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

[chfilm]

So x8 6200MB/s is more than enough for 4K / 8k prores video files? That’s all i’ll be using it for.

Seriously that should really be more than enough. Of course it sucks not to have the full bandwidth available but then again, for me personally amount of storage at that speed would be more important than going even more crazy.

 

[ldstern10]

I am awaiting delivery of a new MacPro. I am planning on getting either the Sonnet M.2 or the Highpoint. I would like to be able to boot Windows 10 on a m.2 SSD attached to their PCI adapter. On my current Mac, I boot Windows from an SSD housed in an external TB enclosure without problem. The Sonnet documentation states that Mac OS is bootable but Windows is not. I wonder if this refers to a Windows PC rather than Windows via bootcamp. I also wonder whether Windows would boot via the Highpoint adapter. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Kedbear]

HighPoint SSD7101A-1 PCB revision 2.00 uses a PWM fan with variable rotation that have a lot less fan noise than my v1.01. You can always replace the fan for a less noisier model and install improved heatsinks if you are in a studio and fan noise makes you crazy. People here have parts list already to mod it.

Yep. No thanks. Not buying a near silent Mac Pro then putting a noisy fan inside it, and don’t have expertise for modding. So Sonnet it is.

 

[H. Flower]

Tsialex, I’m thinking (4) 2tb evo plusses at either raid 0 or raid 5.

would the owc card at 6,000mb limit the speed of those , or should I go sonnet which lists 12,000mb?

Thanks for your expertise in this—-

 

[sirio76]

HighPoint SSD7101A-1 PCB revision 2.00 uses a PWM fan with variable rotation that have a lot less fan noise than my v1.01. You can always replace the fan for a less noisier model and install improved heatsinks if you are in a studio and fan noise makes you crazy. People here have parts list already to mod it.

I'm going to buy the Highpoint, can you please show some aftermarket heatsink that fits the card?
I'll install 4x Samsung 970 Pro(1TB or 512GB).

 

[tsialex]

Tsialex, I’m thinking (4) 2tb evo plusses at either raid 0 or raid 5.

would the owc card at 6,000mb limit the speed of those , or should I go sonnet which lists 12,000mb?

Thanks for your expertise in this—-

Just two 970 Pro are enough to saturating a x8 PCIe switch, 970 EVO+ is just a little slower for cached reads, sequential writes are a lot slower, so use our previous tests with 970 Pro as equivalent for reads.
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I'm going to buy the Highpoint, can you please show some aftermarket heatsink that fits the card?
I'll install 4x Samsung 970 Pro(1TB or 512GB).

I’m on my iPhone/out of home now, go to the HighPoint thread and search for @w1z post on making the SSD7101A-1 near silent, it’s on the last pages.

 

[sirio76]

Just two 970 Pro are enough to saturating a x8 PCIe switch, 970 EVO+ is just a little slower for cached reads, sequential writes are a lot slower, so use our previous tests with 970 Pro as equivalent for reads.
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I’m on my iPhone/out of home now, go to the HighPoint thread and search for @w1z post on making the SSD7101A-1 near silent, it’s on the last pages.

Thanks a lot!

 

[jasonmvp]

So Sonnet it is.

The Sonnet has a fan, too. I don't think there's really any getting around that with four NVMe drives running at or near PCI-E 3 x16 speeds. You're going to have to make do with the OWC card at x8, or deal with a fan.

 

[sirio76]

Thank to tsialex I've founded the fan to get less noise on the Highpoint card: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?mpart=BFB0512MA-C&v=603
I don't do video editing often and I don't read many sequantial file in general so I guess I'm not going to generate that much heat. I only need to read single large file as fast as I can, now it may take 40'' or more on a 950MB/s disk and I want to reduce that to only a few seconds while keeping the system virtually silent, I was wandering if ther's the chance that I would be good even whitout a fan by just using some passive cooler on the SSD, if so can somebody suggest some good solution?

 

[tsialex]

Thank to tsialex I've founded the fan to get less noise on the Highpoint card: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?mpart=BFB0512MA-C&v=603
I don't do video editing often and I don't read many sequantial file in general so I guess I'm not going to generate that much heat. I only need to read single large file as fast as I can, now it may take 40'' or more on a 950MB/s disk and I want to reduce that to only a few seconds while keeping the system virtually silent, I was wandering if ther's the chance that I would be good even whitout a fan by just using some passive cooler on the SSD, if so can somebody suggest some good solution?

The Broadcom PEX87xx PCIe switch is rated to 74ºC, so you have to use a big heatsink with it. Several people posted different solutions to make SSD7101A-1 silent or near silent in the past few months, use the search and you will find.

Btw, Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card FUS-SSD-4X4-E3 have a different fan, with different noise, but it's not silent.

 

[Korican100]

is this compatible with MacPro7,1? OWC says its fanless as well.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACC4M204T/

 

[tsialex]

is this compatible with MacPro7,1? OWC says its fanless as well.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACC4M204T/

Yes, but it's a x8 card. Go back two pages here and read about it. #67

 

[Kedbear]

The Sonnet has a fan, too. I don't think there's really any getting around that with four NVMe drives running at or near PCI-E 3 x16 speeds. You're going to have to make do with the OWC card at x8, or deal with a fan.

I’m sorry yes I meant the owc.

 

[Korican100]

Yes, but it's a x8 card. Go back two pages here and read about it. #67

whoops. Just missed it. Cool. so x16 cards allow max throughput for raids.
Highpoint and sonnet are the main contenders so far?

 

[tsialex]

whoops. Just missed it. Cool. so x16 cards allow max throughput for raids.
Highpoint and sonnet are the main contenders so far?

All working cards are listed in the first post, with pros and cons.

Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

 

[H. Flower]

Just two 970 Pro are enough to saturating a x8 PCIe switch, 970 EVO+ is just a little slower for cached reads, sequential writes are a lot slower, so use our previous tests with 970 Pro as equivalent for reads.




Thank you. I need 2TB sticks so i think i need to go with EVO+.

BTW the test thread is incredible. Thanks for all the info.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

whats the general consensus in this thread? cheapest, most reliable pcie nvme setup for macpro 7,1 is?

Two of them im looking at is the OWC accelsior M, and the sonnet w/ some quality nvme sticks.

I'm not sure there is consensus yet. Seems most want to go to a PCI card with M.2 sticks, which have tradeoffs.

I think Im going to try the 7120 using U.2 drives. The 7120 in theory should let you use 4 U.2 drives which would give you over 60TB of SSD storage. Also the 7120 has no fan so it's better wrt noise. Right now the only challenge I see to using 4 drives is finding a double 2.5-to-3.5" adapter bracket that can hold 2 15mm drives. Then you could put 4 of them into the Pegasus J2i bracket.

For myself, I think I'm just going to get a single Micron 9300 pro 15.36 TB drive, and use that for now as is. Then plug in a 16TB Seagate Exos spinner for time machine on it. both will fit comfortably in the J2i bracket. The Micron runs at 3500MB/sec read/write, so for now, it's adequate speed (faster than Apple's built in SSDs). And this gives me the option to expand to 3 more of those drives for some crazy performance. IMO, it's the least compromised of all the options.

The Micron 9300 Pro goes for about $2400. You're going to spend more than that for 6 2TB M.2 NVMe sticks even and still have less storage even with the Squid card (although you will likely have 4x the throughput--not sure if any of the 4stick PCI cards are bootable when in RAID though)...

 

[H. Flower]

Seriously that should really be more than enough. Of course it sucks not to have the full bandwidth available but then again, for me personally amount of storage at that speed would be more important than going even more crazy.

Yeah , I was going to get the sonnet x8 with Samsung evo plus blades for total of 2200, but at last minute decided to save 800 bucks and just go with OWC x8, which should be more than fine for high res video editing and Gfx. maybe upgrade to 16x down the line, after this spending frenzy is over .

 

[chfilm]

Yeah , I was going to get the sonnet x8 with Samsung evo plus blades for total of 2200, but at last minute decided to save 800 bucks and just go with OWC x8, which should be more than fine for high res video editing and Gfx. maybe upgrade to 16x down the line, after this spending frenzy is over .

spending frenzy 🤑 I'd rather save some buchs towards the XDR

 

[jasonmvp]

Another interesting point about the OWC 4M2: you can't purchase an empty one. They have four configurations available, all pre-populated with NVMe drives that you may or may not want. I've contacted them directly and they said they have no plans to offer a drive-less version of the card.

IMHO, that pretty much disqualifies it as a potential.

 

[moab1]

I'm not sure there is consensus yet. Seems most want to go to a PCI card with M.2 sticks, which have tradeoffs.

I think Im going to try the 7120 using U.2 drives. The 7120 in theory should let you use 4 U.2 drives which would give you over 60TB of SSD storage. Also the 7120 has no fan so it's better wrt noise. Right now the only challenge I see to using 4 drives is finding a double 2.5-to-3.5" adapter bracket that can hold 2 15mm drives. Then you could put 4 of them into the Pegasus J2i bracket.

For myself, I think I'm just going to get a single Micron 9300 pro 15.36 TB drive, and use that for now as is. Then plug in a 16TB Seagate Exos spinner for time machine on it. both will fit comfortably in the J2i bracket. The Micron runs at 3500MB/sec read/write, so for now, it's adequate speed (faster than Apple's built in SSDs). And this gives me the option to expand to 3 more of those drives for some crazy performance. IMO, it's the least compromised of all the options.

The Micron 9300 Pro goes for about $2400. You're going to spend more than that for 6 2TB M.2 NVMe sticks even and still have less storage even with the Squid card (although you will likely have 4x the throughput--not sure if any of the 4stick PCI cards are bootable when in RAID though)...

Do you have a list of all parts you need to make this solution work??

 

[Korican100]

Another interesting point about the OWC 4M2: you can't purchase an empty one. They have four configurations available, all pre-populated with NVMe drives that you may or may not want. I've contacted them directly and they said they have no plans to offer a drive-less version of the card.

IMHO, that pretty much disqualifies it as a potential.

I wonder if that is the trade off to allow it to be fanless

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Do you have a list of all parts you need to make this solution work??

this post (earlier I this thread) and couple posts after it...

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-2019-ncmp-7-1-mac-pro.2189591/post-28067731

 

[sugarfreemedia]

Another interesting point about the OWC 4M2: you can't purchase an empty one. They have four configurations available, all pre-populated with NVMe drives that you may or may not want. I've contacted them directly and they said they have no plans to offer a drive-less version of the card.

IMHO, that pretty much disqualifies it as a potential.

I consider this a good thing. You're buying a ready to use plug-in card, with matched components. Even with third-party NVMe blades you wouldn't go beyond 6GB/s on a x8 card anyway.

 

[jasonmvp]

I consider this a good thing. You're buying a ready to use plug-in card, with matched components. Even with third-party NVMe blades you wouldn't go beyond 6GB/s on a x8 card anyway.

Sure; but what if you want something larger than what they offer? 4TB NVMe drives do exist...