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MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
stix666 said:
Thanks for the thread all, esp Tsialex. I now have a samsung 970 evo in the bottom slot of my mac pro that boots mojave. However, on the blackmagic disk speed (version 3.2), it's just reporting a speed of 300 - 500 MB/s. This seems too slow. Any reason why? Graphic card is RX580. Disk is partitioned 500Gb APFS case-sensitive and 500Gb MSDOS-FAT
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I have similar problems with my SM951-AHCI, sometimes I have to force TRIM even with it enabled by trimforce command.

I usually boot single mode and run e2fsck to force it. Other thing, check with Samsung Magician if you have the most recent firmware.

Both failing, try upgrading to 140.0.0.0.0.
 
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Just tried the M2D18 with a 950 Pro Samsung. It's only reporting it at 4x in system profiler. Not sure if there's a way to force it into 8x mode but if not then it looks like this card is a bust. Could've spent $20 instead of $200 for it.

Just noticed, the PCI device shows up as 2 controllers, 1 AHCI at 4x and 1 NVMe at 4x.
 
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JeDiGM said:
Just tried the M2D18 with a 950 Pro Samsung. It's only reporting it at 4x in system profiler. Not sure if there's a way to force it into 8x mode but if not then it looks like this card is a bust. Could've spent $20 instead of $200 for it.

Just noticed, the PCI device shows up as 2 controllers, 1 AHCI at 4x and 1 NVMe at 4x.
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This card is a no go from the start. It's a PCIe 2.0 switch sharing 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes to a SATA controller and a 4x PCIe 2.0 SSD M2 connector.

Return it, you can get a card with a PCIe 3.0 switch for a little more money.
 
tsialex said:
This card is a no go from the start. It's a PCIe 2.0 switch. Return it.
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You were right. tsialex, there's one thing I'm not understanding. The IOCREST card reads in system profile at 8GT/s correct? How can it do that if the slot is only capable of 5GT/s? Is this what the switch does? It converts the 4x 5GT/s lanes into 4x 8GT/s lanes by combining them on 8x lanes and making it appear as 4x? Confused. How would the Amfeltec or the Highpoint card appear in System Profiler?
 
JeDiGM said:
You were right. tsialex, there's one thing I'm not understanding. The IOCREST card reads in system profile at 8GT/s correct? How can it do that if the slot is only capable of 5GT/s? Is this what the switch does? It converts the 4x 5GT/s lanes into 4x 8GT/s lanes by combining them on 8x lanes and making it appear as 4x? Confused. How would the Amfeltec or the Highpoint card appear in System Profiler?
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All PCIe 3.0 switches do the magic internally. When used into a Mac Pro 5,1 connected to slot 1 or 2:

PLX 874x gets the total combined throughput of 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 (theoretical 10GB/s) and transform it into four PCIe 3.0 4 lanes connections, so 1 970PRO tops at 3200MB/s and 2, 3 or 4 SSDs get around 6200MB/s.

ASMedia ASM2824 gets the total combined throughput of 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0 (theoretical 5GB/s) and convert it into two PCIe 3.0 4 lanes connection, so 1 or 2 SSDs gets around 3000MB/s.

The ASMedia is a little less efficient than the PLX in the same situation. Just the PLX switch is almost the price of the complete IOCrest card when bought in quantity on AliBaba.

PLX 8747 shows as 8GT/s cards with System Information, it's a reporting bug.

With a Mac Pro, PLX and ASMedia switches works at half capacity of the possible throughput when installed in real PCIe 3.0 16x (PLX) / 8x (ASMedia) slot.
 
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Added a do not buy PCIe adaptors list in the first post, I was asked multiple times for some of this cards:

Any card from ASRock/Asus/Gigabyte/MSI that don't have a PCIe 3.0 switch and needs bifurcation.

Aplicata Quad M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe x16 Adapter - bifurcation.
ASRock Ultra Quad - bifurcation.
Asus Hyper M.2 x16 - bifurcation.
Dell Ultra-Speed Drive Quad NVMe M.2 PCIe x16 Card - bifurcation.
GIGABYTE Aorus PCIe x16 M.2 - bifurcation.
GIGABYTE CMT2014 - bifurcation.
GIGABYTE CMT4032 and CMT4034 - bifurcation.
MSI Xpander-Aero - bifurcation
SuperMicro AOC-SLG3-8E2P - fried a Mac Pro.
Synology M2D18 - it's a ~$200 PCIe 2.0 switch card with SATA + M2 that tops at 1500MB/s.
 
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The switch in the M2D18 is a IDT 89HPES24T6G2. Not sure if there's a compatibility issue or the chip just falls short performance wise. Real shame. I'm wondering if there's some kind of trick to it, like maybe running 2 NVMe devices on the board gives you the full 8x speed. It appears to work at full speed in a Synology NAS device.

https://www.idt.com/products/interf...-24-lane-6-port-gen2-pcie-io-expansion-switch
 
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JeDiGM said:
The switch in the M2D18 is a IDT 89HPES24T6G2. Not sure if there's a compatibility issue or the chip just falls short performance wise. Real shame. I'm wondering if there's some kind of trick to it, like maybe running 2 NVMe devices on the board gives you the full 8x speed. It appears to work at full speed in a Synology NAS device.

https://www.idt.com/products/interf...-24-lane-6-port-gen2-pcie-io-expansion-switch
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The M2D18 was designed to be a SATA plus PCIe blade card, you can't make it work with two PCIe blades.

Seems the M2D8 is a little better designed than I thought, it's a B+M blade connector and you can use SATA or PCIe blades.

But is a PCIe 2.0 card and tops at 1500MB/s per blade.
 
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What i meant by that is, maybe if i run just one 970 on the card it works at 4x and if i run two 970s on the card maybe it'll register at 8x? I don't have 2 to test with though but i highly doubt it right?
 
JeDiGM said:
What i meant by that is, maybe if i run just one 970 on the card it works at 4x and if i run two 970s on the card maybe it'll register at 8x? I don't have 2 to test with though but i highly doubt it right?
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Seems that you didn't understood this M2D18 card yet.

This card has one PCIe connector for a NVMe or AHCI PCIe blade and another one for a SATA M2 blade.

You can't connect two 970PRO on this card. You can connect one 970Pro and one SATA M2 blade.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but you won't get 3000MB/s from one SSD with this card. Since it's a PCIe 2.0 switch you have 1500MB/s available to each PCIe blade.
 
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Ah, now i see what you're saying. But yes, i think i'm still missing something. I read that the limitations state it requires both to be NVMe or both SATA, not one of each?

M2D18 Limitation or other information:
Compatible with PCIe 3.0 SSD but performance might drop
Two SSDs must be both NVMe or SATA at the same time
Not compatible with M.2 B-Key, but B+M-key NVMe / SATA SSD
The heatsink is only suited for M.2 2280 SSD
Generally, the M.2 PCIe SSDs are always referring to M.2 NVMeSSD
 
JeDiGM said:
Ah, now i see what you're saying. But yes, i think i'm still missing something. I read that the limitations state it requires both to be NVMe or both SATA, not one of each?

M2D18 Limitation or other information:
Compatible with PCIe 3.0 SSD but performance might drop
Two SSDs must be both NVMe or SATA at the same time
Not compatible with M.2 B-Key, but B+M-key NVMe / SATA SSD
The heatsink is only suited for M.2 2280 SSD
Generally, the M.2 PCIe SSDs are always referring to M.2 NVMeSSD
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The documentation of this card is borderline ridicule, even $70 Chinese cards have better technical documentation than this one.

But one thing is sure, since the PCIe switch is a 2.0 one, this card don't make the same magic that PLX 874x switches does converting more lanes of PCIe 2.0 into less lanes of PCI3.0. The switch is a PCIe 2.0 pure one. You will never get 3000MB/s from one SSD with this card.
[doublepost=1540511960][/doublepost]I edited my previous post.
 
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Has anyone with the SYBA SI-PEX40129 been able to use two SSDs as two separate SSDs? Believe RAID is basically required using both slots, but cannot find a definitive answer to this. Now that I'm on 140.0.0.0.0 (still 10.13.6), looking at replacing one or both of my Apricorn Velocity Solo X2/Duo X2 SATA SSD units with NVMe.
 
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tsialex said:
I don't have this card, but people who has sent me ioregs. It's not required and the card don't have hardware assisted RAID.

You can use as totally independent SSDs.
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Pval said:
I can confirm this, two seperate drives, bootable, etc.
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Awesome, thank you! Keeping the SYBA SI-PEX40129 on my priority list unless the High Point SSD7101A drops in price again. Will hopefully be able to test an Angelbird PX1 with 970 EVO later this week.
 
The Angelbird PX1 arrived a lot sooner than expected... nicely built card with a lot of attention to detail. Even includes actually useable printed instructions for assembly and an allen key for the screws. Some may find the white LED lights of the card an issue, but whatever - it's inside my case and couldn't care less.

Quick specs with an EVO 970 1TB NVMe installed in Angelbird PX1:
In slot 3 as an external drive with nothing on it and formatted HFS+, 1430 MB/s write & 1508 MB/s read.
In slot 2 as system drive (direct system drive clone with CCC) and formatted HFS+, 1302 MB/s write & 1401 MB/s read.

AJA System Test and Blackmagic Speed Test are basically the same readings. In case anyone is really needing more detail: Slot 1 was GTX 1080 FE and slot 4 was a USB card.

Took no more than an hour for PX1 setup, install to slot 3, format HFS+, clone system drive to PX1/EVO970, shutdown, move to slot 2, reboot. NVMe was immediately recognized as system drive and no boot issues. On 140.0.0.0.0 firmware in 10.13.6 build 17G65.

Previous system drive was Samsung SATA SSD (EVO 850 or 860) connected via Apricorn Velocity Solo X2. Velocity Duo X2 with same SATA SSDs average 450 MB/s write & 480 MB/s read as an external drive.

Was not the original plan, but may hold onto the Angelbird PX1 for system drive and wait until either the SYBA SI-PEX40129 or High Point SSD7101A drop in price before upgrading some media drives to NVMe.

Edit: Spotlight must have finished it's thing. Now reporting 1448 MB/s write and 1509 MB/s read in slot 2 with same tests.
 
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bsbeamer said:
The Angelbird PX1 arrived a lot sooner than expected... nicely built card with a lot of attention to detail. Even includes actually useable printed instructions for assembly and an allen key for the screws. Some may find the white LED lights of the card an issue, but whatever - it's inside my case and couldn't care less.

Quick specs with an EVO 970 1TB NVMe installed in Angelbird PX1:
In slot 3 as an external drive with nothing on it and formatted HFS+, 1430 MB/s write & 1508 MB/s read.
In slot 2 as system drive (direct system drive clone with CCC) and formatted HFS+, 1302 MB/s write & 1401 MB/s read.

AJA System Test and Blackmagic Speed Test are basically the same readings. In case anyone is really needing more detail: Slot 1 was GTX 1080 FE and slot 4 was a USB card.

Took no more than an hour for PX1 setup, install to slot 3, format HFS+, clone system drive to PX1/EVO970, shutdown, move to slot 2, reboot. NVMe was immediately recognized as system drive and no boot issues. On 140.0.0.0.0 firmware in 10.13.6 build 17G65.

Previous system drive was Samsung SATA SSD (EVO 850 or 860) connected via Apricorn Velocity Solo X2. Velocity Duo X2 with same SATA SSDs average 450 MB/s write & 480 MB/s read as an external drive.

Was not the original plan, but may hold onto the Angelbird PX1 for system drive and wait until either the SYBA SI-PEX40129 or High Point SSD7101A drop in price before upgrading some media drives to NVMe.

Edit: Spotlight must have finished it's thing. Now reporting 1448 MB/s write and 1509 MB/s read in slot 2 with same tests.
Click to expand...


Any reason not to keep it in Slot 3? I just ordered an Angelbird PX1 and an HP EX920 and was going to put it in Slot 3 to be my new boot drive, replacing a Sandisk Extreme SATA in an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2. I have an RX480 in Slot 1 and Slot 2 is barely accessible.
 
vasuvasu said:
Any reason not to keep it in Slot 3?
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After Spotlight finished its thing, am getting basically the same speeds in Slot 2 & Slot 3, so technically probably not. It's only an x4 card. Only tested in the two slots because I had the opportunity when cloning from system drive. Figured some may want to see real-world speed results.
https://www.angelbird.com/prod/wings-px1-1117/

I do use all 4 PCIe slots and PX1 fits much better in Slot 2 for my setup. The PX1 is a longer card than Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 (which was there previously), but it still does not encroach on the GTX 1080 FE's fan area at all. It's also very "skinny".

Slot 3 is currently an Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 with two SATA SSDs. This would not be a good card to put above my GPU. It's fairly large and could partially block GTX 1080 FE's fan. Eventually will have to swap this back to an RX580 (if NVIDIA web drivers for Mojave are not released) and would be an even worse card to put above an RX580 with dual fans.
 
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Have just got (fo free) Asus Hyper M.2 X4. Not a mini version.

Does it work in not Asus boards? In cMP? What speed does it provide to SSD?
 
Pentaxer said:
Have just got (fo free) Asus Hyper M.2 X4. Not a mini version.

Does it work in not Asus boards? In cMP? What speed does it provide to SSD?
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Bifurcation, it will not work since Mac Pro chipset is ten years older then the Intel 370 chipsets that started to implement PCIe bifurcation.
 
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