MP 1,1-5,1 NVME+cMP3,1: As easy as Accelsior and NvmExpresDxe.efi?

[pullman]

Greetings and salutations

I've just watched Greg Gant's video on the MacFiver card showing how he managed to get a bootable NVME on the 3,1 by injecting the NvmExpresDxe.efi via OCLP.

It made me wonder if I could achieve the same with an OWC Accelsior 1M2 PCIe adapter card, which can be had for little money these days.

If this works, must such a card be in one of the faster PCIe slots or will one of the slower ones do?

Immense thanks
Philip

 

[AlexMaximus]

Greetings and salutations

I've just watched Greg Gant's video on the MacFiver card showing how he managed to get a bootable NVME on the 3,1 by injecting the NvmExpresDxe.efi via OCLP.

It made me wonder if I could achieve the same with an OWC Accelsior 1M2 PCIe adapter card, which can be had for little money these days.

If this works, must such a card be in one of the faster PCIe slots or will one of the slower ones do?

Immense thanks
Philip

Unfortunately, I am only familiar with the MP5.1. However, it might be similar because Greg did a lot of 5.1 videos as well. In the 5.1 PCIe world, the only reason to upgrade from a regular SSD in those SATA bays to NVME is the addition of speed. Because of that everyone uses the fastest PCIe slot #2 in the 5.1. Otherwise the upgrade would just add another SSD with no real speed benefit. So to answer your questions, - if your upgrade is about to get a speedier SSD, you will need to use the fastest slot available.
Now, when it comes to SSD NVME speed, you will have some speed benefit to use a sigle NVME blade in your fastest slot. However, those slots are very old and don't offer that much of a speed boost. Because of that, the industry invented the method of a PCIe bridge card to use the bandwidth of two slots into one to gain double bandwidth with only one slot. Since I have my 5.1 for more than 8 years now, I did use every SSD Generation there is including the older AHCI M2 blades, the predecessor of NVMe. For your MP3.1, most likely your slots are slower compared to the 5.1 slots. If that educated guess is correct, a more expensive dual bridge card may not make much sense because of limiting slot bandwidth in your 3.1. - but a less expensive single slot NVME card may make a lot of sense.
If you can get the OWC Accelsior real cheap on eBay, sure go for it. Otherwise, there are many good single cards you can use. It really comes down to space availability in your tower and the maybe bulky cards above and beneath.
I use two of those high speed dual slot bridge cards and one single card. My fastest boot NVME is in the red dual slot Ablecon card for maximum boot up time. I do sometimes switch around cards and I absolutely feel the speed difference in newer MacOS revisions. It seems to me that newer software apps are programed on the premisses to have certain PCIe bandwidth compared to older MacOS versions.
By the way, My humble respect for your outstanding photography projects on your homepage. Great, stunning pictures that tell a story.

 

[pullman]

Hi Alex

Thank you so much for your kind words about my photography, it means a lot to me.

Thank you also for the detailed information about the NVMEs. I think you're right that the PCI slots in the 3,1 are slower than the 5,1's. I suppose I could call myself a bit of a tweaker in that I enjoy trying to squeeze out the most of the system and find ways around hurdles. The 3,1 has its own challenges due to the design compared to the 4,1 and 5,1 but so far I've managed to make the most of it, which makes me happy as I've had it since 2008 and it's my main machine.

I would be interested in using it for speed, for instance as a fast scratch disk or when editing video. But I'm also simply curious to see if it works and how the computer would run. I actually have a Sonnet Tempo Pro with two Ironwolf drives though I haven't put them in raid 0 yet. Instead I clone the OS between them and have the user folder on them, also cloned across. I bought it years ago just to have more drives and put the OS outside the SATA bays because I have HDDs with photos and other media there.

So such a dual card would probably be an overkill (I didn't even know such cards exist). But another card may be an option. Sadly the OWC Accelsior 1M2 card I saw earlier today has now been sold so I would need to find another one. Do you perhaps have a suggestion?

cheers
philip

Unfortunately, I am only familiar with the MP5.1. However, it might be similar because Greg did a lot of 5.1 videos as well. In the 5.1 PCIe world, the only reason to upgrade from a regular SSD in those SATA bays to NVME is the addition of speed. Because of that everyone uses the fastest PCIe slot #2 in the 5.1. Otherwise the upgrade would just add another SSD with no real speed benefit. So to answer your questions, - if your upgrade is about to get a speedier SSD, you will need to use the fastest slot available.
Now, when it comes to SSD NVME speed, you will have some speed benefit to use a sigle NVME blade in your fastest slot. However, those slots are very old and don't offer that much of a speed boost. Because of that, the industry invented the method of a PCIe bridge card to use the bandwidth of two slots into one to gain double bandwidth with only one slot. Since I have my 5.1 for more than 8 years now, I did use every SSD Generation there is including the older AHCI M2 blades, the predecessor of NVMe. For your MP3.1, most likely your slots are slower compared to the 5.1 slots. If that educated guess is correct, a more expensive dual bridge card may not make much sense because of limiting slot bandwidth in your 3.1. - but a less expensive single slot NVME card may make a lot of sense.
If you can get the OWC Accelsior real cheap on eBay, sure go for it. Otherwise, there are many good single cards you can use. It really comes down to space availability in your tower and the maybe bulky cards above and beneath.
I use two of those high speed dual slot bridge cards and one single card. My fastest boot NVME is in the red dual slot Ablecon card for maximum boot up time. I do sometimes switch around cards and I absolutely feel the speed difference in newer MacOS revisions. It seems to me that newer software apps are programed on the premisses to have certain PCIe bandwidth compared to older MacOS versions.
By the way, My humble respect for your outstanding photography projects on your homepage. Great, stunning pictures that tell a story.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Hi Alex

Thank you so much for your kind words about my photography, it means a lot to me.

Thank you also for the detailed information about the NVMEs. I think you're right that the PCI slots in the 3,1 are slower than the 5,1's. I suppose I could call myself a bit of a tweaker in that I enjoy trying to squeeze out the most of the system and find ways around hurdles. The 3,1 has its own challenges due to the design compared to the 4,1 and 5,1 but so far I've managed to make the most of it, which makes me happy as I've had it since 2008 and it's my main machine.

I would be interested in using it for speed, for instance as a fast scratch disk or when editing video. But I'm also simply curious to see if it works and how the computer would run. I actually have a Sonnet Tempo Pro with two Ironwolf drives though I haven't put them in raid 0 yet. Instead I clone the OS between them and have the user folder on them, also cloned across. I bought it years ago just to have more drives and put the OS outside the SATA bays because I have HDDs with photos and other media there.

So such a dual card would probably be an overkill (I didn't even know such cards exist). But another card may be an option. Sadly the OWC Accelsior 1M2 card I saw earlier today has now been sold so I would need to find another one. Do you perhaps have a suggestion?

cheers
philip

During my upgrades, one law always seems to remain the same and that is this one. Try always to upgrade with parts that are not too distant from the original time frame of the "to-be-upgraded-device". If you have decades between, chances are it will not work or cause issues. This is correct also with older cars, old-timers and other collector items. In your case, it could be very well the case that you will run into problems by using NVME blades. To be honest, I was absolutely surprised when Apple officially allowed NVME blades on the 5.1 just before 2019.
Just in case you want to avoid the injection of the NVME driver thing in OCLP as you mentioned above, you could go for the older standard and most likely have a better compatibility and avoid driver issues down the line.

Here are the basics just in case you want to go this route:

AHCI VS NVMe: Which Is Better? What's Their Difference?

Do you know the difference between AHCI and NVMe SSD? This article focuses on this topic, AHCI VS NVMe, and compares them in compatibility, performance, and other aspects.

www.easeus.com

There are a small number of blades that are still for sale with PCIe adapter in Germany it seems. Just in case you can get one of these new such as this one at your location, it would be worth considering. I still have this blade in operation after 6 years. It is still great and I did go with the largest option at that time (960GB).

Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe AHCI-bootfähig | eBay

Erleben Sie die erstklassige Leistung der Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB SSD, die sich perfekt für sowohl Laptop als auch PC eignet. Diese interne SSD im M.2-Format mit einer Schnittstelle von PCI Express bietet eine beeindruckende Lesegeschwindigkeit von bis zu 1400MB/s, ideal für schnelle...

www.ebay.de

When it comes to the adapters for the NVME route, here are the ones I have or used to have:

Ableconn Technologies

Ableconn Technologies

ableconn.com

Angelbird Wings PX1 PCIe x4 Adapter for PCIe M.2 SSDs [SSAB-001] from WatercoolingUK

Solid State (SSD) >> Angelbird Wings PX1 PCIe x4 Adapter for PCIe M.2 SSDs. Price: £79.21. In Stock

www.watercoolinguk.co.uk

Aqua Computer kryoM.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter für M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD, M-Key mit Passivkühler, Schwarz

Der kryoM.2 Evo ist ein PCIe 3.0/4.0 X4 Adapter für einseitig bestückte m.2/M-Key NGFF PCIe SSD und ist kompatibel zu der Baugröße 2280. funktionen und Eigenschaften des kryoM.2 Evo: - großer Pass...

www.amazon.de

Syba I/O Crest SI-PEX40129 usage?

I have a cMP 2010 5,1 and I ordered a SI-PEX40129 card to solve the 1500MB/s limitation. I already have a Samsung SM951 MZ-HPV5120 SSD mounted on a PCIE 3.0 card running Catalina. The SI-PEX40129 card supports dual SSDs. I would like to have installed a different OS on each, so I can perform...

forums.macrumors.com

( low noise mod 6 years ago on the crest card) still works great till this day

 

[joevt]

If you use the Driver#### method of injecting the .dxe, then the NVMe's can appear in the Apple Startup Manager without OCLP.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-3-1-nvme-support-upgrade-guide-questions.2194878/