have to email them for a sales quote. They should just put up an online shop for this.

Impressive cMP set up. If I may inquire, what type of work do you do with it.

I am considering the same Amfeltec card but unable to find the same SSD modules.

I purchased a used 12core 2.93ghz 2010 and slowly upgrading because I want to learn how to video edit. Undecided about 2K or 4K since I am starting new to this.

 

[PowerMike G5]

Hello everyone,

Been reading this forum for sometime now.

I am considering buying the Amfeltec. I was wondering if anyone have used the following with the card.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computing...-drives/ssd-850-evo-m2-1tb-mz-n5e1t0bw/#specs
[doublepost=1482812865][/doublepost]


Impressive cMP set up. If I may inquire, what type of work do you do with it.

I am considering the same Amfeltec card but unable to find the same SSD modules.

I purchased a used 12core 2.93ghz 2010 and slowly upgrading because I want to learn how to video edit. Undecided about 2K or 4K since I am starting new to this.

I work in film and tv production, so I use my Mac Pro for a lot of 4K video editing/effects/rendering.

Just note that the Amfeltec card only takes M-Key SSDs natively, so the SATA based SSD you linked above will not work on the card. You will need something like the SM951, XP941, etc.

 

[PhotoGUY73]

I work in film and tv production, so I use my Mac Pro for a lot of 4K video editing/effects/rendering.

Just note that the Amfeltec card only takes M-Key SSDs natively, so the SATA based SSD you linked above will not work on the card. You will need something like the SM951, XP941, etc.

Ok, thank you for answering my question.

 

[PhotoGUY73]

Well, so far I have been quoted $404 for the Amfeltec card and found 512mb SM951 AHCI chips for 426.00 each. Not too sure this is a worthy investment to buy all four chips plus card. Estimating on 2TB if RAID all together. Any suggestions? Those of you who have this, is this a worth while item to have?

 

[zedsdeadbaby]

Well, so far I have been quoted $404 for the Amfeltec card and found 512mb SM951 AHCI chips for 426.00 each. Not too sure this is a worthy investment to buy all four chips plus card. Estimating on 2TB if RAID all together. Any suggestions? Those of you who have this, is this a worth while item to have?

Are you sure they're AHCI?? I didn't find any new in my searches and the 256 gig AHCI 951's are up to $446 on Amazon. (I can't bring myself to pay that kind of price/gig just for brand name...)
https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-SM951-MZHPV256HDGL-256GB-Internal/dp/B00VELDBJ6

As far as RAID it's not necessary. If you need ultra high speed for say 4k than RAID makes sense, if not you can set it up as 4 drives, 2 RAIDed pairs, whatever works for you...

 

[PowerMike G5]

Well, so far I have been quoted $404 for the Amfeltec card and found 512mb SM951 AHCI chips for 426.00 each. Not too sure this is a worthy investment to buy all four chips plus card. Estimating on 2TB if RAID all together. Any suggestions? Those of you who have this, is this a worth while item to have?

It is a worthwhile system to have, but whether its right for you comes down to what you're trying to do with it, along with factoring longevity of the investment.

Since it seems from your earlier post that you are just getting into video editing, I don't know if its worth it for you at this point as you may not know what media you'll be working with yet regularly. I work regularly with 4K 10-bit codecs, but I still use 4 HDDs in a RAID 0 from the internal SATA bays as my media storage and it reads back fine with no issues. My primary reason behind the getting the card and 4 SSDs was a combination of having multiple SSDs independently for boot OS/rendering/media cache/media exports. In this configuration, it really balances out the system resources well as their is dedicated bandwidth for each purpose. A RAID 0 would be mostly untapped. Would you really be working with formats that require 5000MB/s+?

 

[zedsdeadbaby]

A RAID 0 would be mostly untapped. Would you really be working with formats that require 5000MB/s+?

If anything it's equal parts ego boost to speed boost I'm sure some people can justify the bandwidth but for most media work I'd imagine it's overkill...

That being said, it is fun taking these machines to the limit since Apple will never make anything this versatile again, (at least as far as an all-in-one-box approach goes... Even then I don't see them making machines this sensible ever again.) So far I'm thinking the last two slots on my Squid will be separate drives since two in RAID0 is already more than enough for me.

I am curious though - So far the consensus I've read is that RAID0 may increase SSD lifespan (half as many writes), while doubling failure likelihood, essentially making it moot... I'd be interested if anyone has a solid (pun intended) argument for or against keeping the current two as RAID0

 

[PowerMike G5]

If anything it's equal parts ego boost to speed boost I'm sure some people can justify the bandwidth but for most media work I'd imagine it's overkill...

Funny thing is I used to run my 4 SSDs on the Squid in RAID 0 in the beginning to get that 5900MB/s speed

But I soon felt it was most part ego boost!

The thing is I am the type of power user who would benefit most from having it in RAID 0, as I work regularly with large sequential data, and read/write constantly. High bit-rate multi-stream 4K video editing requires high consistent speed. But I noticed my system just runs faster when I delineate the drives out instead to separate tasks, giving them each their own 1500MB/s bandwidth. My 4 drive WD Blacks in RAID 0 achieve about 560MB/s and have been my main media storage, in large part to working on projects that exceed the storage limit of the SSD RAID (my current film project is over 8TB in raw footage alone!). But amazingly I haven't had any read issues.. yet!

 

[PhotoGUY73]

Well, so far I have been quoted $404 for the Amfeltec card and found 512mb SM951 AHCI chips for 426.00 each. Not too sure this is a worthy investment to buy all four chips plus card. Estimating on 2TB if RAID all together. Any suggestions? Those of you who have this, is this a worth while item to have?

Are you sure they're AHCI?? I didn't find any new in my searches and the 256 gig AHCI 951's are up to $446 on Amazon. (I can't bring myself to pay that kind of price/gig just for brand name...)
https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-SM951-MZHPV256HDGL-256GB-Internal/dp/B00VELDBJ6

As far as RAID it's not necessary. If you need ultra high speed for say 4k than RAID makes sense, if not you can set it up as 4 drives, 2 RAIDed pairs, whatever works for you...

Here is the link.

http://www.esaitech.com/samsung-mz-...paign=ga-pla&gclid=CLitguX9ldECFUlNfgodv4cBAA
[doublepost=1482897791][/doublepost]

Funny thing is I used to run my 4 SSDs on the Squid in RAID 0 in the beginning to get that 5900MB/s speed

But I soon felt it was most part ego boost!

The thing is I am the type of power user who would benefit most from having it in RAID 0, as I work regularly with large sequential data, and read/write constantly. High bit-rate multi-stream 4K video editing requires high consistent speed. But I noticed my system just runs faster when I delineate the drives out instead to separate tasks, giving them each their own 1500MB/s bandwidth. My 4 drive WD Blacks in RAID 0 achieve about 560MB/s and have been my main media storage, in large part to working on projects that exceed the storage limit of the SSD RAID (my current film project is over 8TB in raw footage alone!). But amazingly I haven't had any read issues.. yet!

Hahaha...no question about it, part ego boost, part longevity, partly because at this point in time I can afford it. It is true I am very new with Adobe Premire and After Affects and don't have any projects that pay me anything (at this time) but would like the assurance of being able to compete projects in a timely manner. I am debating a lot of different options still for video card, external RAID storage options and the like. I do want to do 4K eventually and want to be settled in for it instead of buying later if I get into 4K.
For some reason I didn't think the internal drives for the Mac Pro would be sufficient for 4K. Considering getting sleds for them and putting in high capacity SSD's but not sure if that is a better route too....
[doublepost=1482898846][/doublepost]

Funny thing is I used to run my 4 SSDs on the Squid in RAID 0 in the beginning to get that 5900MB/s speed

But I soon felt it was most part ego boost!

The thing is I am the type of power user who would benefit most from having it in RAID 0, as I work regularly with large sequential data, and read/write constantly. High bit-rate multi-stream 4K video editing requires high consistent speed. But I noticed my system just runs faster when I delineate the drives out instead to separate tasks, giving them each their own 1500MB/s bandwidth. My 4 drive WD Blacks in RAID 0 achieve about 560MB/s and have been my main media storage, in large part to working on projects that exceed the storage limit of the SSD RAID (my current film project is over 8TB in raw footage alone!). But amazingly I haven't had any read issues.. yet!

I see your point about the card/SSD combination.
I have been researching the GTX 980 Ti 6GB Gpu. Seems to be a good card. Then I noticed you have the GTX Titan X 12GB gpu. Is your card overkill for you 4K work or is that specifically for rendering?

 

[carpsafari]

The link for the SM951, is what you see a lot;
By the code MZVPV you can see it is a NVMe.
To make matters worse, they even dare to add 'AHCI'
In other words, they know ****.

 

[PhotoGUY73]

Thank you for clarifying the product code.

 

[Plato65]

I saw people commenting on having TRIM enabled with individual drives on this, but can TRIM be enabled with RAID 0? Is it essential?

 

[zedsdeadbaby]

TRIM is tricky beyond 10.10. You can't enable TRIM on RAIDed drives in 10.11 and 10.12 in traditional ways as far as I understand. You have to wtih with 3rd party apps like softRAID...

I specifically kept a bootable 10.9 drive handy on my machine due to what I read before moving to El Cap... So far everything holds up. Any drive RAIDed in 10.9 has been fine and shows as having TRIM enabled on all striped volumes. (And any volume created in 10.9, post 10.11, works as intended.)

My Macbook for example is partitioned and RAIDed running 10.11, (4TB late, 2011 RAID 0). 10.11 installs fine on RAID volumes created in 10.9 and TRIM shows up as working on both RAID 0 partitions. AFAIU using softRaid creates RAID volumes fine, but TRIM does not work... (I would be super happy to learn I'm wrong. Creating RAID volumes in 10.9 just to use in 10.11 is a PITA!! It's also important to mention I skipped past Yosemite right to El Cap due to recommendations... I'd have chosen 10.10 looking back but that's a big process for me personally...)

As far as whether TRIM is relevant? That's beyond me... From the basics I know it still is on most drives. But my reading is as somewhat vaguely informed consumer... I don't claim to understand the deeper, more technical side at the level many of these guys do... So for now I stick with the method I've always read to... Enable TRIM whenever possible...

 

[zedsdeadbaby]

Barefeats comparison between the Samsungs and Kingstons... http://barefeats.com/tricktb3b.html

On a personal note I Raid 0'd two together and hit between 2650 and 2700 MB/s

 

[William_si]

BTW for those running a gen 2, does anyone know if there's a way to install a generic fan inside the cMP and if so where I might power it from? (Guessing not but who knows... these machines have been full of easter egss from the get go )

The only simple way to tap power (12V only) is splitting out the GPU connectors or use a SATA -> molex cable in one of the HDD bays (needs to be cut and does in some cases not hold perfect).

The PLX chip on the board reports no temp to OS (it could do that) but they work in pretty bad environment usually, the Mac Pro airflow should be sufficient (and is for mine).

 

[zedsdeadbaby]

For anyone curious how these compare neck and neck with Samsung:

http://barefeats.com/tricktb3b.html

 

[nbritton]

I don't think this has a PLX chip, but take a look at this: https://www.servethehome.com/the-dell-4x-m-2-pcie-x16-version-of-the-hp-z-turbo-quad-pro/

 

[William_si]

The fan is very misleading in such products often - if you look at the PCB from the connector going up you see them pretty much evenly going to 4 distinct destinations: the M.2 slots.

It has some logic for seemingly fan control and voltage regulators/a step down converter but that seems to be it, bifurcation is pretty passive.

The HP card, product page here:

http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/business-solutions/hp-z-turbo-drive-quad-pro-2x256gb-pcie-ssd

Also has a fan and seems to have a chip as the workstation models listed as compatible have non onboard (but might or actually likely have bifurcation support) - At a price point of over $ 1k for 2x 256GB i'd EXPECT a PLX/similar (yes, there are others now) chip though.

 

[faefae]

Hey, first post here. This thread is probably the biggest "community" of squid users.

I have a 5,1 2009 mac pro, Yosemite 10.10.5, a macvidcards flashed 6GB 980ti, 64GB RAM, pindelski upgrade to 2x 3.46GHz quad core xeon.

16x squid in 16x slot with 4x samsung AHCI 512GB sticks in a RAID 0 totalling 2TB.

Booting off the RAID 0, running off the RAID 0. Use case is video and audio and some CG. Why squid? Cus time is money and I only have so much time.

Have filled up the card several times and then archived off to disk.

When I initially got the card I benchmarked it and hit around 4500MB/s read/write. Low but I needed to work and went ahead with the "good enough" config. I recently noticed my mac getting laggy. Would click on things in various editors and things wouldn't respond right away. Various apps were taking longer to open. I ran the aja benchmark again.

Saw 1000MB/s read 4000MB/s write.

And then watched it drop down to 300MB/s.

Free space at this time was 300GB. Archived a bunch and freed up 1TB. Enabled TRIM and saw it drop down to 600MB/s this time.

WTF not cool. Currently making a fresh clone and will run some tests:

• boot from USB clone, run aja on card
• if crappy, then reinstall OSX in place (not fresh) on card, re-run aja
• if crappy, delete raid 0 set, format, reconfigure raid 0 set, run aja on card from usb drive
• if good then clone back onto the card, run aja
• if crappy then ???????

I am hoping that TRIM just needed to be enabled with OSX 10.10 and that the Samsung S4LN058A01-8030 controller just wasn't trimming and garbage collecting properly without that.

Anyways if anyone has any ideas about what might have happened in my environment please let me know. I am also curious if any heavy users with several months under their belt can re-run aja and report their results.

Thanks
FF

 

[itdk92]

Hey, first post here. This thread is probably the biggest "community" of squid users.

I have a 5,1 2009 mac pro, Yosemite 10.10.5, a macvidcards flashed 6GB 980ti, 64GB RAM, pindelski upgrade to 2x 3.46GHz quad core xeon.

16x squid in 16x slot with 4x samsung AHCI 512GB sticks in a RAID 0 totalling 2TB.

Booting off the RAID 0, running off the RAID 0. Use case is video and audio and some CG. Why squid? Cus time is money and I only have so much time.

Have filled up the card several times and then archived off to disk.

When I initially got the card I benchmarked it and hit around 4500MB/s read/write. Low but I needed to work and went ahead with the "good enough" config. I recently noticed my mac getting laggy. Would click on things in various editors and things wouldn't respond right away. Various apps were taking longer to open. I ran the aja benchmark again.

Saw 1000MB/s read 4000MB/s write.

And then watched it drop down to 300MB/s.

Free space at this time was 300GB. Archived a bunch and freed up 1TB. Enabled TRIM and saw it drop down to 600MB/s this time.

WTF not cool. Currently making a fresh clone and will run some tests:

• boot from USB clone, run aja on card
• if crappy, then reinstall OSX in place (not fresh) on card, re-run aja
• if crappy, delete raid 0 set, format, reconfigure raid 0 set, run aja on card from usb drive
• if good then clone back onto the card, run aja
• if crappy then ???????

I am hoping that TRIM just needed to be enabled with OSX 10.10 and that the Samsung S4LN058A01-8030 controller just wasn't trimming and garbage collecting properly without that.

Anyways if anyone has any ideas about what might have happened in my environment please let me know. I am also curious if any heavy users with several months under their belt can re-run aja and report their results.

Thanks
FF

Have you checked the temperatures of the card?

My card runs hot with only one module installed, and the latest samsungs ahci drives have the fame of running pretty hot

 

[faefae]

Have you checked the temperatures of the card?

My card runs hot with only one module installed, and the latest samsungs ahci drives have the fame of running pretty hot

Yes, but that is a great tip since these apparently throttle IO over certain temps.

The hottest drive was around 150* during the tests. I run the Macs Fan control

 

[Squuiid]

Hey, first post here. This thread is probably the biggest "community" of squid users.

I have a 5,1 2009 mac pro, Yosemite 10.10.5, a macvidcards flashed 6GB 980ti, 64GB RAM, pindelski upgrade to 2x 3.46GHz quad core xeon.

16x squid in 16x slot with 4x samsung AHCI 512GB sticks in a RAID 0 totalling 2TB.

Booting off the RAID 0, running off the RAID 0. Use case is video and audio and some CG. Why squid? Cus time is money and I only have so much time.

Have filled up the card several times and then archived off to disk.

When I initially got the card I benchmarked it and hit around 4500MB/s read/write. Low but I needed to work and went ahead with the "good enough" config. I recently noticed my mac getting laggy. Would click on things in various editors and things wouldn't respond right away. Various apps were taking longer to open. I ran the aja benchmark again.

Saw 1000MB/s read 4000MB/s write.

And then watched it drop down to 300MB/s.

Free space at this time was 300GB. Archived a bunch and freed up 1TB. Enabled TRIM and saw it drop down to 600MB/s this time.

WTF not cool. Currently making a fresh clone and will run some tests:

• boot from USB clone, run aja on card
• if crappy, then reinstall OSX in place (not fresh) on card, re-run aja
• if crappy, delete raid 0 set, format, reconfigure raid 0 set, run aja on card from usb drive
• if good then clone back onto the card, run aja
• if crappy then ???????

I am hoping that TRIM just needed to be enabled with OSX 10.10 and that the Samsung S4LN058A01-8030 controller just wasn't trimming and garbage collecting properly without that.

Anyways if anyone has any ideas about what might have happened in my environment please let me know. I am also curious if any heavy users with several months under their belt can re-run aja and report their results.

Thanks
FF

Yep, this is temperatures of the SSD chips, as itdk92 said. I have the exact same issue and am still looking into what heatsinks to buy. I'm finding it difficult to source anything low profile enough and that would make a difference. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful.

 

[sauria]

I have the third generation of this card, it has a fan on the back of the card and keeps the drives much cooler. This is operating well In a Hackintosh

 

[faefae]

Yep, this is temperatures of the SSD chips, as itdk92 said. I have the exact same issue and am still looking into what heatsinks to buy. I'm finding it difficult to source anything low profile enough and that would make a difference. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful.

I disagree. I do not think temps are the issue. And this is why

So last night i booted off usb (clone of squid raid)

The usb was not crappy and laggy so i decided that it was a storage problem not the os.

Ran aja, got same results as when i ran it when booting off squidraid

Nuked the raid, erased the drives, made a new 4x squidraid (this took about 15 seconds), ran the test again and bam saw 4GB/s. Kept running the test and speed was steady at 4GB/s at 153* max temps.

So I think and hope that not having trim enabled was the issue. That or the samsung controller is pathetic and cant properly garbage collect.

Currently imaging my fresh squidraid and will then aja again.

Side note- I tested with a raid stripe of 16Kb and 256Kb. Notably the 16Kb outperformed the 256Kb in everything except small block size sequential rights. Difference in performance overall was around 15% better for the small stripe.

Which specific aja test are people using to see 6GB/s?