MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[Alexr13]

Lot's of people are reporting freezing problems with recently bought I/O Crest cards. Maybe they changed something that made the cards incompatible recently, like a new PCB revision or a internal modification on the PCIe switch.

Since no one that is active on this thread has this card to track the revisions like what we have being doing with HighPoint SSD7101A-1 it will be difficult to know what is going on. It's probably time to put a warn about this on the first post.

Yep, Just to confirm, had posted last July 2019 about it: I had exactly the same freezing problem as described before for the I/O Crest card...
Good to see the change on the first post btw
I still didn't get the highpoint yet but will do as soon as I financially can

My 970 pro is still waiting to work!
I was thinking about upgrading my 2014 MBP with the Sintech adaptor with the 970 but it seems too hard on power consumption am I right?...
Do you guys think the Sabrent's Rocket will be a better choice (a lot less power consumption for my beloved battery) for my MBP ?

 

[koreda]

To take full advantage of the speed in do you have to run it in RAID?. Also slot 1 or 2 ?

I running Pro Tools 2020 and concerned about the raid configuration.
[automerge]1601838972[/automerge]

Slot 3: PCIe 2.0 (x4); Regardless of RAID card clearly labeled above Slot 4

approx 4800MB/s 480MB/s throughput. I can't boot os from the 12TB RAID 5 array if that's what ur asking?

Edit: approx 480MB/s throughput, not 4,800

 

[tsialex]

Slot 3: PCIe 2.0 (x4); Regardless of RAID card clearly labeled above Slot 4

approx 4800MB/s throughput. I can't boot os from the 12TB RAID 5 array if that's what ur asking?

Seems you made a mistake here. You can't get 4800MB/s from a PCIe 2.0 x4 5GT/s slot, at best you get real life 1450MB/s on slot3 or slot4.

 

[joevt]

2.5GT/s

Typo - you mean 5GT/s
The picture shows 2.5 GB/s but that's before considering the 8b/10b encoding which reduces bandwidth to 2 GB/s which is before considering PCIe protocol overhead which results in your 1450MB/s number.

 

[tsialex]

Typo - you mean 5GT/s
The picture shows 2.5 GB/s but that's before considering the 8b/10b encoding which reduces bandwidth to 2 GB/s which is before considering PCIe protocol overhead which results in your 1450MB/s number.

Yes, my mistake - thx for noticing it.

 

[koreda]

Seems you made a mistake here. You can't get 4800MB/s from a PCIe 2.0 x4 5GT/s slot, at best you get real life 1450MB/s on slot3 or slot4.

approx 480MB/s

 

[marzer]

I appreciate all the information in this thread, it really helped me sort out the process of adding a NVMe drive to my 5,1.

The following parts are what I went with and all is running well...and FAST!

* RIITOP NVMe Adapter M.2 PCIe SSD to PCI-e x4/x8/x16 Converter Card with Heat Sink for M.2
* Mushkin Helix-L – 960GB PCIe NVMe 1.3 – M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) – Gen3 x4 – 3D TLC - (MKNSSDHL960GB-D8)

Using dosdude1's Catalina Patcher, I was able to perform an install to the encrypted NVMe and used Migration Assistant to duplicate my stuff from the SSD. It's clocking 1300MB/s+ writes and 1500MB/s+ reads.

Thanks!

 

[Ludor]

So… if I have understood everything I have read here… I should be able to put one or two Samsung Evo 970 Plus in an Amfeltec Squid v3, and put it in my 4,1>5,1. And if the blade's firmware starts with a "2" it should just work right OOTB? As a boot drive?

 

[Grumply]

New (silent) Highpoint goodies for the 7,1 have finally arrived! Fingers-crossed they work.

 

[Grumply]

Hi guys, wondering if I could pick people's brains on the smartest layout for an unconventional RAID O?

I've tried a range of different configurations across these two Highpoint cards, and the configuration seems to have a fairly substantial impact on overall read/write speeds.

There’s eight M.2s spread across the two cards:

2x 2TB
6x 1TB

The reason I’m able to stripe them together, is because I can use the Highpoint GUI to stripe the 1TB drives into three 2TB arrays, and then in Disk Utility I can create a software stripe of the five 2TB partitions - for a single 10TB array.

So far, the best speeds I’ve got with a 10TB stripe are:

- 6,700MB/s Write 10,800MB/s Read

However, that’s with a rather unconventional arrangement - with the two 2TB drives on one card, two 1TB drives striped together on the other card, and the last two arrays created by striping ACROSS the remaining two cards on each card (i.e. drives 1A and 1B striped together, and drives 2A and 2B striped together, then 3b and 4b striped together, sort of like this (the 2TB striped arrays are colour coded):

1A (1TB) 1B (1TB)
2A (1TB) 2B (1TB)
3A (2TB) 3B (1TB)
4A (2TB) 4B (1TB)

Other arrangements yield slightly slower speeds, averaging around 6,200MB/s Write and 10,000MB/s Read. But I wonder how important symmetry is to the stability of software RAIDs?

This arrangement is the most symmetrical of all, but yields the slowest speeds (5,800MB/s Write 8,900MB/s Read):

1A (1TB) 1B (1TB)
2A (1TB) 2B (1TB)
3A (1TB) 3B (1TB)
4A (2TB) 4B (2TB)

And then this arrangement ends up somewhere in the middle (6,200MB/s Write 10,000MB/s Read)

1A (1TB) 1B (1TB)
2A (1TB) 2B (1TB)
3A (1TB) 3B (1TB)
4A (2TB) 4B (2TB)

Then the final arrangement I’ve tried is to stripe the six 1TB drives together into a 6TB array, and the two 2TB drives into a 4TB array, and then JBOD those two arrays together, which yields 8,100MB/s Write and 10,500MB/s Read (though I imagine that drops as soon as any data moves onto the smaller two-drive array):

1A (1TB) 1B (1TB)
2A (1TB) 2B (1TB)
3A (1TB) 3B (1TB)
4A (2TB) 4B (2TB)

Does anyone have any thoughts on which arrangement is likely to be the most stable? The speeds of all of these configurations are plenty sufficient for my needs (the drive is for video files, so read speeds are the most important factor).

Would appreciate anyone’s thoughts.

 

[trifero]

New (silent) Highpoint goodies for the 7,1 have finally arrived! Fingers-crossed they work.

View attachment 967174

Christmas is here! Congratulations.

 

[smallwonder]

delete

 

[smallwonder]

New (silent) Highpoint goodies for the 7,1 have finally arrived! Fingers-crossed they work.

View attachment 967174

I'm wondering how this silent Highpoint version compares to the latest (also silent) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card.
The much larger heatsinks on the Highpoint looks like it should work well.

 

[Grumply]

I'm wondering how this silent Highpoint version compares to the latest (also silent) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card.
The much larger heatsinks on the Highpoint looks like it should work well.

I’m sure for most things they’re probably broadly similar.

I just did a big dump of 7TB across to the Highpoint RAID yesterday (from RAIDed SATA SSDs, so at decent speeds). And under heavy write load for around hour, temperatures got up into the low 50s (celsius) and the 7,1’s fan didn’t even appear to lift at all from their base levels.

So thermally, the combination seems pretty sound.

To me the deciding factor was the Highpoints being “intelligent” cards (where the Sonnet is just a dumb carrier board). With shipping the cost worked out to be about $200 AUD more for the Highpoints, but they have the advantage of Crosssync and internal RAID capabilities - which is what allows me to make a functional 10TB striped array from 2x 2TB drives and 6x 1TB drives.

With the Sonnet cards I’d have had to do two separate software RAIDs, one 6TB and one 4TB.

I’ve used a bunch of Sonnet cards over the years, and they’ve all been completely reliable, so having to try an unknown entity in Highpoint was another question I had to deal with.

 

[Jon Manterola Herbozo]

Hi!! I have a samsung 970 EVO installed with pcie adaptor into my MAC PRO (early 2009, updated as 5,1) and works great! 1400 speed more or less... but I'm reading in forums that with a double pcie adaptor and 2 nvme drives in RAID 0, I can double the speed??? into almost 3000??? is this true??? which double pcie to m2 adaptor do you recommend me??? I would like to be sure that this will work in my mac before buying another 970 EVO and a new adaptor... because if not, I prefer stay as I am... thank you so much!!

 

[tsialex]

Hi!! I have a samsung 970 EVO installed with pcie adaptor into my MAC PRO (early 2009, updated as 5,1) and works great! 1400 speed more or less... but I'm reading in forums that with a double pcie adaptor and 2 nvme drives in RAID 0, I can double the speed??? into almost 3000??? is this true??? which double pcie to m2 adaptor do you recommend me??? I would like to be sure that this will work in my mac before buying another 970 EVO and a new adaptor... because if not, I prefer stay as I am... thank you so much!!

You are difficult person to be helped, I linked the thread for you to read the first post and not to just repeat the questions, please read the first post, the answer is there.

Btw, RAID don't work after High Sierra for main disks, just for data disks.

 

[Ludor]

Hi!! I have a samsung 970 EVO installed with pcie adaptor into my MAC PRO (early 2009, updated as 5,1) and works great! 1400 speed more or less... but I'm reading in forums that with a double pcie adaptor and 2 nvme drives in RAID 0, I can double the speed??? into almost 3000??? is this true??? which double pcie to m2 adaptor do you recommend me??? I would like to be sure that this will work in my mac before buying another 970 EVO and a new adaptor... because if not, I prefer stay as I am... thank you so much!!

What PCIe adaptor are you using?

 

[Ludor]

I think I just need a bit of handholding. I am very late to the pcie ssd change because I couldn’t afford it, and now that I do I just need a boot disk solution to carry my poor old Mac for a few more years. This forum is an abundance of knowledge, but it I find it difficult to find my way between the many combinations that, for a variety of reasons, will not work in a 2009 Mac Pro.
I was almost getting ready to buy an OWC Accelsior, but I figured there has to be an alternative that is just one step further in difficulty, that in turn would work a lot better.
So, an Amfeltec Squid. But what brand and model of blades?

 

[Grumply]

I think I just need a bit of handholding. I am very late to the pcie ssd change because I couldn’t afford it, and now that I do I just need a boot disk solution to carry my poor old Mac for a few more years. This forum is an abundance of knowledge, but it I find it difficult to find my way between the many combinations that, for a variety of reasons, will not work in a 2009 Mac Pro.
I was almost getting ready to buy an OWC Accelsior, but I figured there has to be an alternative that is just one step further in difficulty, that in turn would work a lot better.
So, an Amfeltec Squid. But what brand and model of blades?

Honestly, for your boot/OS drive, I think it's far more trouble than it's worth (and boot times actually got slower for me on PCIe).

SATA SSDs work just fine for the OS, keep the NVMEs for things that need speed - like a media or cache drive.

 

[Ludor]

Honestly, for your boot/OS drive, I think it's far more trouble than it's worth (and boot times actually got slower for me on PCIe).

SATA SSDs work just fine for the OS, keep the NVMEs for things that need speed - like a media or cache drive.

Thank you kindly for replying! It does indeed seem to involve some hoops to jump through. The thing is, I need a couple of SATA ports for my graphics card, so I thought a PCIe boot drive would solve that and be snappy too. But you are saying you got lower speeds with that?

 

[tsialex]

Thank you kindly for replying! It does indeed seem to involve some hoops to jump through. The thing is, I need a couple of SATA ports for my graphics card, so I thought a PCIe boot drive would solve that and be snappy too. But you are saying you got lower speeds with that?

When you install a PCIe drive of any kind on an early-2009 to mid-2012 Mac Pro, all PCIe space needs to be scanned, the controllers and drives found need to be configured and enumerated. This process takes time, that's why boot times with PCIe drives are a lot longer than on a Mac Pro with just SATA drives connected to the native SATA ports.

Bigger throughput don't mean that the time to do everything is smaller, for Mac Pro Boot times is a balance.

Using SATA power connectors to feed a GPU is not a good idea. Rethink this, Pixla's mod is the correct and safe way to power a modern GPU out of the power envelope of the backplane.

 

[Ludor]

When you install a PCIe drive of any kind on an early-2009 to mid-2012 Mac Pro, all PCIe space needs to be scanned, the controllers and drives found need to be configured and enumerated. This process takes time, that's why boot times with PCIe drives are a lot longer than on a Mac Pro with just SATA drives connected to the native SATA ports.

Bigger throughput don't mean that the time to do everything is smaller, for Mac Pro Boot times is a balance.

Using SATA power connectors to feed a GPU is not a good idea. Rethink this, Pixla's mod is the correct and safe way to power a modern GPU out of the power envelope of the backplane.

Thank you so much for replying! I got the SATA thing from the cMP GPU thread (and bought the suggested cables already). I have been looking at Pixlas’ mod too, of course, but felt that it was beyond my technical skills. Maybe I’ll take another look.

So, would my wisest choice be to just put another SATA ssd in the SuperDrive compartment?

 

[tsialex]

Thank you so much for replying! I got the SATA thing from the cMP GPU thread (and bought the suggested cables already). I have been looking at Pixlas’ mod too, of course, but felt that it was beyond my technical skills. Maybe I’ll take another look.

So, would my wisest choice be to just put another SATA ssd in the SuperDrive compartment?

No, that's not what I and @Grumply are saying. You have to evaluate yourself what's best for your own workflow. PCIe drives are fast, with enormous amount of bandwidth and capable of IOPs 10x more of SATA drives, but like everything else has it's own cost.

If you need bandwidth/IOPs, NVMe is the way to go. If not, just use SATA.

 

[Ludor]

No, that's not what I and @Grumply are saying. You have to evaluate yourself what's best for your own workflow. PCIe drives are fast, with enormous amount of bandwidth and capable of IOPs 10x more of SATA drives, but like everything else has it's own cost.

If you need bandwidth/IOPs, NVMe is the way to go. If not, just use SATA.

I see. Thank you sir. Boot time does not really bother me, but I do work with several kinds media in general (often heavy enough to make the Mac complain), so I figured PCIe might make a difference.

If you would be inclined to suggest reasonable SSDs to put in a Squid (i e, moderate price, not needing a firmware replacement), I would appreciate it immensely. I have tried to scan the thread for “this works well with that” but have trouble finding such posts.

 

[tsialex]

I see. Thank you sir. Boot time does not really bother me, but I do work with several kinds media in general (often heavy enough to make the Mac complain), so I figured PCIe might make a difference.

If you would be inclined to suggest reasonable SSDs to put in a Squid (i e, moderate price, not needing a firmware replacement), I would appreciate it immensely. I have tried to scan the thread for “this works well with that” but have trouble finding such posts.

Read the first post first, all info is concentrated there.

I don't think that Amfeltec Squid cards are the best choice for a MP5,1, but there are several users here with one. The most used and usually the best quad M.2 choice for a MP5,1 is HighPoint SSD7101A-1 or the new fan-less version, SSD7104.