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MP 7,1 Highpoint vs Sonnet vs Amfeltec
- Thread starter chfilm
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so I only use samsung 970.
I had upgraded my 2014 15" macbookpro to NVMe and thought a 2TB silicon power would be enough,
but in the meantime I've learned a better lesson and exchanged it for a 970evo plus.
with the silicon power i couldn't even view a 5min 4k proresLT file without stopping in between - no problem with the samsung.
I'm coming from a 2013 Mac Pro and a bunch of Pegasus Thunderbolt 1 RAID with 5200 RPM HDD. I just want to move my projects to an internal RAID so that I can keep up with multi TB projects and shut down the spinners. It seems like the EVO plus are the safest bet for reliable speeds, but I'm not even sure if it would matter if I was just using QLC drives like the Intel 660p for my purposes. Even so, the Sabrent drives are relatively cheap, have a five year warranty, and seem to have the support to fulfill an RMA. With all the money I save going that route, I can just by a backup drive or two in case a drive fails.
I’m also eyeing the new Sabrent PCI4 rockets. They seem to be even faster than the 870plus. Is there anything about them that should be a red flag for video editors?
My concern would be that I haven't seen a review whether the new PCIE 4 controller works as well with the PCIE 3 board as the previous generation. I would guess that the Evo Plus is a better option at those prices.
I bought the Amfeltec simply to get max storage with the least use of pcie slots. While they don’t have a web store and charge a lot for shipping, they are responsive and helpful via email.
On a cost standpoint alone, the 4x boards are a better deal and if I knew I would not need the extra slots, I would have probably gone for 2x sonnet boards. From everything I have read/ heard... the quiet design, quality build, and customer support seem to set sonnet above highpoint.
There is a "where to buy" link on the product's web page.
There is a long list. Can poke around with some of the smaller players. Took about four minutes to find that (somewhat ironically) OWC has a "ships in 24-48" hours link. https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet Technologies/FUSSSD4X4E3/
(their own brand cards are "same day" shipping so perhaps the 48 hours is a cross sales opportunity. or maybe folks just aren't looking there. If go through their options for Mac Pro , internal storage . it doesn't pop up as one of the alternatives. So they are not giving it top visibility at all. )
Since it is out of stock in most of the "obvious" places the smaller ones probably won't hold up very long.
Slightly surprising in that with the "ad placement" in the WWDC presentation for the Mac Pro that they didn't make a few more in the span between June and December 2019. Almost certainly they didn't want to make too many, but Apple's SSD pricing is just relatively high and the T2 is 'stuck' on the PCH bus (so upper end throughput is no match). Lots of competitors though so it would be a cloudy projection.
Not sure if this is more Mac Pro sold than they though or more Mac Pros sold with smaller T2 drives than Apple thought.
Turns out my Slate VRS8 won't work unless Full Security is enabled, which means no HIGHPOINT 7101A-1
The PCIe setting requires for the T2 chip to be turned off, and audio will not flow to any DAW.
FIX
I did buy an AMFELTEC Squid.... https://www.amfeltec.com/pci-express-gen-3-carrier-board-for-m-2-ssd/
No drivers, plug and play, and all my DAW's (Logic Pro and Studio One) are working great.
The PCIe setting requires for the T2 chip to be turned off, and audio will not flow to any DAW.
FIX
I did buy an AMFELTEC Squid.... https://www.amfeltec.com/pci-express-gen-3-carrier-board-for-m-2-ssd/
No drivers, plug and play, and all my DAW's (Logic Pro and Studio One) are working great.
You can run the Highpoint card without loading their drivers, so the Squid card shouldn't have been a necessity. You just have to use software RAID and not the Highpoint utility.
Hm. Not sure. I guess i could uninstall the Highpoint drivers. I will give it a shot. Yet, their customer service is abhorrent. I did setup my RAID w disk utility in MacOS.
You don't need the HighPoint drivers - or for that matter, manufacturer supplied drivers for any PLX/Broadcom switch based cards since the Darwin kernel already has full native support since 10.5 at least.
May I ask why did you send back the OWC ?, was it a noise issue ?. I've always been happy with their products, although some items are overpriced, but I'm seriously considering on buying the M4.
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Interesting read that! thanks!
I've been experiencing slow-downs when generating After Effects previews that are read/writing to 2x Sabrent Rockets 1T in R0. I wonder does it relate to cache issues. I might try a couple of 970 Evo Plus when I can