PCIE M.2 NVMe on MacPro

[whgmkeller]

I just installed a new SM951 AHCI 256 M2 on an Angelbird PX1, to use as bootdisk for my clean Mojave install. It's really really fast !!! Glad I bothered to search for a SM951 source - got it brand-new from Australia

Willem

 

[AAGSmac]

Hello and good morning. Using the angel bird wing px 1 with a 970 evo nvme as a boot drive, Is it possible/ bootable with a Boot Rom of 140.0.0.0 in mac os Mojave?

 

[h9826790]

Hello and good morning. Using the angel bird wing px 1 with a 970 evo nvme as a boot drive, Is it possible/ bootable with a Boot Rom of 140.0.0.0 in mac os Mojave?

Possible

 

[AAGSmac]

Possible

Thanks. Bought the PX1 and hopefully everything will go well.

 

[crjackson2134]

I purchased another NVMe 1TB blade for my High Point SSD7101A carrier. You can add this to the compatibility list...

It's an addlink S70 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280

So far I'm pleased, it has a 5 Yr warranty and other details can be seen on the link above.

Here are a few screenshots...

 

[Mac_User 0101]

I purchased another NVMe 1TB blade for my High Point SSD7101A carrier. You can add this to the compatibility list...

It's an addlink S70 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280

So far I'm pleased, it has a 5 Yr warranty and other details can be seen on the link above.

Here are a few screenshots...
View attachment 825999 View attachment 826000 View attachment 826001

The benchmarks you posted of the addlink NVMe looks to me as if it's doing what's advertised. I'd like to know if you found any weaknesses in performance when stressing the iops. Please follow up when you can. I'm considering purchasing 2 (2TB) 970 Evo but if these addlink perform in the ballpark I can save some serious cash.

 

[crjackson2134]

The benchmarks you posted of the addlink NVMe looks to me as if it's doing what's advertised. I'd like to know if you found any weaknesses in performance when stressing the iops. Please follow up when you can. I'm considering purchasing 2 (2TB) 970 Evo but if these addlink perform in the ballpark I can save some serious cash.

I haven’t noticed any weaknesses... I’m very happy with the drive. It’s used primarily as a clone backup of my 970 Pro. I usually switch off about 1/2 the time making it daily driver, and it performs just as well as the Pro in my case, but realize I don’t really stress my system.

I think it’s at least on par with the EVO, it has a 5yr Warranty and high TBW rating.

 

[Mac_User 0101]

I haven’t noticed any weaknesses... I’m very happy with the drive. It’s used primarily as a clone backup of my 970 Pro. I usually switch off about 1/2 the time making it daily driver, and it performs just as well as the Pro in my case, but realize I don’t really stress my system.

I think it’s at least on par with the EVO, it has a 5yr Warranty and high TBW rating.

Thank you so much, I'm pretty much sold. With the money I can save on two of them, I could buy a third drive.

 

[crjackson2134]

Thank you so much, I'm pretty much sold. With the money I can save on two of them, I could buy a third drive.

Just realize that if you’re using a passthrough PCIe adapter rather than a switched adapter, your speeds will be less than mine.

 

[Mac_User 0101]

Just realize that if you’re using a passthrough PCIe adapter rather than a switched adapter, your speeds will be less than mine.

Well noted. Currently using a x16 Squid (gen 2) but looking to upgrade possibly to a 7101A like yourself. If I do, I'll have to come up with a solution for that noisy fan because I can't have that in my workstation. (I think I read on this forum you found a quieter fan which I'll reference if I go that route). I may hold out for a bit and live with the Squid. I've been in touch with Sonnet and they may have something in the works.

 

[crjackson2134]

No, that wasn’t me. Mine isn’t particularly noisy but I actually do have a hearing loss. That may or may not be the reason it does’t present to me.

 

[Earl Urley]

All these SSD's are essentially the same construction. They have the Phison E12 controller and Toshiba 3D NAND. This combo has been favorably compared in performance as the equivalent of the Samsung 970 Pro.

Inland Premium ($135 for 1 TB at MicroCenter)
MyDigital BPX Pro
Sabrent Rocket
Silicon Power 34A80
Corsair Force Series MP510
addlink S70
Seagate Firecuda 510 (not shipping yet)
Gigabye Aorus
Patriot Viper VPN100
HIKVision C2000
Galax Hall of Fame
DigiFast Ace
KingMax Zeus P3480

My Inland works well in a 2015 15-inch rMBP and a 2013 13-inch rMBP as well as on my MP 5,1 with a kryo PCIe carrier.

Gotta pick up that IOCrest soon.

 

[Sharky II]

Hi guys, sorry for the 'noob' question:

I currently have a 4,1 -> 5,1 12-core Mac Pro with an SM951 AHCI 256GB on a Lycom DT-120 as my boot drive, the rest of my drives are traditional 7,200rpm drives. I'm really struggling running large Logic Pro projects @ 96KHz and so I'm looking for a larger, fast data drive and so I'm fine with a 512GB or 1TB NVMe (or AHCI) drive. I have 3 PCI devices:

Slot 1: Old ATI card
Slot 2: empty
Slot 3: Lycom DT-120
Slot 4: SSL MadiXtreme 64 audio card

My question is with regards to the slot number - I got crappy speeds in slot 2 with my current boot drive (currently getting 1250MB write and 1350MB read). Do I have to accept that if I purchase another Lycom DT-120 and a 512GB+ drive, that it will have relatively 'poor' performance compared to if it were in slot 2?

And what about slot 4?

I'm sure I've read this information before, but I couldn't find it

Thanks!

Ed

 

[tsialex]

Hi guys, sorry for the 'noob' question:

I currently have a 4,1 -> 5,1 12-core Mac Pro with an SM951 AHCI 256GB on a Lycom DT-120 as my boot drive, the rest of my drives are traditional 7,200rpm drives. I'm really struggling running large Logic Pro projects @ 96KHz and so I'm looking for a larger, fast data drive and so I'm fine with a 512GB or 1TB NVMe (or AHCI) drive. I have 3 PCI devices:

Slot 1: Old ATI card
Slot 2: empty
Slot 3: Lycom DT-120
Slot 4: SSL MadiXtreme 64 audio card

My question is with regards to the slot number - I got crappy speeds in slot 2 with my current boot drive. Do I have to accept that if I purchase another Lycom DT-120 and a 512GB+ drive, that it will have relatively 'poor' performance compared to if it were in slot 2?

And what about slot 4?

I'm sure I've read this information before, but I couldn't find it

Thanks!

Ed

You need to upgrade to 1xx.0.0.0.0 firmwares, 138.0.0.0.0 will make Slot-2 work at 5GT/s for everything and not only Mac Edition GPUs and 140.0.0.0.0 will make your Mac Pro boot from NVMe M.2 blades natively.

After you do all firmware upgrades, all Mac Pro slots will work as 5GT/s. Read the first post of this thread to upgrade your Mac Pro firmware: MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave

 

[avatar1349]

ACHI is bootable, NVMe is not.

I got a Mac Pro with bootROM 140.0.0.0.0 and a NVMe Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB and got this one bootable thru SuperDuper. Make sure, if you use SuperDuper, that your NVMe is formatted to APFS cuz HFS+ doesn't seems to work (at least in my case) I was also able to have my NVMe beeing seen as a internal drive instead of external drive

 

[h9826790]

I got a Mac Pro with bootROM 140.0.0.0.0 and a NVMe Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB and got this one bootable thru SuperDuper. Make sure, if you use SuperDuper, that your NVMe is formatted to APFS cuz HFS+ doesn't seems to work (at least in my case) I was also able to have my NVMe beeing seen as a internal drive instead of external drive

140.0.0.0.0 wasn't exist when I made that reply.

Anyway, your Evo Plus work flawlessly?

Which adaptor? What speed you get?

 

[flowrider]

I got a Mac Pro with bootROM 140.0.0.0.0 and a NVMe Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB

There have been many posts from folks on this forum who have not been getting reliable service from the Samsung Evo Plus. The Plus version shows many kernel panics. The regular Evo and Pro work fine however. This has been verified on many other sites, here's one example:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...work-spoiler-alert-no-they-dont.270757/page-6

It's even been mentioned on Amazon and Samsung has confirmed the issue.

I'd bee very surprised if your Evo Plus works without issues.

And yes, as h9826790 posted above, Boot ROM 140.0.0.0.0 enabled boot with an NVMe SSD on the cMP 5.1. There is now a later Boot ROM 141.0.0.0.0.

Lou

 

[avatar1349]

First of all the Evo 970 Plus SSD doesn't work all the time flawlessly.
The adapter I'm using is a x4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe from Startech; I guess, due to the restrictions of PCI slot the SSD has its limitations (I use PCI slot 4) Based upon my bootrom (140.0.0.0.0) I can get the NVME bootable.
To be quiet honest I would have expected more, but then again the speed is at least 3x the speed of my Samsung 860 SSD
In general I'm quiet satisfied with the performance, but it could be better.
I got some screenshots to give you an idea

 

[Messy]

Hmmm... any reason i'm now only using 2 lanes?

 

[alphaod]

I know this thread is mostly for the classic Mac Pro, but in my 2013 Mac Pro my Samsung 970 EVO (2TB) only reaches at most 12xx/14xx write/read speed and it's running x4-5GT/s links.

 

[h9826790]

I know this thread is mostly for the classic Mac Pro, but in my 2013 Mac Pro my Samsung 970 EVO (2TB) only reaches at most 12xx/14xx write/read speed and it's running x4-5GT/s links.

That sounds perfectly normal to me.

nMP gives PCIe 2.0 x4 lane to the SSD slot. So, the bandwidth is 2000MB/s.

With 20% overhead, that real world max should be ~1600MB/s.

And 12xx / 14xx MB/s seems very normal for a x4 5GT/s connection.
[doublepost=1555427448][/doublepost]

Hmmm... any reason i'm now only using 2 lanes?

Your adaptor?

 

[Messy]

That sounds perfectly normal to me.

nMP gives PCIe 2.0 x4 lane to the SSD slot. So, the bandwidth is 2000MB/s.

With 20% overhead, that real world max should be ~1600MB/s.

And 12xx / 14xx MB/s seems very normal for a x4 5GT/s connection.
[doublepost=1555427448][/doublepost]

You adaptor?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CWWAENG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Been running fine at x4, but now running at x2.

 

[h9826790]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CWWAENG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Been running fine at x4, but now running at x2.

But the original SSD can still run at x4?

 

[Messy]

But the original SSD can still run at x4?

Who knows, don't have the original SSD.

This was running at X4 and now running at X2.

 

[h9826790]

Who knows, don't have the original SSD.

This was running at X4 and now running at X2.

Then it's hard to tell if the logic board / socket / adaptor / SSD is the faulty part without swap test.