Very similar to what I am seeing performance wise with the same cards. The replacement fans from DigiKey will make your machine whisper quiet again. Really just a bad fan choice from HighPoint on their cards.
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MP All Models Bootable PCI SSD Cards/Drives for Mac Pro (NVMe M.2, U.2, EDSFF E3.S, etc.)
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Very similar to what I am seeing performance wise with the same cards. The replacement fans from DigiKey will make your machine whisper quiet again. Really just a bad fan choice from HighPoint on their cards.
what about the owc-accelsior-4m2 ? has anyone tried one of These yet ? They do not have fans just the heatsink hence no noise .... but is there really any difference between the two listings (2012 vs 2019) apart from price ? and if you buy the 1tb model what is inside ? surely there is space for 2 more blades ?
eshop.macsales.com
eshop.macsales.com
eshop.macsales.com
OWC 1.0TB Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD for 2010-2012 Mac Pro
OWC's fastest SSD ever with up to 6000MB/s speed for large format video editing, VR/AR/MR environments, extreme gaming, and other high bandwidth needs.
eshop.macsales.com
SSD Upgrade Kits For Apple Mac Pro 2009-2012
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OWC Accelsior 4M2 SSD for Apple Mac Pro
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Reports on another thread here are that they are slower and so far multiple people have reported very spotty results--they will slow way down all of the sudden at times. This with multiple cards. Sounds like they should be avoided at the moment until the issue is resolved. Regardless, you will get faster performance from the HighPoint card at nearly the same price point.
Fans run 100% of the time at 100% speed. There's no option that I have to disable or slow them down other than to get a PWM resistor and do it that way. The ultimate solution will be either no fan, or a different fan. As @Adult80HD says: these are just low-quality impeller fans.
I need help in getting the HP 7101 drivers to work. I have installed the Highpoint 7101 on my Mac Pro 7.1 with 4 Samsung970 Pros. I am trying to set up a Raid 0 array using the Highpoint software. I have installed the drivers and the GUI but the GUI cannot access the adapter. In system info screen, the HP extensions are installed but show as not loaded. I have reinstalled the drivers several times but to no avail. I should mention I have turned off secure boot in recovery mode. I apologize for posting this also in the specific Highpoint thread.
I would appreciate any help in getting this to work. Thanks.
I would appreciate any help in getting this to work. Thanks.
are drivers really needed for the high point? I thought they were bootable and so no drivers are needed to use and boot from it.
Catalina saw the cards and I could have initialized them without loading the drivers, but the drivers are required to run the HighPoint software and create the RAID array on the card itself vs. with Mac OS. You can also see status of the arrays, individual cards and things like NVMe drive temperatures with the HighPoint Web GUI, so it's very useful.
Even after reinstalling them? And I assume you gave consent during the installation where it asks you do so?
You HAVE to disable Secure Boot in order for the drivers to work properly.
Reboot, CMD-R to get into Recovery, and then go to the Security application. Disable Secure Boot completely and reboot. Should be good to go after that.
ETA: I'd check again and just to make sure it's disabled completely.
If you have completely disabled Secure Boot, then it should work. If it's still not working you might need to try what this guy did:
Highpoint 7101A - PCIe 3.0 SSD performance for the cMP
Hi guys, Long time lurker, first time posting as I feel I have something to add now that I bought the card and a couple of Samsung 970 EVO's 1TB. During my setup I was having issues with the driver supplied by Highpoint, the driver was not loading even after allowing it thru the Security and...
forums.macrumors.com
If you have completely disabled Secure Boot, then it should work. If it's still not working you might need to try what this guy did:
Highpoint 7101A - PCIe 3.0 SSD performance for the cMP
Hi guys, Long time lurker, first time posting as I feel I have something to add now that I bought the card and a couple of Samsung 970 EVO's 1TB. During my setup I was having issues with the driver supplied by Highpoint, the driver was not loading even after allowing it thru the Security and...
I doubled checked. Secure boot is off totally.
This is interesting. So when you create a RAID on the card itself, I kind of view this more as a hardware RAID (although not fully I guess). I wonder, you could use this to set up the hardware RAID and then remove the driver, and then the drive should still be bootable and your RAID on the card itself should persist. You could even, I suspect, put this in an old 5,1 Mac Pro, install the driver, set up the RAID, and then all set up, transport this as a finished product to the 7,1.
I could see doing that because I like to keep the number of non apple drivers down to a minimum, and setting up a RAID on the card seems way preferable and likely better performance than either SoftRAID or apple's DiskUtility software RAID. Also, I suspect a RAID setup on the card itself has a decent chance of being bootable.
Would be interesting to test the performance of the card with the RAID setup on the card itself vs SoftRAID vs Apple's DiskUtility raid setup. One would hope that the RAID on the card itself would perform the best, and perhaps closest to the theoretical limit of throughput. Has anyone tried this?
I'm not an expert here, so take what I say with several grains of salt. However: with the shroud removed and your fan disabled, all the PCI-E switch is getting is a little air blown across it from the case fans. You've removed the switch's heat sink, which is the shroud. While the drives may be able to deal with that, I'd bet the switch is getting HOT HOT HOT. You might need to reconsider your approach.
HighPoint's take on the 7,1 Mac assumes you're leaving the shroud on. While it may be a pathetic heat sink, it's still something that's helping pipe the heat away from the chip.
Yes, that seems logical. I am actually thinking of replacing their heatsink/shroud with all copper heatsinks. The thermal pad to "connect" the PLX switch to the heatsink is a fairly thick rubbery pad. It doesn't strike me as something that's got a high coefficient of thermal conductivity. On the other hand, when you remove the front of their shroud, you do create a mini air flow tunnel not unlike the apple MPX cards, although the opening is so small its no doubt not terribly efficient. That said, the two of us that have reported removing the front of the shroud have both reported a net 5 C drop in temperature of the NVMe cards so it definitely helps.
I will likely do the same, in steps. The first two things I intend to do is replace the fans and remove that back plate like you did. But otherwise leave the shroud untouched and let it continue to serve as a (pathetic) heat sink.
The second path: I received some small, square copper heat sinks today that should almost completely cover the PCI-E switch (maybe off by 1mm or so, but the center is the hot spot). They came with sticky backs, but the reports are that after a while, that backing tape dries out and the heat sinks just.. fall off whatever they were on. So, my intent is to pull that backing tape off the heat sinks and mix up some Arctic Silver thermal adhesive and apply it. I also have NVMe heatsinks made of graphene coming as well.
Ultimately if I decide the "quiet" fans aren't quiet enough, or, the solution isn't keeping things cool enough (I doubt the latter will happen), then I'll start overhauling the cooling by adding copper and graphene.
The SSD's are not the only heat source in the card; the PLX switch chip actually generates even more heat.
Check it out, y’all - Bare Feats just published:
2019 Mac Pro with PCIe-based flash RAID
real world speed test results for performance minded Macintosh users
barefeats.com
As I noted in an earlier post, I finally succeeded in getting the HP drivers installed and the raid setup thru the GUI. Can I reenable secure boot in recovery mode without affecting the HP drivers? Hopefully reenabling secure boot won’t disable the drivers.
Very nice. Interesting how only the Amfeltec 6 M.2 card can max the write speed.
Now we just need to raid two, three, or four of those cards together for 24 GB/s, 36 GB/s, or 48 GB/s. How many full 16 lane connections can you get to the CPU? I think 4. Two from the GPU slots and two from the 96 lane switch.
I'm glad you got the drivers installed and running. As for re-enabling Secure Boot, I honestly haven't a clue on that one as I haven't tried. If you do and succeed, please post and let us know!
How does it work- if HP advertises a fanless Operation of their card, is there a simple switch In the card’s driver software where you turn off the fan?
It seems strange that you’d have to manually tinker with the card, installing heat sinks etc no?
It seems strange that you’d have to manually tinker with the card, installing heat sinks etc no?