PCIE M.2 NVMe on MacPro

[tsialex]

Thank you for a deeper explanation, it helps my understanding. I will keep my card, but just to be better settled in that, would a gen 3 from Amfeltec perform better, speedwise or the same, 1500MB/sec?
I guess that I have read others “higher” results on this forum as generic, like that would be possible for me too.
thank you for your patience.

Amfeltec Squid v3.0 or any of the HighPoint SSD7xxx cards have a x16 PCIe v3.0 switch that will convert x16 v2.0 into x4 v3.0.

So, a PCIe 3.0 x16 switched card installed in a Mac Pro will have single blade throughput limited to the x4 PCIe v3.0, ceiling is (x4 * 985MB/s) 3940MB/s, but real life throughput is around 3300MB/s.

 

[GreyT-Drumming]

Amfeltec Squid v3.0 or any of the HighPoint SSD7xxx cards have a x16 PCIe v3.0 switch that will convert x16 v2.0 into x4 v3.0.

So, a PCIe 3.0 x16 switched card installed in a Mac Pro will have single blade throughput limited to the x4 PCIe v3.0, ceiling is (x4 * 985MB/s) 3940MB/s, but real life throughput is around 3300MB/s.

Ahaa, so that would explain the “12GB/sec“ they show Via the ATTO result, since that is for 4 blades combined?

 

[tsialex]

Ahaa, so that would explain the “12GB/sec“ they show Via the ATTO result, since that is for 4 blades combined?

I'm not sure where you can get 12GB/sec. x16 PCIe v3.0 will be 16x * 984MB/s, real life around 12800 to 13200 MB/s

A x16 PCIe v3.0 switch when installed in a Mac Pro 5,1 will be limited to the real life throughput of x16 v2.0, around 6200MB/s total throughput.

A RAID-0 of just two top performance M.2 blades, like 970PRO, will hit the Mac Pro PCIe x16 v2.0 total throughput - when using a card that has x16 PCIe v3.0 switch.

 

[GreyT-Drumming]

I got curious, and I moved the 'Mojave' blade from the Amfeltec to a simple one-blade card (StarTech.com X4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe SSD, selling for about $30 here). Keeping both cards I now get ATTO result og reads at 1.62 GB/s for both cards, as you predicted, and I can now see I have a combined result at 3.3GB/sec. This has not been intentional but it sure is a more economic solution, than going for the Amfeltech gen 3 at a much higher price than the gen 2.
So now I feel a bit wiser, thank you, and quite content with the performance of my MacPro

 

[KingCachapa]

what's up! I finally got around to getting a Squid (x4 m2 slots Gen3) from Amfeltec (= Installed with no issues, but I have a couple curious questions:

• Does this thing care which m2 slot I plug my NVMe drive into if I'm only using 1 slot for now? The plan obviously is to work up to having all 4 slots filled but you know.... coronie times and this was already a considerable splurge.

• Is the following normal? When running tests with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test (default settings) my numbers have a pretty big range. For example read speed on the NVMe, on which Mojave is running, ranged from 1600 MB/s on one run, and to 2100+ MB/s on another run.
Same with write speed, although that one has been a little more consistent around the 2700/2800 MB/s.

The screenshots below were taken once the test stopped running (the needles stopped moving)

thanks in advance

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

 

[GreyT-Drumming]

I have a MacPro 5.1 running Mojave, and I got the gen. 2 squid with space for 4 M.2 blades. only loaded 2 (money and space).
My setup is that the graphic card sits in first row occupying row 2. Best performance is reached when squid sits in row 3!
I started out with a very simple card for one blade, which now sits in row 4 (its a 1TB samsung 970 EVO) and I boot Mojave from this. The squid have 2 blades (Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 1TB) on the side away from graphich card, they are set up as Raid0 using SoftRaid Lite. works perfect.
One thing to keep in mind is cooling. I have added heatsinks on top of the units, it is close quarters, so be careful. Wanting to use heatsinks prohibit (in my case) to add 2 blades more on the squid!
I use ATTO Disk Benchmark, and te attached screenshots show the benefit of keeping the squid in row 3.
I also attach a photo of the cramped space they share!
GreyT

 

[KingCachapa]

I have a MacPro 5.1 running Mojave, and I got the gen. 2 squid with space for 4 M.2 blades. only loaded 2 (money and space).
My setup is that the graphic card sits in first row occupying row 2. Best performance is reached when squid sits in row 3!
I started out with a very simple card for one blade, which now sits in row 4 (its a 1TB samsung 970 EVO) and I boot Mojave from this. The squid have 2 blades (Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 1TB) on the side away from graphich card, they are set up as Raid0 using SoftRaid Lite. works perfect.
One thing to keep in mind is cooling. I have added heatsinks on top of the units, it is close quarters, so be careful. Wanting to use heatsinks prohibit (in my case) to add 2 blades more on the squid!
I use ATTO Disk Benchmark, and te attached screenshots show the benefit of keeping the squid in row 3.
I also attach a photo of the cramped space they share!
GreyT

I appreciate the info thanks! For similar reasons my PCIe slots are the way the are based on performance and on what I have. When I ask about the slots before, I was referring to the slots on the x4 NVMe card itself and if it matters where we plug in if we don't have drives to put on all four slots.

I had the same issue with the graphics card so the easiest thing to do for me was to find a reference size Vega 56 which is what I wanted, so now my squid is right on top of the GPU with some heatsinks as well and a fan (all part of the Squid card)

 

[Sean__Wong]

I have a MacPro 5.1 running Mojave, and I got the gen. 2 squid with space for 4 M.2 blades. only loaded 2 (money and space).
My setup is that the graphic card sits in first row occupying row 2. Best performance is reached when squid sits in row 3!
I started out with a very simple card for one blade, which now sits in row 4 (its a 1TB samsung 970 EVO) and I boot Mojave from this. The squid have 2 blades (Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 1TB) on the side away from graphich card, they are set up as Raid0 using SoftRaid Lite. works perfect.
One thing to keep in mind is cooling. I have added heatsinks on top of the units, it is close quarters, so be careful. Wanting to use heatsinks prohibit (in my case) to add 2 blades more on the squid!
I use ATTO Disk Benchmark, and te attached screenshots show the benefit of keeping the squid in row 3.
I also attach a photo of the cramped space they share!
GreyT

Thank you for posting that Photo of your PCI slots,
Is that a Saphire RX580 video card?

Why ?
I'm looking to add some USB-C / Thunderbolt capacity and NVME on my cMP5,1

specifically did you have any Power issues with using the RX580 and the extra cards?

For other noobs here's a reminder slots start at bottom

• Slot 4: PCIe 2.0 (x4)
• Slot 3: PCIe 2.0 (x4)
• Slot 2: PCIe 2.0 (x16)
• (space for Graphics card fans / heatsink and fancy shroud)
• Slot 1: PCIe 2.0 (x16)

Are My Mac Pro Expansion Slots PCIe 2.0 or 1.0? | Rev Your Mac

 

[GreyT-Drumming]

Thank you for posting that Photo of your PCI slots,
Is that a Saphire RX580 video card?

Why ?
I'm looking to add some USB-C / Thunderbolt capacity and NVME on my cMP5,1

specifically did you have any Power issues with using the RX580 and the extra cards?

For other noobs here's a reminder slots start at bottom

• Slot 4: PCIe 2.0 (x4)
• Slot 3: PCIe 2.0 (x4)
• Slot 2: PCIe 2.0 (x16)
• (space for Graphics card fans / heatsink and fancy shroud)
• Slot 1: PCIe 2.0 (x16)

Are My Mac Pro Expansion Slots PCIe 2.0 or 1.0? | Rev Your Mac

yes its the Radeon RX 580 8GB card, and I never experienced any power trouble. maybe the fan(s) runs a bit faster but nothing to irritate me. And I added the USB C card because there was an empty slot and it gives also me USB 3.1

 

[blademan007]

7/20/20. I'm going to provide updates in this larger thread on the same topic. PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

Hey all,
Great thread info on the 1st page of the thread linked above. Based on a couple of positive reviews from MacPro 4,1-5,1 buyers I bought the x8 lane Ableconn PEXM2-130. I'm running a 1TB Adata 8200.
I can format the SSD with either MacOS extended or APFS, and I can run a black magic speed test. But I can't copy files to the ssd, or install High Sierra or Mojave. Once started, activity continues for 10 seconds, then the OS freezes for about 1 min, and then reboots.
I have an Apple 128GB AHCI running successfully via an adaptor card in a Lycom MF-DT129, so I'll swap things around and see if I can get either to work in other configurations.

 

[earthcub]

I'm having a strange problem and I'm hoping one of the geniuses on this thread can help.

I have a 2010 4,1 with a 5,1 boot rom upgrade from Mojave but I'm running El Capitan because I'm running older software that I can't migrate yet.

I've been running my OS for the past 7 months on:
WD Blue SN550 500GB NVMe Internal SSD
RIITOP NVMe Adapter M.2 PCIe SSD to PCI-e

It's worked fine until my UPS battery died and caused my machine to shut down unexpectedly. I didn't know what was going on and tried rebooting it and the UPS choked again killing the machine while it was booting.
The problem now is that if I shut the machine down, I can't get it to boot onto the SSD. It begins and then shows the anti sign. I've been able to restore the SSD from a Time Machine backup which allows it to boot again but if I shut down the machine, the boot is corrupted and won't fully load the OS again and again I have to restore from backup to be able to load the OS again. It's pretty frustrating.

I've tried all the regular things, SMC, PRAM (changes the boot drive to a different install), Disk Utility (no errors reported), reseating the adaptor in the PCI slot (does nothing), detaching peripherals (does nothing), etc. I'm attaching a verbose load printout pic. I'm wondering if anyone has any wisdom on this.

TIA

 

[tsialex]

I'm having a strange problem and I'm hoping one of the geniuses on this thread can help.

I have a 2010 4,1 with a 5,1 boot rom upgrade from Mojave but I'm running El Capitan because I'm running older software that I can't migrate yet.

I've been running my OS for the past 7 months on:
WD Blue SN550 500GB NVMe Internal SSD
RIITOP NVMe Adapter M.2 PCIe SSD to PCI-e

It's worked fine until my UPS battery died and caused my machine to shut down unexpectedly. I didn't know what was going on and tried rebooting it and the UPS choked again killing the machine while it was booting.
The problem now is that if I shut the machine down, I can't get it to boot onto the SSD. It begins and then shows the anti sign. I've been able to restore the SSD from a Time Machine backup which allows it to boot again but if I shut down the machine, the boot is corrupted and won't fully load the OS again and again I have to restore from backup to be able to load the OS again. It's pretty frustrating.

I've tried all the regular things, SMC, PRAM (changes the boot drive to a different install), Disk Utility (no errors reported), reseating the adaptor in the PCI slot (does nothing), detaching peripherals (does nothing), etc. I'm attaching a verbose load printout pic. I'm wondering if anyone has any wisdom on this.

TIA

Seems you are making some confusion here, El Capitan don't have support for NVMe devices other than Apple made ones. It's Sierra that support NVMe devices other than Apple, albeit just NVMe devices that follow the 4kn spec.

Btw, WD Blue SN550 is a NVMe blade that is incompatible with MP5,1, it's warned on the first post:

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[earthcub]

Seems you are making some confusion here, El Capitan don't have support for NVMe devices other than Apple made ones. It's Sierra that support NVMe devices other than Apple, albeit just NVMe devices that follow the 4kn spec.

Btw, WD Blue SN550 is a NVMe blade that is incompatible with MP5,1, it's warned on the first post:
[automerge]1595925709[/automerge]
Btw, this thread should be locked for new posts, since we already have a stickie for the same topic.

There's no confusion. I'm telling you what my system is. I spent a lot of hours setting it up in just that way. Didn't know about the WD SSD but it's been working for months. Do you suspect that it's the drive suddenly rearing its ugly head?

 

[tsialex]

There's no confusion. I'm telling you what my system is. I spent a lot of hours setting it up in just that way. Didn't know about the WD SSD but it's been working for months. Do you suspect that it's the drive suddenly rearing its ugly head?

AFAIK, the only way that a non Apple NVMe device works with El Capitan is using a patched IONVMeFamily.kext from RehabMan. If you did so to make your blade work, you have to re-do it. Btw, the RehabMan patched driver only "works" with El Capitan and causes kernel panics with anything newer, you have to remove it from anything newer than 10.11.6.

Apple support for non-Apple made NVMe devices start with Sierra for 4096bytes/sector drives and High Sierra for 512bytes/sector drives.

Anyway, WD Blue SN550 firmware is not compatible with MP5,1 and have several issues with sleep/cold boot and WD don't offer firmware updates that makes the drive compatible.

 

[tsialex]

Moderation (@Weaselboy and others):

Could you please lock this thread for new posts since this hack was superseded from at least Sierra (causes kernel panics with anything newer than 10.12.6) and all the current info for using NVMe devices with Mac Pros are on the frequently updated first post of the wiki/stickie:

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com