MP 7,1 Sonnet M.2 4x4 Pcie Card New Version?

[JAlvarino]

Hi everyone

As the Sonnet is available again, im adding it to my mp 7.1 my question is, the card is the same as before or is there any change i should be aware of as i order it?

As i live in Spain, im going to order it here: https://www.alternate.es/Sonnet/FUS...-2-Interno-Tarjeta-RAID/html/product/1564486?

Looks like its all the same product code FUS-SSD-4x4-E3 but wanted to be sure.

Im gonna add 4 samsungs 2tb 970 evo Plus

Thanks Everyone!

 

[lwatso]

hey, did you get this in the end? I am now looking for a solution like this. Can I ask you some questions?

 

[JAlvarino]

I asked Sonnet costumer service and all versions in the market right now are the same, they just run out of stock and made more.
Feel free to ask me any question

 

[lwatso]

great! I am just wondering if you're able to RAID these and what the performance is like? I have seen on their website that it's possible just not sure if its a PC only thing.

 

[JAlvarino]

Many post in this forum about that, also videos on youtube. Yes, you can RAID them, thats my idea. To have a 8tb raid with speed 7000mb/s read & write.
Check this video:

 

[lwatso]

I also saw a Highpoint card for a similar price, except if you get 2 of them it can link together to get 2x the size AND the speed, reaching 28,000mb/s!

 

[profdraper]

I had the Highpoint, dreadful reliability problems, tech support was hopeless. Returned the card for refund & went with a Sonnet. Never looked back: zero issues, excellent performance, quite. 4 x Samsung EVO plus.

 

[lwatso]

I had the Highpoint, dreadful reliability problems, tech support was hopeless. Returned the card for refund & went with a Sonnet. Never looked back: zero issues, excellent performance, quite. 4 x Samsung EVO plus.

thanks for this! I think that’s solidified my purchase decision.

I’m also after a smaller (probably single m2) card. Any recommendations for one of those?

 

[profdraper]

thanks for this! I think that’s solidified my purchase decision.

I’m also after a smaller (probably single m2) card. Any recommendations for one of those?

So happens I'm using an old PM961 256GB in a no name riser for an Alt Boot drive. Running that in the M.2 slot of a Thunderbay 6. No issues, works as it should. There's some other threads in this forum about cheap single risers for one of the MP x8 slots.

 

[Schismz]

Hi everyone

As the Sonnet is available again, im adding it to my mp 7.1 my question is, the card is the same as before or is there any change i should be aware of as i order it?

As i live in Spain, im going to order it here: https://www.alternate.es/Sonnet/FUS...-2-Interno-Tarjeta-RAID/html/product/1564486?

Looks like its all the same product code FUS-SSD-4x4-E3 but wanted to be sure.

Im gonna add 4 samsungs 2tb 970 evo Plus

Thanks Everyone!

With that exact setup I get an average of 6.5-7GB/s write, 8-8.5GB/s read on 8TB RAID0:

 

[Theophilos]

Hello,

I have two of these cards in PCIe slots 4 and 5. One of them has 4 x 1 TB Samsung Evo Plus drives in a RAID 0 array. The other has 2 x 2 TB in a RAID 0 and 2 x 1 TB being used as separate backup and scratch disks; they are also Samsung Evo Plus.

Here is my performance on both of them; the faster performance is from the Sonnet with 4 x 1 TB drives and the slower is from the Sonnet with 2 x 2 TB RAID. I'm sure the slower performance is caused by using only 2 of the drives in a RAID 0.

 

[Schismz]

Does RAID0 across both cards increase speed?

 

[Schismz]

Hmmm. New "new" Sonnett seems to have gone fanless (improved because they can't source part anymore, or massive advance in thermal dyn4micS!?!?!?) It kinda looks an awful lot like they just went, "hey, let's skip the whole shroud and fan thing and call it a day." ?

Sonnet M.2 4x4 Silent PCIe Card (Four M.2 NVMe SSD slots • Add your own SSDs up to 32TB)

Four M.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 3.0 x16 card. Silent operation. Add your own SSDs up to 16TB. Devotes four lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to support full performance to every SSD.

www.sonnetstore.com

 

[orytek]

My Sonnet just arrived today from BH and of course it is the older version with fans.
Now I'm trying to decide if I should return it unopened and order the fanless from Sonnet.

 

[bsbeamer]

Worth noting, Sonnet is differentiating the part numbers FUS-SSD-4X4-E3 (old) vs FUS-SSD-4X4-E3S (new/silent).

They have had very minor changes in product PN's before and it has led to massive confusion at resellers and retailers, most recently with the eGFX Breakaway Box eGPU that supported 650W (750W equivalent) with 100W PD charging. GPU-650WOC-TB3 and the non OC model co-existed for a few months/weeks before it was entirely replaced with the OC model.

Ordering direct from Sonnet for the first 2-3 months is the only way to "guarantee" you get the latest model.

 

[Schismz]

The question would be, does the new model actually keep the drives cooler or can they no longer source the parts for the previous shroud/fan. It literally looks exactly the same, with same heatsinks, and the shroud and fan not placed on the card.

Typical temps I get on SSDs in 7,1:

- Apple's glorious T2-locked SSDs win by a long-shot and hover in the 70s F almost always.
- Sonnet with fan * 4 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB = 98-105 F on average.
- KryoM.2 EVO w Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB = 105-120 F on average (and this is a single stick/blade, in what amounts to one massive heatsink with thermal insulators).

- TB3 Connect to Samsung X5 2TB = all over the place. External enclosure sitting on top of MP when in use, hovers between 100F - 120+ F. Drive gets pretty warm when in use. It will eventually throttle.

Takeaway: Other than Apple's own SSDs, the Sonnet with fan is keeping 4 SSDs cooler than the KryoM.2 EVO with only a single blade and big & heavy heatsink. FWIW I cannot hear the fan on the Sonnet at all.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to see what the temps are like on the "new" Sonnet without the fan.

 

[jasonmvp]

Typical temps I get on SSDs in 7,1:

- Apple's glorious T2-locked SSDs win by a long-shot and hover in the 70s F almost always.
- Sonnet with fan * 4 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB = 98-105 F on average.
- KryoM.2 EVO w Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB = 105-120 F on average (and this is a single stick/blade, in what amounts to one massive heatsink with thermal insulators).

Of course a spinning fan is going to cool the drives better than not. But for what it's worth, none of your temps are even remotely close to "dangerous". In fact the EVO Plus' "error" alert kicks off at 80*C. You've got some wiggle room there.

FWIW I cannot hear the fan on the Sonnet at all.

And that's a person-by-person thing. Several folks here said they couldn't hear the HighPoint fan either. I simply don't know how they don't hear it. It's obnoxiously loud to me.

 

[Warbands]

I had the Highpoint, dreadful reliability problems, tech support was hopeless. Returned the card for refund & went with a Sonnet. Never looked back: zero issues, excellent performance, quite. 4 x Samsung EVO plus.

What speed are you seeing from your Sonnet with 4 x Samsung Evo Plus units? Also did you use Apple's own RAID within Disk Utility, or did you use SoftRAID's product?

 

[mBox]

What speed are you seeing from your Sonnet with 4 x Samsung Evo Plus units? Also did you use Apple's own RAID within Disk Utility, or did you use SoftRAID's product?

Oooh I am curious on that ADU vs SoftRAID question too.
I used Apple Disk Utility and only getting 5K average both ways

 

[Peter Fitskie]

Sonnet fanless 4x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB RAID0 (via Apple Disk Utility).
Reasonable speed and temp.

 

[kennyman]

Sonnet fanless 4x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB RAID0 (via Apple Disk Utility).
Reasonable speed and temp.

Sorry for asking this question, looks like the fanless version of the Sonnet card works better than the fan-version, cause your temps are much lower. Am I right?

 

[cobra521]

Kenny,

I have two of the fanless Sonnet cards. With 4 x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus running as JBOD I get 47C temps. The other Sonnet fanless card has 4 x 2TB HP EX950 running as JBOD also, I get 34C.

Tom

 

[Warbands]

Has anyone gotten super low speeds all of a sudden. I have had to reboot a few times to get my speed back to 4GB a second, at worse I have seen 300MB a sec out of the blue, but a reboot resolved it. I also tried my card on a PC and saw similar behaviors.

 

[LeonPro]

What’s your memory card and computer specs?

 

[Warbands]

PC is a i9 7940x 14 core on an ASUS R6E motherboard. The Mac is a Mac Pro 12 core 2019.
I am using 2 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB.

I wiped the stripe raid 0 and reformatted for each OS. The slowdown happens on both systems. Sometimes after a reboot it will go from 4 or 5GB a sec down to 300MB a second. This can happen anytime, I don't even need to be working from the drive. Most of the time it works well, it is just annoying.