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Rtjr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 29, 2024
13
0
Will a 2019 27 inch intel IMac be capable of using a PCIe 5.0 ssd?
 

Rtjr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 29, 2024
13
0
Are you saying the nvme drive will only support PCIe 3.0 and nothing later?
 

Nguyen Duc Hieu

macrumors 68040
Jul 5, 2020
3,016
1,003
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Are you saying the nvme drive will only support PCIe 3.0 and nothing later?

Yes.
I mean that all the hardwards inside iMac 2019 can only support PCIe 3.0 and older devices, including the GPU.
PCIe 4.0 nVME SSDs are backward compatible, which means they will function like an PCIe 3.0 device inside iMac 2019.

If you want to utilize the PCIe 4.0 or later protocol, you will need external devices that support.
 

Rtjr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 29, 2024
13
0
Thanks for the reply. I am about to change the Fusion Drive out with a new nvme ssd and also change the hdd to a ssd. Will changing out the gpu make this computer up to date? PCI’s 5.0 is out now. Would that work in my computer if I changed the gpu or the cpu also?
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,754
4,579
Delaware
You would have to change out the supporting chipset, too.
Other than that mod (highly unlikely to ever happen), the 2019 iMac does not support PCIe 4, let alone PCIe 5.
As mentioned above, PCIe 4 should clock down to PCIe 3. I suppose PCIe 5 will also clock down, but unknown for sure.
(The chipset/bus does not magically upgrade to PCIe 5, just because you plug a newer device into a socket... You get PCIe 3, as that is what the chipset (and the logic board) is designed to support.
You won't get anywhere close to the advertised speed on a PCIe 5 device.
 

Rtjr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 29, 2024
13
0
Thanks. That was some good advice. I appreciate it. Could you tell me what speeds the pcie 3.0 normally produce? Or what top speed has anyone ever got by changing the nvme to a newer one? with pcie 3.0.
 

PaulD-UK

macrumors 6502a
Oct 23, 2009
906
506
A good result for TB3 is 2800MB/s R/W.
That is because of the 40Gb/s TB3 data rate only about 22Gb/s is available for PCIe 3 data transfer.
The rest is reserved for DisplayPort video and various encoding losses.

You generally got better results with Mac OS using an NVMe SSD with DRAM to hold the data allocation database.
More recent SSDs tend to use other methods.
 
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