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Macpro mid2010 ssd upgrade question

J

jagaloon

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 2, 2014
31
1
NH
Hi all,

I am the original owner of a mid 2010 mac pro which I have upgraded to a 3.33Ghz 6-core cpu but have done little else to it and I have recently gotten the urge to upgrade my current system for responsiveness and speed.

Primarily I am using my machine for web development, graphic design, audio production with logic and a program called Maschine with Komplete Ultimate 9 and Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5.

I have all of my 4 SATA bays full but with storage to spare, each with a 1TB spinner. Last night I came across a card, Kingston Hyper X Predator 480 that would allow for some fast read/write speeds and after researching possibly putting in a Samsung EVO 850 in or something from OWC and getting outright confused it seemed like a no brainer to me and the only real option anyways.

My question which came about from second guessing, is that perhaps the 480 is overkill but the write speeds are touted as being faster than the 240gb model which is what has me somewhat confused if I just overbought for the sake of faster write speeds and is that really worth it?

240GB — 1400MB/s Read and 600MB/s Write
480GB — 1400MB/s Read and 1000MB/s Write

I realize that "worth it" is very subjective however if I can get faster responsiveness from my unit including not having to balance out what I put on my main HDD and buy myself a few more years out of my current rig the I suppose then it would be "worth it".

I'm curious as to what other macpro users are using and what their current configs are?
 
any SSD will be much much faster than a HD, iv got a evo 850 250gb seems fine (it's lose below my dvd drive).
im not shore if the Kingston Hyper X Predator 480 will give you something worth the price hike (or if it will work some one else will have to chime in on if that card works).

i think cards like that are used more for multi cam video editing ?

depends on you i gess.
 
There's a good likelihood that you would never notice the difference in the write speeds of the two. However, the Kingston that you found is one of the last of a dying breed of AHCI M.2 SSDs. The industry has shifted to NVMe M.2 SSDs which do not work natively with macOS. It will only get increasingly difficult to find these types of SSDs in the future. Personally, I would just keep it and enjoy the performance it will give you even if it may be a bit of overkill right now.
 
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Yes, up to a point the larger capacity SSD's have faster top write speeds than the smaller ones, generally due to higher internal parallelism.

I replaced my original drives with a 1 TB SATA SSD (from Mushkin) and a couple of WD Black spinners. I need the latter for comparative performance tests or I'd have gone all SSD. Running an SSD at SATA II speeds doesn't sound like much but it was enough to keep me happy. At some point I might install a PCIe SSD but I'm in no rush. If you are working with larger files then you might want to go with the Kingston. As pastrychef mentioned, the Kingston is AHCI which will get harder to find, so maybe you should just jump in now. (In my case the PCIe SSD would most likely be used as a linux fs so AHCI vs NVMe is not as much of a concern.)
 
At this point as I have found out that I'm somewhat lucky to have an order in for the older AHCI M.2 SSD so I will let that order stand :) Thanks for the input!
 
I've gone a fair distance towards blowing my cMP 4,1>5,1 out (same Hexa-core as yours by the looks), including a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for boot and apps in an Accelsior S PCIe SATA III adapter, and a Fusion Drive created with a Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe coupled with a WD Black Caviar 2TB for my User data (plus other spinners for backup), and I'm very pleased with how fast this machine is.

Yes, the NVMe FD is overkill, but those little millisecond-faster read/writes do make for a more snappier experience. If I was doing more than an occasional Motion/FCPX/AE/PP then I'd be even happier as I'd realise even more of that power and speed.
 
JedNZ said:
I've gone a fair distance towards blowing my cMP 4,1>5,1 out (same Hexa-core as yours by the looks), including a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for boot and apps in an Accelsior S PCIe SATA III adapter, and a Fusion Drive created with a Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe coupled with a WD Black Caviar 2TB for my User data (plus other spinners for backup), and I'm very pleased with how fast this machine is.

Yes, the NVMe FD is overkill, but those little millisecond-faster read/writes do make for a more snappier experience. If I was doing more than an occasional Motion/FCPX/AE/PP then I'd be even happier as I'd realise even more of that power and speed.
Click to expand...

When using the Accelsior card do you need to provide separate power to the SSD or the card provides the power for the SSD?
 
The Accelsior S PCIe SATA III card provides SATA III read/write speeds. So SATA II theoretical maximum is 3 Gbps (375 MB/s -- you divide Gbps by 8 to get MB/s) and SATA III is 6Gbps (750 MB/s). And as macuser covers off, no power (it gets it through the PCIe slot).

The best results I've had with the BlackMagic test shows speeds up to 570 MB/s - however, I seldom ever see read/write speeds over 400 MB/s, which indicates (as a boot disk - all my User data is on the NVMe FD) macOS doesn't need the full speed of SATA III for what I use it for.

You might think then that SATA III is overkill: I would argue it isn't (that it's well worth it). SSD's do a spectacular job of accessing all those small 4Kb files - no spinning up and positioning the read/write heads like a spinner HDD has to. Simply put, SSD's have given my cMP's an extra life. I highly recommend the Samsung 850 EVO (PRO if you can stretch your money that far) as they provide stellar performance. I've bought two Crucial SSD's in the past (a MX200 240GB, and a MX300 750GB), and both have failed (3 months and 3 days respectively), although your experience may differ.
 
Yes - works fine on my cMP. And fast. Not sure how much faster (if any) than if you had the SSD sitting in a direct connect bay (SATA II). If you go for a M.2 card in a PCIe adapter then you have to get a AHCI version as they will boot. Mine is a NVMe, but it's only for data so I don't need it to boot.

I got my Accelsior S SATA III card from OWC. Had to send it back due to a fault, but they were great to deal with, and haven't had any issues with the replacement. Worth the upgrade? Hmm, I think so. Again, I don't see huge read/write numbers.
 
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