MP 7,1 ASUS m.2 card

[DrEGPU]

sonnet won't ship to australia and the australian stores are really expensive.
What about this one? Would it work on a mac pro do you think?

Quad M.2 NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-Bifurcation Motherboard

The IO CREST SI-PEX40152 is a great accelerated secondary storage solution for any workstation with true PCIe 3. 0 x16 bandwidth. It has 4 M. 2 NVMe ports to accept 4 NVMe M. 2 SSDs, so each NVMe M. 2 SSD has dedicated PCIe 3. 0 x4 bus bandwidth. It delivers transfer speeds 20 times faster than S...

www.amazon.com

It should. It has the PLX chip/switch as detailed in the description. I would guess that tiny little fan is very loud, similar to the highpoint card. On mine, I disconnected the fan and left the cover off and the ssd’s have been perfectly fine.

 

[tsialex]

It should. It has the PLX chip/switch as detailed in the description. I would guess that tiny little fan is very loud, similar to the highpoint card. On mine, I disconnected the fan and left the cover off and the ssd’s have been perfectly fine.

You are mistaken, it´s a Swiftech PLX-32xG3 PCIe switch, not an AVAGO/Broadcom/PLX/whatever it´s the name now switch that is fully supported by macOS. No one ever tested a Swiftech switch with a Mac.

 

[DrEGPU]

You are mistaken, it´s a Swiftech PLX-32xG3 PCIe switch, not an AVAGO/Broadcom/PLX/whatever it´s the name now switch that is fully supported by macOS. No one ever tested a Swiftech switch with a Mac.

Fair enough. In all likelihood, it’ll probably work just fine. You’re right, though. The possibility exists it might not be compatible.

 

[estherau]

I found a sonnet that ships to australia at amazon. For a reasonable price.

 

[SkiProIII]

Macs don't support Intel PCIe Lane Partition at all, aka bifurcation. Asus Hyper M.2 x16 GEN4 still requires it.

Read the first post of the thread:

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

New to the Forum. I have zero experience with Macs (technically) and only got into building PCs to test configurations for my own startup software business in late 90's. I know enough to figure stuff out, but not explain it. My kids got me into Apple - I am a big fiscal supporter now. As we get older, they 'just work' which I like about Apple quality. I don't like the price tags.

I only use Macs for basic computing. I recently got into drones and videos so upgraded 2013 MBP with NVMe SSD - and can run full video editing on an Intel Iris 4000 card as a result. It isn't a powerhouse for video, but decent results and reasonably keeps up with the new MBP with dual AMD 5500.

So, I recently bought a base cMP 4,1 (2009) in perfect shape for $500 as a project to make into usable storage and video editing machine, through upgrades. Incredible quality build in the cMP, especially compared to days of PCs! Fun of the project is to not to exceed $1000 CDN.

I took the machine back to basics, cleaned/dusted and wiped everything and started from there. So far,

> flashed to 5,1 firmware
> added an 120GB SSD boot drive (had)
> kept 640 Apple original SATA (came with)
> running MacOS 10.15.7 (Opencore)
> the added 2 x 1TB SATA ($20 each) for storage in RAID-0
> kept DVD drive
> RX580 bought (waiting for the added power cables) so running gt120 still

Keeping to the fiscal restraint, I bought new ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 for $60, new WD Black SN750 - 500GB (full price $100 taxes in) to put in. I figured the ASUS card would work, and liked that the card had a large heat sink and switchable fan. Ok, the $60 price tag, same day, no Amazon, was a attractive too. Then, I get into the Forum and was thinking the Project was out $60 after reading a number of the threads.

Nonetheless, I owned it now so I popped in the NVMe into the ASUS (great build quality) and popped into slot 2 (the x16) and fired up the Pro. Upon log in, I received an error message window that the 'storage media is not recognized' and gave me an option button to initialize. I restarted and same thing but still could not see it in the Finder window and nothing after clicking 'initialize'.

Opening System Report, and it showed up under the NMVExpress and PCI, generic, but there. So I opened up Disk Utility, clicked Show All under the View Menu tab and there it was! Uninitialled and just waiting to be formatted! Quick format and showed up under Finder.

So, I can say I have a stable operating ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 working in 4,1 flashed to 5,1 running Catalina. It appears as an internal drive.

My speeds are in the mid 750's using Disk Speed Test (BlackMagic) so I know I have to work on getting the lane issue (assumed) figured out as that is well below the theoretical speeds I expected as the Black Magic is capable of 3420 MB/s speeds, just don't know if the cMP is via PCIe 2.0.

I will update if I can get the speeds up.

 

[tsialex]

New to the Forum. I have zero experience with Macs (technically) and only got into building PCs to test configurations for my own startup software business in late 90's. I know enough to figure stuff out, but not explain it. My kids got me into Apple - I am a big fiscal supporter now. As we get older, they 'just work' which I like about Apple quality. I don't like the price tags.

I only use Macs for basic computing. I recently got into drones and videos so upgraded 2013 MBP with NVMe SSD - and can run full video editing on an Intel Iris 4000 card as a result. It isn't a powerhouse for video, but decent results and reasonably keeps up with the new MBP with dual AMD 5500.

So, I recently bought a base cMP 4,1 (2009) in perfect shape for $500 as a project to make into usable storage and video editing machine, through upgrades. Incredible quality build in the cMP, especially compared to days of PCs! Fun of the project is to not to exceed $1000 CDN.

I took the machine back to basics, cleaned/dusted and wiped everything and started from there. So far,

> flashed to 5,1 firmware
> added an 120GB SSD boot drive (had)
> kept 640 Apple original SATA (came with)
> running MacOS 10.15.7 (Opencore)
> the added 2 x 1TB SATA ($20 each) for storage in RAID-0
> kept DVD drive
> RX580 bought (waiting for the added power cables) so running gt120 still

Keeping to the fiscal restraint, I bought new ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 for $60, new WD Black SN750 - 500GB (full price $100 taxes in) to put in. I figured the ASUS card would work, and liked that the card had a large heat sink and switchable fan. Ok, the $60 price tag, same day, no Amazon, was a attractive too. Then, I get into the Forum and was thinking the Project was out $60 after reading a number of the threads.

Nonetheless, I owned it now so I popped in the NVMe into the ASUS (great build quality) and popped into slot 2 (the x16) and fired up the Pro. Upon log in, I received an error message window that the 'storage media is not recognized' and gave me an option button to initialize. I restarted and same thing but still could not see it in the Finder window and nothing after clicking 'initialize'.

Opening System Report, and it showed up under the NMVExpress and PCI, generic, but there. So I opened up Disk Utility, clicked Show All under the View Menu tab and there it was! Uninitialled and just waiting to be formatted! Quick format and showed up under Finder.

So, I can say I have a stable operating ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 working in 4,1 flashed to 5,1 running Catalina. It appears as an internal drive.

My speeds are in the mid 750's using Disk Speed Test (BlackMagic) so I know I have to work on getting the lane issue (assumed) figured out as that is well below the theoretical speeds I expected as the Black Magic is capable of 3420 MB/s speeds, just don't know if the cMP is via PCIe 2.0.

I will update if I can get the speeds up.

Send the ASUS M.2 back, it's not compatible with Macs - not even with 2019 Mac Pro. Only the first/upper M.2 slot works and only with 2 PCIe lanes - you will never get past 725~750MB/s with an early-2009 to mid-2012 Mac Pro.

Any other dumb M.2 to PCIe x4 adapter will get the ~1450MB/s possible with a MP5,1. With a switched adapter you can get up to 6000MB/s.

 

[estherau]

I got the sonnet M.2 4x4 PCI3 card with 4 970 evo plus cards, thanks to the advice here. It all works beautifully. I'm really happy with it! Thankyou very much tsialex, and the others who gave me advice.

​

 

[ladeluff]

@tsialex Just to confirm, I installed the ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 and only the first drive shows up.
I knew this was the case, so no high hopes of other outcome. nevertheless, it cheap and does a mediocre speed with one 1TB Kingston drive installed.

On the other hand. I´m running Sequoia Beta and OCLP 1.6.0n on same system (cMP 5.1) with a stock PCIe card w/ Apple NVMe m2 ssd from an old 2013 trashcan, and getting double the speed.
approx 1000m/s

 

[tsialex]

@tsialex Just to confirm, I installed the ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2 and only the first drive shows up.
I knew this was the case, so no high hopes of other outcome. nevertheless, it cheap and does a mediocre speed with one 1TB Kingston drive installed.

Only two PCIe lanes are available for the first (and only working) blade, instead of the expected four.

Waste of money/time.