MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[Darmok N Jalad]

I've employed your advice and got the Riitop adapter and an Inland Premium drive. Mine is only 512GB, but it has the same controller as the 1TB model. Whole kit was around $80. Will be dropping it into my cMP 4,1 --> 5,1 when it arrives. My existing SATA SSD is rather anemic by comparison. It's pulling about 250MB/s w/r. I'm hoping it picks up the pace on my photography hobby. Paging through 20MB RAW files is pretty sluggish right now.

Replying to myself, but the config works perfectly. Went from 250/250 to 1400/1400. Restored from Time Machine to the new drive and it booted right up. RAW files pull up immediately now. Mission accomplished.

Do I still need to enable TRIM in Mojave, or is that automatically covered? I'm new to NVMe drives.

 

[tsialex]

Hi all , Bonjour tt le monde ,

https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-dc-p4600-enterprise-pcie-nvme-review?page=1

will this work on CMP4.1 ( flashed 5.1) ?

thanks for your help

No one tested this specific model yet, AFAIK only earlier models, but should work. Please note that will be limited to around 1450MB/s throughput when used in a MP5,1, or your MP4,1>5,1.

You need at least BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 for it to work as a boot drive.
[doublepost=1564620366][/doublepost]

Replying to myself, but the config works perfectly. Went from 250/250 to 1400/1400. Restored from Time Machine to the new drive and it booted right up. RAW files pull up immediately now. Mission accomplished.

Do I still need to enable TRIM in Mojave, or is that automatically covered? I'm new to NVMe drives.

Only Apple drives and drives that mimic these, like some OWC and others, have TRIM enabled automatically, but if you enabled for another drive, it's valid for all drives installed. Just check if it's enabled:

System Report > Hardware > NVMExpress > NVMExpress DeviceTree > Trim Support

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

No one tested this specific model yet, AFAIK only earlier models, but should work. Please note that will be limited to around 1450MB/s throughput when used in a MP5,1, or your MP4,1>5,1.

You need at least BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 for it to work as a boot drive.
[doublepost=1564620366][/doublepost]
Only Apple drives and drives that mimic these, like some OWC and others, have TRIM enabled automatically, but if you enabled for another drive, it's valid for all drives installed. Just check if it's enabled:

System Report > Hardware > NVMExpress > NVMExpress DeviceTree > Trim Support

Thanks. I realized after the fact that I could just check and see, and sure enough, Trim enabled.

 

[mani girafe]

No one tested this specific model yet, AFAIK only earlier models, but should work. Please note that will be limited to around 1450MB/s throughput when used in a MP5,1, or your MP4,1>5,1.

You need at least BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 for it to work as a boot drive.
[doublepost=1564620366][/doublepost]
Only Apple drives and drives that mimic these, like some OWC and others, have TRIM enabled automatically, but if you enabled for another drive, it's valid for all drives installed. Just check if it's enabled:

System Report > Hardware > NVMExpress > NVMExpress DeviceTree > Trim Support

MErci ALEX , i will go to how update in BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 for it to work as a boot drive

 

[tsialex]

MErci ALEX , i will go to how update in BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 for it to work as a boot drive

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions).

 

[Soba]

Just to share my experiences here, I purchased a HighPoint SSD7101A and installed it in my 5,1 with (2) Samsung 970 Pro 1TB and (1) Samsung 970 Pro 512GB. The card works great and performs as expected, but I had two problems that are deal breakers for me on this card and I am sending it back:

1) Fan noise. It's not extremely loud, but it's too high pitched and I find it very annoying. It's not possible to have this kind of sound in my office.

2) I feel very stupid for not realizing this sooner, but this card cannot boot Windows. Highpoint makes this clear on their website, but somehow I overlooked this. Windows 10 cannot create partitions on the blades, cannot set them up for booting, and cannot boot a Windows install that was cloned to the card. So, I need a separate controller card anyway for the 512GB blade to boot Windows 10. (I reinstalled one of my old Lycom DT-120 cards for this.)

I updated the first post in this thread with a note that the Highpoint is not bootable in Windows, just so this is obvious for anyone who is shopping for a card.

Edit: I'm wrong. The card is bootable in a Mac Pro with some extra work. See Alex's post below.

Because I already own two Lycom DT-120 cards, I will probably just put in a third Lycom and have each blade on its own controller in the near term and add heat sinks to the blades. Unfortunately this fills all my PCIe slots and displaces the eSATA controller I use to clone my Time Machine drive for off-site backup, so I will continue to hunt for a reliable, fanless card.

Does anyone know of a fanless card that holds 2 or more blades so I can free up a PCIe slot? (I don't need RAID and it's okay if it doesn't boot Windows; I can always keep the Windows blade on a Lycom DT-120.) The Lycom DT-130 looks perfect for the job, but despite being on the Lycom website, it looks like it was never actually released.

 

[tsialex]

Just to share my experiences here, I purchased a HighPoint SSD7101A and installed it in my 5,1 with (2) Samsung 970 Pro 1TB and (1) Samsung 970 Pro 512GB. The card works great and performs as expected, but I had two problems that are deal breakers for me on this card and I am sending it back:

1) Fan noise. It's not extremely loud, but it's too high pitched and I find it very annoying. It's not possible to have this kind of sound in my office.

2) I feel very stupid for not realizing this sooner, but this card cannot boot Windows. Highpoint makes this clear on their website, but somehow I overlooked this. Windows 10 cannot create partitions on the blades, cannot set them up for booting, and cannot boot a Windows install that was cloned to the card. So, I need a separate controller card anyway for the 512GB blade to boot Windows 10. (I reinstalled one of my old Lycom DT-120 cards for this.)

I updated the first post in this thread with a note that the Highpoint is not bootable in Windows, just so this is obvious for anyone who is shopping for a card.

Because I already own two Lycom DT-120 cards, I will probably just put in a third Lycom and have each blade on its own controller in the near term and add heat sinks to the blades. Unfortunately this fills all my PCIe slots and displaces the eSATA controller I use to clone my Time Machine drive for off-site backup, so I will continue to hunt for a reliable, fanless card.

Does anyone know of a fanless card that holds 2 or more blades so I can free up a PCIe slot? (I don't need RAID and it's okay if it doesn't boot Windows; I can always keep the Windows blade on a Lycom DT-120.) The Lycom DT-130 looks perfect for the job, but despite being on the Lycom website, it looks like it was never actually released.

SSD7101-A is a non-bootable card while installed in a PC, but is Windows bootable while installed in a Mac Pro since MP5,1 BootROM makes it possible.

The Windows 10 + SSD7101-A + NVMe blades combo problem is that you need UEFI for it to work and then you have the SecureBoot certificates problem, see below/that Microsoft is looking at, and it's a complicated install* - but works and you don't even need to use HighPoint drivers, see the screenshot above.

Btw, I removed your first post edit.

* The simplest way to make it work is to use a SATA SSD on Mac Pro SATA port 1, do the UEFI install, clone it to the NVMe blade while using a dumb adaptor, then move the NVMe blade to the SSD7101-A. My workflow is a little more complex, using WIM images, but it's because I have a Windows OEM license and nothing to do with SSD7101-A.

Warning: SecureBoot certificates are not a problem for some, but for others is a nightmare and frequently make havoc inside the NVRAM. I did helped a lot of people with BootROM clean-ups because UEFI Windows made macOS disk not bootable or NVIDIA GPUs to not work correctly anymore. So, be warned about Windows UEFI until Microsoft finally blacklist SecureBoot with MP5,1. Btw, with a SATA SSD + CSM mode + iMac Pro BootCamp drivers, you can go to and from Windows without the need of BootPicker/BootSelector and it's the only way to reliably use a GPU that don't have pre-boot configuration support with dual boot.

 

[atonaldenim]

Just to share my experiences here, I purchased a HighPoint SSD7101A and installed it in my 5,1 with (2) Samsung 970 Pro 1TB and (1) Samsung 970 Pro 512GB. The card works great and performs as expected, but I had two problems that are deal breakers for me on this card and I am sending it back:

1) Fan noise. It's not extremely loud, but it's too high pitched and I find it very annoying. It's not possible to have this kind of sound in my office.

2) I feel very stupid for not realizing this sooner, but this card cannot boot Windows. Highpoint makes this clear on their website, but somehow I overlooked this. Windows 10 cannot create partitions on the blades, cannot set them up for booting, and cannot boot a Windows install that was cloned to the card. So, I need a separate controller card anyway for the 512GB blade to boot Windows 10. (I reinstalled one of my old Lycom DT-120 cards for this.)

I updated the first post in this thread with a note that the Highpoint is not bootable in Windows, just so this is obvious for anyone who is shopping for a card.

Because I already own two Lycom DT-120 cards, I will probably just put in a third Lycom and have each blade on its own controller in the near term and add heat sinks to the blades. Unfortunately this fills all my PCIe slots and displaces the eSATA controller I use to clone my Time Machine drive for off-site backup, so I will continue to hunt for a reliable, fanless card.

Does anyone know of a fanless card that holds 2 or more blades so I can free up a PCIe slot? (I don't need RAID and it's okay if it doesn't boot Windows; I can always keep the Windows blade on a Lycom DT-120.) The Lycom DT-130 looks perfect for the job, but despite being on the Lycom website, it looks like it was never actually released.

I agree the fan noise is kind of annoying. Curious if anyone has found a good solution for this, other than just disconnecting the fan. I just successfully replaced a noisy fan on a GT 640 GPU with a much quieter one, I’m sure you could probably do the same here.

 

[tsialex]

I agree the fan noise is kind of annoying. Curious if anyone has found a good solution for this, other than just disconnecting the fan. I just successfully replaced a noisy fan on a GT 640 GPU with a much quieter one, I’m sure you could probably do the same here.

You can replace the fan with one with a lot less noise, @W1SS investigated the options and made a post about the SSD7101-A fan replacement.

 

[Soba]

View attachment 851493

SSD7101-A is a non-bootable card while installed in a PC, but is Windows bootable while installed in a Mac Pro since MP5,1 BootROM makes it possible.

The Windows 10 + SSD7101-A + NVMe blades combo problem is that you need UEFI for it to work and then you have the SecureBoot certificates problem, see below/that Microsoft is looking at, and it's a complicated install* - but works and you don't even need to use HighPoint drivers, see the screenshot above.

Btw, I removed your first post edit.

* The simplest way to make it work is to use a SATA SSD on Mac Pro SATA port 1, do the UEFI install, clone it to the NVMe blade while using a dumb adaptor, then move the NVMe blade to the SSD7101-A. My workflow is a little more complex, using WIM images, but it's because I have a Windows OEM license and nothing to do with SSD7101-A.

Warning: SecureBoot certificates are not a problem for some, but for others is a nightmare and frequently make havoc inside the NVRAM. I did helped a lot of people with BootROM clean-ups because UEFI Windows made macOS disk not bootable or NVIDIA GPUs to not work correctly anymore. So, be warned about Windows UEFI until Microsoft finally blacklist SecureBoot with MP5,1. Btw, with a SATA SSD + CSM mode + iMac Pro BootCamp drivers, you can go to and from Windows without the need of BootPicker/BootSelector and it's the only way to reliably use a GPU that don't have pre-boot configuration support with dual boot.

Alex,

Somehow I had a feeling I should have just asked you first. Thanks for clearing this up! (And also for all the work you've done in this forum.)

I tried something similar to the install procedure you described, but not your exact process. I already have all the parts I need to do this, so perhaps I'll try again before deciding whether to return the card.

Fan noise is still an issue, but I'll also look into replacing the fan. Since the card does in fact work in Windows, the fan problem might be a surmountable hurdle. (And thank you to @atonaldenim, as well.)

 

[tsialex]

Alex,

Somehow I had a feeling I should have just asked you first. Thanks for clearing this up! (And also for all the work you've done in this forum.)

I tried something similar to the install procedure you described, but not your exact process. I already have all the parts I need to do this, so perhaps I'll try again before deciding whether to return the card.

Fan noise is still an issue, but I'll also look into replacing the fan. Since the card does in fact work in Windows, the fan problem might be a surmountable hurdle. (And thank you to @atonaldenim, as well.)

Just do what I explained in my previous post, do all the Windows updates needed while with using your SATA SSD, clone it to NVMe blade and then move it to the SSD7101-A, it will work.

Remember that you can have trouble with the SecureBoot certificates, so at least do a ROMTool dump of your BootROM and keep it safe/upload it to somewhere.

 

[frenchieisverige]

Thanks to you two a lot!
I combined both information and ended up buying a 512GB XP941 with a Aqua Computer kryoM.2 evo.

I can report that is combination is fully working on a 3,1 Mac Pro. Thanks @tsialex and @AlexMaximus!

 

[drac]

Hi guys,

I have 2 apple 1TB SSD's from the 2013 MacBook pro on individual sintech cards in slots 3 & 4, I think SSUAX.
One is my Mojave boot the other HS. (Intend to change the HS to a storage volume in the near future.)
I would like to free up a PCI slot to put a USB3 card in. Is there an adapter which they can go on the same card?

 

[tsialex]

Hi guys,

I have 2 apple 1TB SSD's from the 2013 MacBook pro on individual sintech cards in slots 3 & 4, I think SSUAX.
One is my Mojave boot the other HS. (Intend to change the HS to a storage volume in the near future.)
I would like to free up a PCI slot to put a USB3 card in. Is there an adapter which they can go on the same card?

Nope.

You can use format converters but it's a very bulky solution and will totally invade the next slot space. So, it's better to sell both while still has somewhat decent resell value and buy normal M.2 blades.

 

[drac]

Hi Alex,

Is there a solution that will work with M.2 that fits in the PCIx4 slots or do you need to use slot 2 for the 16 lane bandwidth?

 

[tsialex]

Hi Alex,

Is there a solution that will work with M.2 that fits in the PCIx4 slots or do you need to use slot 2 for the 16 lane bandwidth?

Nope.

You only have 4 PCIe lines there, btw the 4 PCIe lines are shared by both Slot 3 and 4, and the simplest/cheaper card, IO Crest IO-PCE2824-TM2 (aka Syba SI-PEX40129), needs 8 PCIe lines while all the other 1st post recommend cards need 16 lines.

Any switched card will need to be installed on Slot 1 or 2.

 

[Selsk]

Stupid question. On my 6,1 with a Samsung evo 970 I just accidentally did the latest update and now I’m stuck in a bootloop. Do I just swap back in the stock drive, complete the update and I should be good to go? Or do I now have to do anything with my nvme to make it “work again”. Thanks.

 

[atonaldenim]

You can replace the fan with one with a lot less noise, @W1SS investigated the options and made a post about the SSD7101-A fan replacement.

Thanks for this! My mistake, I was thinking of the Syba / IO-Crest SI-PEX40129 two-blade card which also has a noticeably loud fan. You've inspired me to open it up and see what part # the fan is. It turns out it's a Delta KSB0405HB, which is 40mm in diameter, 8.5mm high, with a triangular mounting bolt pattern. (datasheet)

A quick search of that very useful Digi-Key site doesn't turn up an alternative fan option of the same size. I wonder if anyone has looked into this...

 

[Selsk]

Stupid question. On my 6,1 with a Samsung evo 970 I just accidentally did the latest update and now I’m stuck in a bootloop. Do I just swap back in the stock drive, complete the update and I should be good to go? Or do I now have to do anything with my nvme to make it “work again”. Thanks.

All good. I swapped drives and completed the bottom update to 132.0.0.0.0. Then I swapped back and well I am typing to you from the NVMe system! Panic over!

 

[Manzana]

Does anyone know of a fanless card that holds 2 or more blades so I can free up a PCIe slot? (I don't need RAID and it's okay if it doesn't boot Windows; I can always keep the Windows blade on a Lycom DT-120.) The Lycom DT-130 looks perfect for the job, but despite being on the Lycom website, it looks like it was never actually released.

This is actually something that I am looking for but have not seen. All the passive PCIe adaptors only carry one blade. Could it be possible to have dual NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs on the same card if you use the 16 lane slot?

 

[tommy chen]

This is actually something that I am looking for but have not seen. All the passive PCIe adaptors only carry one blade. Could it be possible to have dual NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs on the same card if you use the 16 lane slot?

if it doesn't have a PCI switch it doesn't matter
there is no speedboost at an 16 lane slot

 

[kohlson]

At the beginning of this thread it lists cards *not* to use. A Synology card, which is fanless and holds 2 M.2's, is listed because it tops out at 1500 MBps.

May warrant further investigation - perhaps this will work?

 

[tsialex]

At the beginning of this thread it lists cards *not* to use. A Synology card, which is fanless and holds 2 M.2's, is listed because it tops out at 1500 MBps.

May warrant further investigation - perhaps this will work?

Someone here bought one and tested, search the thread, it's a PCIe 2.0 switch with 8 lines only and made to be used with Synology line of NAS. It's more expensive than a card like IO-Crest/SYBA.

 

[Manzana]

At the beginning of this thread it lists cards *not* to use. A Synology card, which is fanless and holds 2 M.2's, is listed because it tops out at 1500 MBps.

For my needs this would be fine, I’d be happy with dual m.2s @ 1500 MBps on a fanless card.
From what I’ve been reading in this thread there are only 4 switched cards (Squid, HighPoint, IOCrest/Syba, sonnet) on the market at this time, and of those seems only 1 has shown super reliability so maybe pass through may be the way to go for me.

 

[handheldgames]

For my needs this would be fine, I’d be happy with dual m.2s @ 1500 MBps on a fanless card.
From what I’ve been reading in this thread there are only 4 switched cards (Squid, HighPoint, IOCrest/Syba, sonnet) on the market at this time, and of those seems only 1 has shown super reliability so maybe pass through may be the way to go for me.

a lower cost card from qnap multi m.2 adapter may meet your needs. they are based on lower cost x8 broadcom chipsets compared to the x8 asmedia used in syba cards.