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dang these ssds are confusing

A

aslowdodge

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 12, 2012
94
9
I posted this in another thread I started but I don't thnk many saw it so I'm starting a new thread now.
I currently have a 512gb toshiba ssd in Bay 1 of my 2009 Mac pro which I flashed to 5.1. My understanding is it is bottle necked at 3gb.

So I'm looking at
1. https://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120...00MYCQP38/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 pcie adapter to go with
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C8Y31G2/ref=twister_B07CY4L25D?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 samsung 512bg 970pro ssd

or

this samsung ssd https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-512GB-V-NAND-Solid-MZ-76P512BW/dp/B07836C6YV
with this pcie adaptor that can hold 2 of them
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0096P62G6/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Is one preferable over the other as far as actual drives or type or adapter? Is one faster and which PCIe slot does it need to be in?
 
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You will likely not be able to hit the max speed with the 970PRO NVMe in Lycom DT120, so may be overkill. The regular 970 EVO is working great for me with Angelbird Wings PX1 adapter.

This is all NVMe. You need to be on firmware 140.0.0.0.0 for this to be bootable system drive.

Your second links are SATA SSDs. They are not as fast as NVMe, but fine for a lot of people. Was and have been using 840/850/860's with Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 and Velcity Duo X2 as PCIe adapter for them for years. Biggest benefit - can easily and quickly be swapped into SATA bays when needed.
 
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Okay let me see if I understand.The max on the PCIe is about 1500mbs

With combo 2 I am using SATA SSDs which will max out about 500mbs which is what the drives specify so they will not be bottle necked with this set up.

Combo 1 The Blade SSD maxes out at at 3,500mbs, but will be stuck at 1500mbs because of the PCIe.

Still the prices for either are close enough that even though the blade is is severly handicapped, it's still going to be tripple the Sata SSD speed. Am I understanding this correctly?
 
aslowdodge said:
Okay let me see if I understand.The max on the PCIe is about 1500mbs

With combo 2 I am using SATA SSDs which will max out about 500mbs which is what the drives specify so they will not be bottle necked with this set up.

Combo 1 The Blade SSD maxes out at at 3,500mbs, but will be stuck at 1500mbs because of the PCIe.
Click to expand...
Yes, but if you really need more speed, you can get a PCIe card with a PCIe 3.0 switch, this cards can get over the 1500MB/s limitation but the cheapest one is around $250 (IOCrest), with the best ones around $450 or more (HighPoint SSD7101A/SSD7102 and Amfeltec Squid 3.0).

Read the Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI.

Still the prices for either are close enough that even though the blade is is severly handicapped, it's still going to be tripple the Sata SSD speed. Am I understanding this correctly?
Click to expand...
With standard adapters, PCIe 2.0 limits blade speeds at 1500MB/s. So, yes you are understanding it correctly.
 
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I just purchased the highpoint and 970 evo, I have now sent them back after serious testing because for my use general desktop and logic pro X there was very little difference in real world speed between them and my sata ssd, yes they are great for large file sizes but for booting and app launching there was very little noticeable difference.
 
Ok being that I mostly use photoshop, lightroom, and Painter and currently have 32gb of ram, do I even need more speed? I will be going from the ssd in the hard drive bay probably at what, 250mbs? to a blade ssd at almost 1500 mbs. Maybe anything beyond 1500 mbs is overkill for me?
 
aslowdodge said:
Ok being that I mostly use photoshop, lightroom, and Painter and currently have 32gb of ram, do I even need more speed? I will be going from the ssd in the hard drive bay probably at what, 250mbs? to a blade ssd at almost 1500 mbs. Maybe anything beyond 1500 mbs is overkill for me?
Click to expand...
Buy a cheap adaptor now or a better one like Angelbird Wings PX1, use it, then down the road you think about this, you are overthinking this a little.
 
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I'm a heavy Adobe user. Entire machine is filled with SSDs. I notice a significant difference in application launch speed, especially with plugin heavy applications like After Effects, Premiere, and Media Encoder. I went from Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 with EVO 850 (or 860) to PX1 with 970 EVO for boot drive.
 
bsbeamer said:
I'm a heavy Adobe user. Entire machine is filled with SSDs. I notice a significant difference in application launch speed, especially with plugin heavy applications like After Effects, Premiere, and Media Encoder. I went from Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 with EVO 850 (or 860) to PX1 with 970 EVO for boot drive.
Click to expand...
Just one thing of note, if you are using it for work, spend a little more and buy a 970Pro, don’t depend your livelihood into a EVO/TLC/QLC drive. I personally had bad experiences with TLC/QLC drives and I never will buy one again for my main drive, only for storage/backup/scratch disk. A lot of Pro people will say the same.
 
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Whatever PCIe adapter the OP buys, he must be sure it has a heatsink or heatsink and a fan. The PX1 does, the DT120 does not!

NVME SSDs tend to run hot.

Lou
 
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tsialex said:
Just one thing of note, if you are using it for work, spend a little more and buy a 970Pro, don’t depend your livelihood into a EVO/TLC/QLC drive. I personally had bad experiences with TLC/QLC drives and I never will buy one again for my main drive, only for storage/backup/scratch disk. A lot of Pro people will say the same.
Click to expand...

Clone all drives to a backup, then to another backup. Unless it's backed up twice it's not really backed up. Carbon Copy Cloner makes this way too easy to not update at least one clone set daily.
 
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The PX1 has been fantastic. Build quality is excellent. The assembly instructions are actually useful and should be very easy to follow for almost anyone.

It's in my 5,1 with all slots being occupied. Even fits better than the Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 did. Will be less of an issue with the Sapphire Pulse RX580 8GB when I'm eventually on Mojave full time. See this thread to see what I mean:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...580-8gb-spacer-wedge-for-pcie-slot-2.2134562/
 
tsialex said:
Buy a cheap adaptor now or a better one like Angelbird Wings PX1, use it, then down the road you think about this, you are overthinking this a little.
Click to expand...
I think I'll do the angelbird wings. Yeah overthinking has been a habit of mine
 
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does anybody know a NVME or AHCI adapter card that comes with esata port?
something like the owc mercury accelsior e2 but in fast? doesn't have to be a raid either.
 
flygbuss said:
does anybody know a NVME or AHCI adapter card that comes with esata port?
something like the owc mercury accelsior e2 but in fast? doesn't have to be a raid either.
Click to expand...
PCIe adaptors for NVMe and AHCI blades don’t have SATA support, they just provide power and convert the PCIe signals to the M2 connector. So no SATA support.

Some Chinese manufacturers have cards that have a SATA connector for you to use one SATA port from the motherboard to connect old M2 SATA blades and one PCIe M2 slot for NVMe and AHCI blades. This cards are know to not work correctly with Mac Pro, none that I know of have a eSATA port. This is one example of this type of card https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-SST-ECM20-Adapter-ECM20/dp/B01798WOJ0/

There is a M2 adapter card with SATA controller on board that don’t need a motherboard SATA cable, but no one tested if it is MP5,1 compatible, since is only SATA3 and only compatible with M2 SATA blades. One version of this card have eSATA, but don’t have NVMe/AHCI support. This one you can use an eSATA bracket https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-NGFF-RAID-Controller-Ports/dp/B01C7FRZUS/ but you can't use NVMe/AHCI blades.
 
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Thank you!

So the speed for the installed m2 blade would be limited to sata speed? Something around 500mb/s?

I just asked because I don’t have any free pci/e slots and thought there might be a solution.

But what you say makes absolutely sense and I just didn’t think about the fact that esata requires of course sata..
 
flygbuss said:
Thank you!

So the speed for the installed m2 blade would be limited to sata speed? Something around 500mb/s?

I just asked because I don’t have any free pci/e slots and thought there might be a solution.

But what you say makes absolutely sense and I just didn’t think about the fact that esata requires of course sata..
Click to expand...
M2 SATA blades are old ones, usually removed from notebooks from 4 or more years ago. There is not a new M2 SATA blade for some years. Apple last used one with early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro.

M2 is a format. M2 format has SATA, the oldest one, AHCI and NVMe blades.
  • SATA and AHCI/NVMe blades are not compatible, they only have the same format, but totally different protocols and signals. They don't even fit into the same connector.
  • AHCI and NVMe blades are compatible.
 
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tsialex said:
M2 SATA blades are old ones, usually removed from notebooks from 4 or more years ago. There is not a new M2 SATA blade for some years. Apple last used one with early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro.

M2 is a format. M2 format has SATA, the oldest one, AHCI and NVMe blades.
  • SATA and AHCI/NVMe blades are not compatible, they only have the same format, but totally different protocols and signals. They don't even fit into the same connector.
  • AHCI and NVMe blades are compatible.
Click to expand...

AHCI and SATA are effectively the same, NVMe is different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host controllers in a non-implementation-specific manner in its motherboard chipsets.
Click to expand...
 
AidenShaw said:
AHCI and SATA are effectively the same, NVMe is different.
Click to expand...

Only the high level SOFTWARE protocol implementation is the same for SATA and AHCI M2 blades. Hardware is totally different between SATA and AHCI blades.

AHCI and NVMe signals and connections, HARDWARE, are the same, both are PCIe and are interchangeable.

[doublepost=1545521867][/doublepost]
flygbuss said:
what speed can I expect from such a m2 blade?
Click to expand...
Same as SATAIII, since it's a SATA drive into the M2 format. Today you won't find a new SATA M2 blade, just pulls.
 
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