MP All Models Bootable PCI SSD Cards/Drives for Mac Pro (NVMe M.2, U.2, EDSFF E3.S, etc.)

[ldstern10]

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!

Thanks. Will try later this week.

 

[arock]

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, I'd rather not have to experiment at all. But I really don't want to listen to the stock fan.

We still don't have official guidance on how to disable the fan right? How can you be sure that Highpoint will want the shroud on?

 

[jasonmvp]

How can you be sure that Highpoint will want the shroud on?

Because it's acting as a heat sink.

 

[Adult80HD]

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?

The newer PCB boards have a PWM fan, so it should be a simple matter of configuring the driver and Web GUI management software to include a switch for you to disable the fan entirely. There's no way they would condone you removing the shroud, etc. We'll have to wait and see what they release, but my money is on a simple software update with the option to disable the fan.
[automerge]1577894235[/automerge]

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 wonder why they didn't test the HighPoint card as well? It's well-known. Regardless, I can download the same software and give mine a test later this week.

 

[bxs]

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.

Woweeee.... that PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for six M.2 or NGSFF (NF1) PCIe SSD is a beastie.... 👍

 

[natallica]

Does anyone know how much the Amfeltec card costs and best place to buy? Is it direct only?

 

[bxs]

Does anyone know how much the Amfeltec card costs and best place to buy? Is it direct only?

I have a quote request to Amfeltec, and will post back the quoted pricing. I'm sure it will not be cheap.

 

[bxs]

I have a quote request to Amfeltec, and will post back the quoted pricing. I'm sure it will not be cheap.

Amazingly, I received a quote from Amfeltec a few minutes ago....

 

[H. Flower]

All right, so because of the wavering speeds, I'm returning the OWC card.

I'm thinking of the Sonnet Card with (4) 2 TB Evo Plusses, but am worried about the possible firmware upgrade, as I don't have access to Windows.

Has anyone gotten the Sonnet and Evo Plusses to easily work?

 

[bxs]

All right, so because of the wavering speeds, I'm returning the OWC card.

I'm thinking of the Sonnet Card with (4) 2 TB Evo Plusses, but am worried about the possible firmware upgrade, as I don't have access to Windows.

Has anyone gotten the Sonnet and Evo Plusses to easily work?

I firmly believe if you purchase your Samsung blades directly from Samsung any firmware update will already have been done. I have my Sonnet/Samsung unit ready to go when our MP7,1 arrives between Feb 7-13 and sure hope the blades I bought directly from Samsung are good-to-go without needing firmware updating.

Question: If firmware hasn't been installed, how does one tell it hasn't been done ?

 

[Adult80HD]

I firmly believe if you purchase your Samsung blades directly from Samsung any firmware update will already have been done. I have my Sonnet/Samsung unit ready to go when our MP7,1 arrives between Feb 7-13 and sure hope the blades I bought directly from Samsung are good-to-go without needing firmware updating.

Question: If firmware hasn't been installed, how does one tell it hasn't been done ?

I got my Samsung EVO's from Amazon and B&H (Amazon limits you to 3) and all of them were current and didn't need a firmware update. Once you pop the blades into the card and boot it up you can see the NVMe blade details in the Web GUI for HighPoint, I'm not sure if Sonnet has something comparable.

 

[H. Flower]

Thanks guys

 

[jasonmvp]

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 don't yet have my replacement fans since it's a holiday; I think they arrive tomorrow or Friday. In a quest to quiet my machine down, I decided to go all in and remove the shroud and fan. Along with that, I added my little copper heat sinks to the PLX chip. Uh... with a simple BlackMagic disk test, several NVMe drives shot straight to 65*C or so. That's a bit too close to their 70* (per Samsung) top end.

Attempt #2 was to remove the copper heat sink from the PLX chip, then remove the end cap from the shrouds. I then put the shrouds back on the cards and ran another test. After a few BlackMagic beat downs, the drives settled on a happy 46*C or so. Much better.

So:

• Shroud is on.
• Shroud end cap is gone.
• Fan is removed completely.

Seems to be doing OK so far. And the machine is now whisper quiet again.

 

[Adult80HD]

I don't yet have my replacement fans since it's a holiday; I think they arrive tomorrow or Friday. In a quest to quiet my machine down, I decided to go all in and remove the shroud and fan. Along with that, I added my little copper heat sinks to the PLX chip. Uh... with a simple BlackMagic disk test, several NVMe drives shot straight to 65*C or so. That's a bit too close to their 70* (per Samsung) top end.

Attempt #2 was to remove the copper heat sink from the PLX chip, then remove the end cap from the shrouds. I then put the shrouds back on the cards and ran another test. After a few BlackMagic beat downs, the drives settled on a happy 46*C or so. Much better.

So:

• Shroud is on.
• Shroud end cap is gone.
• Fan is removed completely.

Seems to be doing OK so far. And the machine is now whisper quiet again.

I believe someone else did the same as you and also ended up around 46 C on the drives. With the quieter fan running I am at 40-41 C on mine. I'll probably just leave that fan in there and not poke around anymore as it's pretty much silent now anyway.

 

[joevt]

Amazingly, I received a quote from Amfeltec a few minutes ago....

I got the x4 card for $465 USD. So each additional M.2 slot for the x6 card costs $150 USD. Awesome.

 

[arock]

So:

• Shroud is on.
• Shroud end cap is gone.
• Fan is removed completely.

Seems to be doing OK so far. And the machine is now whisper quiet again.

Thanks for doing this testing and reporting the results. Much appreciated.

 

[dpzim]

Happy New Year to us — I just found this diglloyd review of the OWC 4M2 (presumably the newly blessed model) in a 7,1:

2019 Mac Pro: OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD

macperformanceguide.com

 

[eric.blair]

All right, so because of the wavering speeds, I'm returning the OWC card.

I'm thinking of the Sonnet Card with (4) 2 TB Evo Plusses, but am worried about the possible firmware upgrade, as I don't have access to Windows.

Has anyone gotten the Sonnet and Evo Plusses to easily work?

You don’t need Windows.

5 of the 6 EVO Pluses I ordered from Amazon had the latest firmware (checked via ‘System Report’ / NVMe). One of them had a production date of April 2019 and needed the update.

I created a USB boot drive using instructions from Samsung (EVO Plus Firmware Boot). Disabled the boot security etc., but being that the Mac is new I think the boot drive was missing the video card driver or something. Once I finally booted off the drive the video went blank. So I used the Samsung manual for the firmware utility and just did the update blindly by adding a ‘y’ here and an ‘enter’ there, and it worked, hah.

 

[ocre_mac]

ZombiePhysicist, where you able to get the 9300 SSD running in the Mac Pro 7,1? The 9300 is the drive I've settled on but I haven't been able to find any confirmation that the drive will work under Catalina. (I understand that the 9300 will need a PCIe to U.2 adapter or RAID controller.)

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

ZombiePhysicist, where you able to get the 9300 SSD running in the Mac Pro 7,1? The 9300 is the drive I've settled on but I haven't been able to find any confirmation that the drive will work under Catalina. (I understand that the 9300 will need a PCIe to U.2 adapter or RAID controller.)

Not yet. I'm really frustrated. I have the drive on order in 4 different places but none have it in stock. Ship dates Im getting are anywhere form the 7th to the 16th of this month.

I could get their 12TB Max drive, but I really need the extra few TBs to fit all my stuff. And so I wait...

If anyone knows of a place that actually has it in stock let me know. Most places list it as in stock, you order and then magically it goes on backorder. Not sure what the deal is. The drive was readily available on Amazon just couple of months back.

 

[roobarb!]

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.

My thoughts exactly regarding the HighPoint cards. You might be interested in this old post of mine, replacing the fan with a passive copper heatsink. Still use this now in the 5,1. Haven't had any issues at all.

 

[jasonmvp]

Hrm. I just received my fans from Digi-Key. They showed up without connectors on the end of the wires. That's no bueno.

 

[Adult80HD]

Hrm. I just received my fans from Digi-Key. They showed up without connectors on the end of the wires. That's no bueno.

Yeah, it's annoying. I didn't have any handy so I just used a solder iron to remove the leads on the stock fan and soldered the stock cable to the new fan. Piece of cake.

 

[jasonmvp]

Yeah, it's annoying. I didn't have any handy so I just used a solder iron to remove the leads on the stock fan and soldered the stock cable to the new fan. Piece of cake.

Yeah. I have 2 different fans on the HighPoints: a 2-pin and a 3-pin; two different revs I guess. The 2-pin fan is identical to the ones I got from Digi-Key. Same brand, same model, same everything.

So: I'm punting on this whole fan swap thing. Not happening.

 

[Adult80HD]

Yeah. I have 2 different fans on the HighPoints: a 2-pin and a 3-pin; two different revs I guess. The 2-pin fan is identical to the ones I got from Digi-Key. Same brand, same model, same everything.

So: I'm punting on this whole fan swap thing. Not happening.

Interesting, I didn't compare the model/part numbers on mine. They were the same brand, but definitely NOT the same fan based on the noise levels.