MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[SirVikon]

Hi, has anyone experience with the new Samsung 980 NVMe SSDs? I want to buy one and use it with my Kryo M2 Card in a cMP 5.1.

On the list in the Wiki there is only the 970. But the 980 ist cheaper than the 970 ... so i want to spent the money in more capacity

 

[flowrider]

I have not, but if it were me, I'd go with the newer SSD. Frequently when models go out of production, the older model electronics costs more. I really don't know why, but I see it frequently. I've had my 970s for awhile (both EVO and Pro)

Lou

 

[Lance Nanek]

Anand had a good summary on 970 vs. 980:

New Samsung 980 SSD improves on 970 EVO, EVO Plus performance

Samsung’s ever-shifting consumer branding drops “EVO” suffix entirely this time.

arstechnica.com

970 Pro has some performance benefits from using 2-bit flash, but 980 mostly makes up for it by using a cache area that runs as fast and slowly gets written to the 3-bit area in the background later (which is what the 970 Plus did). If you don't exceed the SLC cache, it's better. Also better than the non-Pro 970s. Haven't tried it on a Mac. There's PCIe 4 support too, but most computers don't have that.

 

[SirVikon]

For me its the only question, if the new 980 will work in a cMP 5.1. I think so and will try it. My Dealer has a shipment time of 3 weeks But then i will comment, if the 980 works fine.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Amazon has them both in stock:

Amazon.com: samsung 980 nvme

Amazon.com: samsung 980 nvme

www.amazon.com

Lou

 

[Virtuoso]

Let us know how you go with it ?

I have the 7140 currently setup with 4 drives, which migrated straight across from my previous 7101 RAID0 with no data loss.

I'm getting around 7.5GB/s on both read and write in a 4 drive RAID0 array, down from the 7101 which gave around 8.5-9.5GB/s. I will be getting 4 more drives on Tuesday so I will be able to see whether it is capable of better speeds.

You can hear the 2 fans - it's not an unpleasant noise, but it's certainly louder than the 7101 set on LOW. Unfortunately you can't control the fan speed. The WebGUI has settings for off, low, medium and high, but they don't work. I contacted support who replied "Sorry, the SSD7140 does not currently support WebGUI fan speed adjustment.
However, we will add this requirement to the software update plan." With the 2019 Mac Pro being otherwise virtually silent this is a shame.

More to follow when I get the new drives installed.

 

[ivion]

I have the 7140 currently setup with 4 drives, which migrated straight across from my previous 7101 RAID0 with no data loss.

I'm getting around 7.5GB/s on both read and write in a 4 drive RAID0 array, down from the 7101 which gave around 8.5-9.5GB/s. I will be getting 4 more drives on Tuesday so I will be able to see whether it is capable of better speeds.

You can hear the 2 fans - it's not an unpleasant noise, but it's certainly louder than the 7101 set on LOW. Unfortunately you can't control the fan speed. The WebGUI has settings for off, low, medium and high, but they don't work. I contacted support who replied "Sorry, the SSD7140 does not currently support WebGUI fan speed adjustment.
However, we will add this requirement to the software update plan." With the 2019 Mac Pro being otherwise virtually silent this is a shame.

More to follow when I get the new drives installed.

@Virtuoso congrats with your choice, it’s a great card! I have been running the same set up with 8 x Samsung 970 pro ssd’s (after snapping them up for a good price) getting about 12gb/s read & write for about 3 months. You can just remove the connector between the card and the fans. The ssds & card stays cooled sufficiently through the great fans of the Mac Pro 2019 and the aluminum cooling element of the Highpoint card. 100% silent.

 

[Virtuoso]

@Virtuoso congrats with your choice, it’s a great card! I have been running the same set up with 8 x Samsung 970 pro ssd’s (after snapping them up for a good price) getting about 12gb/s read & write for about 3 months. You can just remove the connector between the card and the fans. The ssds & card stays cooled sufficiently through the great fans of the Mac Pro 2019 and the aluminum cooling element of the Highpoint card. 100% silent.

Great - that's good to know. I'll disconnect the fans tomorrow when I install the extra drives.

 

[LibbyAnne]

I can CONFIRM a "Simplecom EC412" adapter board works with a WD Black SN750 250 GB NVMe SSD using Mojave bootrom ( V 144 ) under High Sierra and Mojave.

As a side note card also has a SATA M2 slot that I used with an OWC Mercury Accelsior M PCIe mSATA card and a SATA to mSATA adapter with a WD Green 480 GB SATA SSD for BOOTCAMP.

All working and NVMe boot of macOS is very fast once it has checked 96 GB Ram.

 

[Virtuoso]

@Virtuoso have been running the same set up with 8 x Samsung 970 pro ssd’s (after snapping them up for a good price) getting about 12gb/s read & write for about 3 months.

I added 4 new drives to the 7140 today and created a new 8 disk RAID0 (block size 64 - sector 512), but my speeds have hardly changed at all - the read increased by 1GB/s to 8.6GB/s but the write stayed the same at 7.2GB/s. I tried APFS and MacOS Extended (no encryption) as well as both Highpoint and Apple RAID.

Pretty disappointing - I was getting better speeds before with just 4 drives in the 7101-A.

@ivion - any idea why yours is so much faster?

 

[Lance Nanek]

Tested a Toshiba XG5 today. Speed in the PCIe 3.0 x2 Sabrent enclosure:
Macbook Pro 2019 -> Sabrent EC-T3NS enclosure -> Toshiba XG5 512GB = Blackmagic 5GB benchmark 966.2 MB/s write, 1494.4 MB/s read

Successfully ran at PCIe 2.0 x4 in a OWC Mercury Helios TB2 enclosure on my MacPro6,1:

Generic SSD Controller:

KXG50ZNV512G NVMe TOSHIBA 512GB:

  Capacity:    512.11 GB (512,110,190,592 bytes)
  TRIM Support:    Yes
  Model:    KXG50ZNV512G NVMe TOSHIBA 512GB
  Revision:    AADA4102
  Serial Number:    Z78S11IATY7T
  Link Width:    x4
  Link Speed:    5.0 GT/s
  Detachable Drive:    No
  BSD Name:    disk2
  Partition Map Type:    GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  Removable Media:    No
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Verified
 
  pci1179,116:

  Type:    NVM Express Controller
  Driver Installed:    Yes
  Tunnel Compatible:    Yes
  Pause Compatible:    Yes
  MSI:    Yes
  Bus:    PCI
  Slot:    Thunderbolt@25,0,0
  Vendor ID:    0x1179
  Device ID:    0x0116
  Subsystem Vendor ID:    0x1179
  Subsystem ID:    0x0001
  Revision ID:    0x0000
  Serial Number:    Z78S11IATY7T
  Link Width:    x4
  Link Speed:    5.0 GT/s

Was nightmare to dd one of my RAID 0 members to it, though. Kept erroring out after a couple hunder GB if I used /dev/rdisk# and 1m block size. Had to use /dev/disk# and 512 block size, which takes much longer.

RAID array benchmarks:
MacPro6,1 -> RAID 0 array = 1,630.6MB/s write / 2,630 MB/s read for 1xEvo970, 1xRocket4Plus, 2xRocket3, 1xXG5
MacPro6,1 -> RAID 0 array = 2,314.8MB/s write / 2,163.9 MB/s read for 3xLiteOnEP1, 1xRocket4Plus, 1xSX8200 Pro

 

[mediabunker]

Hi,

I've recently bit the bullet and installed OpenCore/Big Sur on a new NVME setup but I'm finding the whole setup 'laggy' to say the least and seeing the beachball far too often when opening apps (adobe apps, safari etc).

Don't get me wrong, the system is still useable just not as snappy as Catalina with exactly the same setup minus the NVME drive.

My speed tests for the NVME setup are around 1500/1500 which from what I understand is correct.

My graphic card uses slot 1 (and covers slot 2 due to its height), I have the NVME controller in slot 3 and a USB 3 card in slot 4. From what I have read on here this should all be okay?

Also, I notice sometimes when copying data that the drive seems to 'bottle neck' and crawl along at certain stages of the process.

Any thoughts guys?

Thanks.

 

[rx78]

Hi,

I've recently bit the bullet and installed OpenCore/Big Sur on a new NVME setup but I'm finding the whole setup 'laggy' to say the least and seeing the beachball far too often when opening apps (adobe apps, safari etc).

Don't get me wrong, the system is still useable just not as snappy as Catalina with exactly the same setup minus the NVME drive.

My speed tests for the NVME setup are around 1500/1500 which from what I understand is correct.

My graphic card uses slot 1 (and covers slot 2 due to its height), I have the NVME controller in slot 3 and a USB 3 card in slot 4. From what I have read on here this should all be okay?

Also, I notice sometimes when copying data that the drive seems to 'bottle neck' and crawl along at certain stages of the process.

Any thoughts guys?

Thanks.

I've had the same lagging and beach balling with big sur on NVME (usually when opening appa) but it works great with Win 10 on NVME. Couldn't figure out why though.

 

[Lance Nanek]

Could just be a Big Sur thing. The place I work has only rolled it out to a couple beta tester computers, citing performance issues.

 

[mediabunker]

Yes, I'm trying to figure if it's an OpeCore tweak(s) that's required or Big Sur itself. Half tempted to reinstall Catalina on a different drive and use Open Core with that - at least that would rule out any NVME issues.

 

[ldstern10]

I've got a pair of 7104s running in my 7,1. And they've been fantastic. Rock solid, and completely silent.

I had the 7101As before, and the fan noise irritated me, but I didn't quite trust the heatsink by itself. The 7104 seems to solve all of those issues. I think you'll enjoy yours a lot.

Speaking of Highpoint controller endorsements though, has anyone tried the 8x M.2 7140 yet? I need to add yet more NVME storage to my machine (10TB just doesn't cut it for active projects these days apparently ). Would love to hear if anyone's taken the punt, seems to be the only 8x NVME board on the market.

Do you know what is the difference between the 7104 and the 7204. I can’t tell from the HP website. Thanks for any information re the difference.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^The difference is:



Lou

 

[ldstern10]

^^^^The difference is:

View attachment 1747642 View attachment 1747643 View attachment 1747644

Lou

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[NO_H2O]

I have a 2009 4,1 flashed to 5,1 loaded Opencore/Mojave with a MSI Radeon 570 graphics card. I installed a Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIE card with a Samsung 970 EVO 500gig drive. It showed up as an external, I formatted it and use Carbon Coby to clone my SSD with a fresh Mojave install. Shut it down and restarted. It still shows the drive as external. What have I done incorrectly?

 

[trifero]

I have a 2009 4,1 flashed to 5,1 loaded Opencore/Mojave with a MSI Radeon 570 graphics card. I installed a Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIE card with a Samsung 970 EVO 500gig drive. It showed up as an external, I formatted it and use Carbon Coby to clone my SSD with a fresh Mojave install. Shut it down and restarted. It still shows the drive as external. What have I done incorrectly?

Nothing.

 

[NO_H2O]

Thanks. A bit more reading and I would have known. Newbey.

 

[trifero]

Thanks. A bit more reading and I would have known. Newbey.

My pleasure. And welcome.

 

[TRV]

Hi, has anyone experience with the new Samsung 980 NVMe SSDs? I want to buy one and use it with my Kryo M2 Card in a cMP 5.1.

On the list in the Wiki there is only the 970. But the 980 ist cheaper than the 970 ... so i want to spent the money in more capacity

I got my 980 yesterday and it works in my 5.1

 

[tripmusic]

Hi, just reporting that I've got a 1TB KIOXIA XG6 (w/passive heatsink) working fine in an MP 5,1 with a dummy Startech card I had laying around with an NVMe slot. I'm getting about 1500/1400 MB/s read/write. Warm idle temp was 40C and after writing about 160GB of data it didn't get much higher.

This is my first taste of NVMe, so it was quite a difference coming from SATA3 speeds. I'm just using this as an audio sample library drive, so it won't really see a lot of work writing. But seeing this speed is making me want more and I really could use another NVMe as a DAW session drive. I may have to look more into switch cards, but they seem to be pretty pricey.

 

[Golgafrincham]

Thank you all for collating this information and keeping it up to date. I have lurked on this thread for quite a while prior to taking the plunge, I have recently installed a Samsung 970 Evo Plus in my MacPro6,1 together with the EKWB heatsink.

For the record the SSD came with the latest macOS compatible firmware, my MacPro6,1 was running 136.0.0.0.0 firmware and Catalina and my initial experiment with Internet recovery mode was successful, firmware updated and Big Sur installed fine. To transfer my installation I actually swapped back to original internal Apple SSD and the Samsung in a Sabrent USB3 NVMe external adapter, upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur and then use Carbon Copy Cloner / ASR having had a so so experience attempting to use the migration app from my backup.

In retrospect I think a cooler running NVMe SSD would cause me less mental stress, iStat Menus is regularly showing ~47C for the SSD with light work load of me browsing the web and reading email and with the iStat Menus "medium" fan profile manually selected, just a little too close to 50C for my liking. Is there a "better" heatsink option available or would I be better off changing my choice of NVMe SSD?

Edit: I should add, I purchased the 970 Evo Plus 1TB last June, it has just what with life getting in the way I parked it on a shelf.