SM951 Alternative for Mac Pro 5.1

[irked]

Auggie has said he already owns one 2TB Samsung, so his costs would only include 1 drive and 1 card.

 

[Filin]

Thanks for the info, but that $525 is for a single 2TB SSD right?

Of course

Auggie said $790 for 4TB (2x 2TB), and that's including the $140 Apricon card! So, only $650 for 4TB, $325 for a single 2TB SSD!

He said "I already have an 850 EVO 2TB SSD" and made a mistake in the calculations
$325 for a single 850EVO 2Tb is too good to be true for nowadays, maybe next year!

 

[Auggie]

Auggie has said he already owns one 2TB Samsung, so his costs would only include 1 drive and 1 card.

Yep, I already have 1 850 2TB, so I just need to get another, which is $650 (no tax, no shipping charge) from B&H, to get me to 4TB. Since I would RAID the pair, I want to stick to exact same drive.

But if you are comparing apples to apples, 2TB of 951's will cost almost 2K with a 4-slot PCIe card, whereas an 850 2TB SSD will only cost $650. A hundred or two more to get a PCIe card to bypass stock SATA ports.

 

[Filin]

But if you are comparing apples to apples, 2TB of 951's will cost almost 2K with a 4-slot PCIe card, whereas an 850 2TB SSD will only cost $650. A hundred or two more to get a PCIe card to bypass stock SATA ports.

True, but 4 x SM951 with Amfeltec adapter will give you SEQUENTIAL speeds about 5000Mb/s!!!
SATA 850 EVO gives only 500Mb/s, its 10 times slower.

http://barefeats.com/hard210.html

 

[h9826790]

Of course


He said "I already have an 850 EVO 2TB SSD" and made a mistake in the calculations
$325 for a single 850EVO 2Tb is too good to be true for nowadays, maybe next year!

I see, that makes much more sense now.

 

[Auggie]

True, but 4 x SM951 with Amfeltec adapter will give you SEQUENTIAL speeds about 5000Mb/s!!!
SATA 850 EVO gives only 500Mb/s, its 10 times slower.

That would be a schweet setup to have, no doubt! Ah, but for my use, I don't have anything that this speed demon can connect to that can get anywhere near that speed; all my data devices are either on the stock SATA II plugs, the stock USB 2.0 ports, or to uber-slow NAS's on 1GigE network.

It's like these new high HP muscle-cars being offered by Dodge and Ford: the 757 horse Challenger Demon and the mind-boggling 1200 HP twin-turbo Mustang out of Lebanon Ford. I would love to have those monster muscle cars in my garage, but where the heck can I drive it legally to be able to put to use all that power to the pavement! A few expensive runs down a commercial drag strip for some good times, but the rest of its life they'll just be idling in traffic or cruising within tolerable speed limits.

So, I get by with my relatively sedate SuperCrew F-150 that does me more good and is more utilitarian for my lifestyle than a one-trick pony car.

Still, I can dream and drool over those specs...

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Is the general consensus here to still go for the Kingston HyperX Predators over a 2nd hand or Dell/Samsung SM951? Am looking to upgrade an OWC Accelsior boot drive in a Mac Pro 5,1 to a 512gb or 480Gb M.2 AHCI with a Lycom DT-120...

 

[Squuiid]

Is the general consensus here to still go for the Kingston HyperX Predators over a 2nd hand or Dell/Samsung SM951? Am looking to upgrade an OWC Accelsior boot drive in a Mac Pro 5,1 to a 512gb or 480Gb M.2 AHCI with a Lycom DT-120...

Depends if you want a warranty. Either of those options are good ones.

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Depends if you want a warranty. Either of those options are good ones.

Thanks for that, Squuiid. Am gonna have to lean for warranty over tradition here

 

[Earl Urley]

Thanks for that, Squuiid. Am gonna have to lean for warranty over tradition here

$300 for a 512GB is a good find, but I have been burned a couple of times with them advertising 'new' when SMART Utility tells me there's been 30 GB of writes to the drive. You're better off with something that's at least still probably being produced. Also supplies of reasonably priced 512GB SM951's look to be near nil at this point.

If you purchase a HyperX Predator, can you let us know what the manufacturing date on it winds up as? If it's within the past six months that can at least help us tell if it's still in production, rather than stock that's been wasting away since it was announced..

There's still likely a ****-ton of AHCI only PC's out there they need to support..

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Will keep you all posted, should be here in a week or so. Went with the Predator 480Gb + Lycom.

 

[Baunkjaer]

Are the Kingston HyperX Predators still a viable alternative (https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/consumer/shpm2280p2)? The reviews on Amazon seem to indicate that they are. I'm toying with the idea of a 960GB...

Thanks,
John

It works like a charm in my 5,1.

 

[dlwg]

Does anyone know anything about being able to use this in Mac Pro instead of Amfeltec?

By the way, there is a person on this forum that loaded Windows 10 from NVMe in 2013 Mac through changing original EFI: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-3#post-24968772

Clearly some of the older hardware is capable of booting from the official Apple NVMe drives which tells me that select models that were produced later contain the necessary EFI firmware that allows them to boot from the NVMe drive. If someone is able to or has the necessary tools to make a complete firmware dump of a newer Mac that is either able to boot an aftermarket or official Apple NVMe drive, I can do some analysis and compare it with the EFI of other Macs.

This looks very promising!