SSD upgrade for 3.1 Mac Pro...revisited!

[flyman]

Hi Everyone,

We the time has come for me to finally upgrade some components as my machine is now really labouring!
A while back on another thread I was asking how would be best to put SSD's in and one of the recommendations was to place this Icy Dock in:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?tag=macr0e-21&field-keywords=Icy+Dock+MB324SP-B
and to use this PCIe Adapter:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Syba-Marve...00AZ9T264/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

This suggestion was as a cheaper alternative to using either the Apricorn Velocity Duo x2 or the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus.
Details on this thread...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/5-25-bay-to-4-x-2-5-hdd.1951746/

My question is, can anyone suggest any other PCIe adapter card that I could use as all the reviews are Windows based and i'm just a bit concerned of running into problems given that I'm not too good with the techie stuff!?

 

[hwojtek]

Nonsense. Plug it into the existing SATA port in the backplane, you won't notice real-life difference for a boot drive.

 

[flyman]

By the backplane do you mean onto the motherboard?
If thats the case then surely I'll only get 3gb throughput at best !!!???

 

[hwojtek]

You will saturate (make the best use of) all the bandwidth available and trust me - you will not get significantly higher real-life figures with an additional SATA controller. If you want fast - go for an M2 adapter and an M2 AHCI SSD, in some cases you will top 1.2 Gbytes/sec sustained transfers.
Best of all, you can hook up the drive right away to the motherboard and in case you fancied it, later add any compatible and bootable PCIe SATA3 controller, re-plug the drive, job done, computer starts just like before. Why bother when you have a solution right in the box?

 

[flyman]

Ok I've got the picture so to start with I'm going to order 2 of these (for booting OS X & Windows 10)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product...act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
And 2 of these...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product...act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Can you recommend a fast & quiet external hard drive?

 

[Fuchal]

I have a 1TB SSD in an Icy Dock plugged in to the onboard SATA. I can tell you that I max out around 250-270MB/s, but I can't perceive any difference loading applications between this computer, my 2013 Mac Pro, and my MacBook Pro (which runs 1.3TB/s). It boots quickly and was a dirt cheap solution.

 

[flyman]

Can you remember which Icy Dock you use?

 

[Fuchal]

I have two of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002Z2QDNE/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Working perfectly since 2014