MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[Larry-K]

Anyway, if your daily use does not include continous manipulating big files, like heavy videos or audios files, dont´t worry at all. You have now an excellent mac!

Hi trifero,
I was watching the Monaco GP, and I thought a little multi-tasking was in order.

Got these results running the Speed test for around eight minutes, I did lock up in the middle, which is a little disconcerting, but stuff happens. Crash log says "211".

I'm using this machine for large Photoshop files and illustrator files, those aren't particularly taxing, but I'll probably be throwing some 3D in, and we'll see how rendering affects things.

This machine sat on the shelf for several years as a backup after I slapped in the X5690s in, but now I'm using it as my home workstation, while my office machine is a venerable 5,1 3.33 HexCore, which has around 25,000 hours on it. It's old and a little slow, but it's never failed to boot up, and it's configured just the way I like it. I guess it's due for an upgrade as well.

 

[trifero]

Hi trifero,
I was watching the Monaco GP, and I thought a little multi-tasking was in order.

Got these results running the Speed test for around eight minutes, I did lock up in the middle, which is a little disconcerting, but stuff happens. Crash log says "211".

I'm using this machine for large Photoshop files and illustrator files, those aren't particularly taxing, but I'll probably be throwing some 3D in, and we'll see how rendering affects things.

This machine sat on the shelf for several years as a backup after I slapped in the X5690s in, but now I'm using it as my home workstation, while my office machine is a venerable 5,1 3.33 HexCore, which has around 25,000 hours on it. It's old and a little slow, but it's never failed to boot up, and it's configured just the way I like it. I guess it's due for an upgrade as well.

So nice. Mac Pro 5,1 is a great machine. For sure you have thousands of working hours ahead from you. In fact, I have a second Mac Pro 5,1 for replacement when the first one fails, if ever.

 

[Larry-K]

So nice. Mac Pro 5,1 is a great machine. For sure you have thousands of working hours ahead from you. In fact, I have a second Mac Pro 5,1 for replacement when the first one fails, if ever.

That was my thinking as well. I've always liked having a completely configured machine, that is ready to go at the drop of a hat. I've seen iMacs (which I loathe) tank at the most inopportune times.

5,1s are just so reliable that the backups don't get much use. I do wish I'd bought a couple of the base model dual 2.4s at the time, but the second one would probably end up in an estate sale.

As for thousands of hours of work ahead of me, the machine may have that many left in it, but I'm getting old.

 

[William4673]

Hi all, this is my first time using this site, as I've recently started upon my own MP5.1 journey. The info on this site has been invaluable.

windows specific question...Once I BootCamp Windows 10 will Windows be able to access supported m.2 nvme SSD's through supported m.2 pcie hubs? (I've selected fully supported components [ SAMSUNG 970 Pro, and kryoM.2 ] )

My plan is to have my windows 10 installation on the first SATA port on an SSD, and then have windows access my programs and games which will be stored on the NVME drive (for faster game load times and intense programs). I don't want to use the drive for MacOS at all. This is possible yes?
If I need to post this question elsewhere please tell me, thanks again.

Edit: Just wanna specify because I know this is a really rudimentary question, but I need to know for a fact it will work before I drop the cash on these components.

-W

 

[tsialex]

Hi all, this is my first time using this site, as I've recently started upon my own MP5.1 journey. The info on this site has been invaluable.

windows specific question...Once I BootCamp Windows 10 will Windows be able to access supported m.2 nvme SSD's through supported m.2 pcie hubs? (I've selected fully supported components [ SAMSUNG 970 Pro, and kryoM.2 ] )

My plan is to have my windows 10 installation on the first SATA port on an SSD, and then have windows access my programs and games which will be stored on the NVME drive (for faster game load times and intense programs). I don't want to use the drive for MacOS at all. This is possible yes?
If I need to post this question elsewhere please tell me, thanks again.

Edit: Just wanna specify because I know this is a really rudimentary question, but I need to know for a fact it will work before I drop the cash on these components.

-W

NVMe support requires UEFI installed Windows 8.1/10/11, while BootCamp is a CSM/BIOS Windows install. So, won't work with BootCamp.

 

[William4673]

NVMe support requires UEFI installed Windows 8.1/10/11, while BootCamp is a CSM/BIOS Windows install. So, won't work with BootCamp.

UEFI windows install, if Im correct, is the install type where you don't use bootcamp and use the dvd drive with a burned ISO and holding the C key on startup to install instead correct? if I find guides on EFI installs are those the same things? sorry this area has been the most confusing part for me.

Edit: after doing more research I’m gonna avoid doing UEFI install of windows, don’t wanna screw up my NVRAM, Boot Rom, or brick my machine. I think the easiest and safest route is to buy a USB 3.1 USB C card for my Mac Pro, and connect an external drive for windows to use, once in boot camp. If this is a good idea with supported cards please let me know. Thanks.

 

[greenmeanie]

I have the Ableconn PEXM2-130 dual M.2 adapter, which as I understand it is the same/similar as the StarTech PEX8M2E2 that @trifero mentioned. I've got a Samsung 970 EVO and a 970 EVO Plus installed and get ~2600MBps from either them. I haven't tested with only one installed, so not sure if it gives higher R/W with one. Likewise, I haven't tested speed tests with both blades at the same time.

One of my blades is in a FusionDrive with a 2TB HDD spinner which is where my User accounts sit, the other is my boot drive. Has not caused me any issues.

I am running the Ableconn too but have a issue with it not finding the nvme on a reset? I am running a Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 I am burned out for now tried everything I could think of but it still loses the nvme on a reset. If I shut the computer off and turn it back on it finds the nvme.

 

[mode11]

SOLVED: Slow write speeds with a 960EVO 1TB + kyroM.2 passive PCIe adapter w/ heatsink

Blackmagic Speed Test shows that whilst my read speeds are 1350MB/s, my write speeds are less than 200MB/s. When I first installed the NVMe drive, both read and write were comparable.

The disk now has about 240GB free on it (just removed about 100GB). Is there anything obvious I should check for problems?

System Information indicates x4 link width, and 5GT/s speed.

Edit: the issue seems to be that Martin's OC package disables TRIM (at least on startup). At his suggestion, I re-enabled it by setting SetApfsTrimTimeout to 4294967295. Back to 1400MB/s for read and write now after a reboot.

 

[Omnath]

I just wanted to upgrade my 1tb nvme to a 2tb nvme on my cMP4.1 patched to 5.1. I used Martin Lo's Open Core 8.0 with plist for Monterey 12.4 since this is the only version I can download. I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus from 2022 so the Firmware should be up to date and working. Tried an ADATA XPG SX 8200 Pro as well, same problem happened with the Samsung 970 Evo Plus.

I detached everything beside my SSD on wich OC is installed and a RX 580, mouse and keyboard and was able to beginn the installation process with a USB Stick with Monterey 12.4. Everything went perfectly fine until the first restart where a window appeared which says something like "necessary firmware update couldn't be loaded" (freely translated from German) and I cloudn't do anything from this point on. I was asked if I want to go to HDD mode or shut down but nothing happens in HDD mode. Does anyone know what went wrong? Help is highly appreciated!

Edit: Before I had non problems at all with 1TB NVME as startdisk. It doesn't say which one that is.

Regards
Omnath

 

[Mike Richardson]

Will any adapter card work, if it only accepts a single drive? The impression that I get is that the cards that accept more than one drive will not work correctly or must be of some particular type.

I have a MacPro5,1. My SATA SSD (Crucial MX500) just took a crap and died, so I figure I might as well go to an NVMe drive.

The card I am looking at is this one, since it also has a heatsink, which is recommended in the thread. https://www.microcenter.com/product...mm-ssd-pcie-x4-adapter-with-covered-heat-sink

I know there's other issues having to do with only being able to get 1500 MB/sec and stuff like that. I'm not needing the faster speeds. I am coming from a SATA SSD that was mounted on a Sonnet card. It's an old Mac Pro so I'm not gonna dump a huge amount of money into it.

 

[greenmeanie]

I know it isn't supported but I am trying a Samsung 980 PRO NVMe in my mid 2012.
When I do a GET INFO on the drive you can see USED: sometimes counting up in bytes? Is this normal or is it because it isn't compatible?

 

[BoomerTheBlunt]

I currently have 2 NVMe blades on separate PCIe cards. One is from OWC, the other from Sabrent. I realize that neither of them is great but they do work. I'd like to save a PCI slot so I was going to try the OWC one but then everything I read here says don't use OWC. LOL. I'm wondering if there is a 2 or 4 blade card that isn't ridiculously expensive that works well? Preferably in the $100-200 range?

 

[trifero]

I currently have 2 NVMe blades on separate PCIe cards. One is from OWC, the other from Sabrent. I realize that neither of them is great but they do work. I'd like to save a PCI slot so I was going to try the OWC one but then everything I read here says don't use OWC. LOL. I'm wondering if there is a 2 or 4 blade card that isn't ridiculously expensive that works well? Preferably in the $100-200 range?

This is the one I use. Works so great.

StarTech.com Tarjeta Adaptadora para 2 SSD M.2 PCIe SSD, Dos SSDs NVMe o AHCI M.2 SSD a x8/x16 PCI Express 3.0, Compatible con PCIe M.2 NGFF (M-Key) , Admite 2242, 2260, 2280, Mac y PC (PEX8M2E2)

Actualice el rendimiento y velocidad de su sistema mediante este adaptador.ssd pcie m.2.dual.le permite agregar.dos unidades ssd pcie 3.0 m.2.(nvme y ahci) de alto rendimiento y categoría empresarial en la ranura pcie.de 8 carriles.o superior, de su.ordenador de sobremesa o servidor. Aumente el r...

www.amazon.es

 

[ApplyBoi]

Does anyone know what chipset the Sonnet M.2 4x4 Silent is using? I know a lot of other cards like OWC use an Asmedia chipset but I can't find anything about sonnet online.

 

[tsialex]

Does anyone know what chipset the Sonnet M.2 4x4 Silent is using? I know a lot of other cards like OWC use an Asmedia chipset but I can't find anything about sonnet online.

PLX PEX8747, like the non silent one.

 

[ApplyBoi]

PLX PEX8747, like the non silent one.

Thank you!

 

[thrush]

It's been a while, but I am happy to report that the Startech PEX8M2E2 allows for a bootable Windows 10 EUFI install on a compatible NVMe blade (in my case, it's installed on a 256GB Sabrent Rocket). I managed to get RefindPlus' boot selection screen to display, and I am using that to switch between MacOS Mojave and Windows 10.

I am still very happy with the Startech PEX8M2E2 card!

you are able to boot off either blade, one with win 10 and the other with Mojave?

 

[thrush]

These are the heat sinks I use on my blade, self adhesive thermal tape, stuck onto the top of the blade. they work very well.



And yes the starTech works very well considering its cost compared to SSD 7101A which I believe can do 3000mbs on a single blade, so saving £250 + with a startech makes sense to me also.

where did you find these?

is there a manufacturer name/sku?

 

[Matty_TypeR]

where did you find these?

is there a manufacturer name/sku?

I found them on Ebay, there is no name as such and i purchased them years ago a pack of 20. Sorry i cant be more help.

 

[thrush]

Finally found the desired heatsinks on Amazon. Thanks for your posts/interest-

 

[Mike Richardson]

Well I guess I'm just gonna buy some random crap from Micro Center and see if it works. I'll just get a single blade adapter since the ones with more than one blade seem to have most of the issues.

If it works then I can add to the Wikipost I guess, if not then I get to take it back the next day and try again.

 

[tsialex]

Well I guess I'm just gonna buy some random crap from Micro Center and see if it works. I'll just get a single blade adapter since the ones with more than one blade seem to have most of the issues.

If it works then I can add to the Wikipost I guess, if not then I get to take it back the next day and try again.

Please note that we only add/list blades as working that really, really work in the long run. For example, some blades work perfectly for weeks, but then fail midway when you have software updates (yes, this happens - XPG Spectrix S40G is one that doesn't work with software updates).

If you gonna test and add something to the first post, please test it over time and not just check if it can run macOS.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Please note that we only add/list blades as working that really, really work in the long run. For example, some blades work perfectly for weeks, but then fail midway when you have software updates (yes, this happens - XPG Spectrix S40G is one that doesn't work with software updates).

If you gonna test and add something to the first post, please test it over time and not just check if it can run macOS.

OK, I'll keep that in mind. I run this machine 24/7, and plan to dual boot Mojave and Mexico Monterrey using whatever the method is now. It does file serving and I also use it directly, so I think it will be a good test. I'll leave it on Monterrey and see how it does with updates.

I can report that my selections so far are working, the drive shows up and I was able to format it.

I was going to speed test it, but whenever I try to download Blackmagic Speed Test, I just get this stupid dialog box that says "cancelled".

Literally nothing will download from the App Store. I don't think having the card in is related though. But I didn't try to download App store stuff before now on this install.

Here's the drive I got: https://www.microcenter.com/product...80-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive

It's not the fastest drive out there, but it's still faster than the PCIe bus will be able to deliver, from what I understand.

The card I wound up is not showing on their site. It has 2 slots, but one is for SATA blades. You have to connect a SATA cable to the card for that one to even work. I have no idea if that part of the card works or not.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Here's a few really quick and dirty tests using dd.

Mikes-Mac-Pro:~ mike$ cd /Volumes/Intel\ SSD/

Mikes-Mac-Pro:Intel SSD mike$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test2 bs=1m count=10000
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes transferred in 9.109125 secs (1151127042 bytes/sec)

Mikes-Mac-Pro:Intel SSD mike$ sudo purge
Password:

Mikes-Mac-Pro:Intel SSD mike$ dd if=test2 of=/dev/null bs=1m count=10000
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes transferred in 6.399740 secs (1638466568 bytes/sec)

The purge command is necessary or you will get a false result for the read back test.

 

[Mike Richardson]

I decided to try "Restoring" the Mojave install, from my SATA SSD to a volume I created on the NVMe drive.

This actually worked. I am legitimately surprised! I am typing this from the copied install.

It was extremely fast and only took about 2-3 minutes to copy the entire OS from the SSD (which is on a Sonnet card).

I have to set up OpenCore again but that makes sense since that's on the EFI partition which didn't get copied.

I'm not sure I trust this copied install though. I loaded iTunes and it shows all the music I've purchased but it won't play. More stupidly vague errors.

Well, now it plays, but then shows a stupid error despite playing :/

Whatever. #SteveJobsDied I'll reinstall everything just to be safe.

EDIT: I had my nazi ad blocking/privacy "hosts" file enabled. Disabling that fixed iTunes. Then I was able to get the App Store to work as well. I'll have to review the hosts file later.

Here's Blackmagic. These are about the speeds I was expecting. Fully 2x faster than the SSD on the Sonnet card.

So far I am happy. Now to install Mexico Monterrey. I do not care much for that version, and never will. It gets used only because I am essentially forced to use it, and not because of any of it's own merits. I remember when I actually used to look forward to OS updates. (The last version I really looked forward to was whatever version added iMessages, because I was stuck on Android at the time.)

Back to on topic though.

Reinstalling OpenCore now followed by Monterrey installation.

Is there some trick to Monterey? Monterrey? You know what, I'm just gonna call it 12.x.

I downloaded it from the System Preferences thing and selected the MonterreySSD volume I had made before.

It copied some crap, and then rebooted into Mojave again. The non-OpenCore Mojave

OpenCore 0.8.2 is on both EFI partitions now (the NVMe and the SATA SSD).

I want to do a clean install onto an APFS volume I have made. I have 3 volumes on the NVMe drive: MojaveSSD, Monte-Whatever-12SSD, and DataSSD.

...

OK, I rebooted, held option. Randomly picked one of the EFI drives (both have OpenCore though), then I picked MacOS Install. Now it's doing something...

That gets me a lovely kernel panic screen and then it reboots into Mojave again. Yay!