Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

[spacec0w]

That's "safe", yes. The only thing I've noticed with my tests is that certain drives, the Adata, Western digital and HP among them, seem to very quick to jump to temperatures that, if sustained, would be dangerous long-term (around 100 for most of these CPUs as far as I know). Unfortunately in Spain I haven't been able to locate the Sabrent Rocket which also could be fine from what I read here.

But with average use this would probably never be a problem with the main issue being the annoyance of hearing the fan pretty often.

Does anyone know if the sabrent Rocket 512 would be much cooler than my SX8200Pro and a better choice? I only have until today to exchange it. They are the same price on amazon.

I’m getting around 70-75c with my SX8200Pro browsing while on YouTube HD. Are these temperatures normal/safe?

I never checked the temperatures before the upgrade, so I don’t know what I was getting beforehand. When I bought my SX8200Pro I thought I was buying the non pro version.

 

[nicho]

First, 760p is better than 660p. But 660p is far cheaper than 760P.If you have any question about the performance of 660p, I recommend you to watch Linus tech tip (here is the link https://www.bilibili.com/video/av35908680). 660p or 760p or any other nvme ssd are better than the original one in speed ,And I think 660p is enough for me.

I believe 760P is better than 660p dealing with the hot issue according to the Intel advertisement.

Maybe something was up with the test on page 1... time to weigh up what I can get for the price but I’m less bothered about capacity (with modern macs having SSDs that cant be replaced I probably shouldn’t get used to having more than 512GB onboard let alone more than 1TB else it’ll cost me a fortune to replace this computer...)

Thanks for your tips. If only Sintech shipped to China so I wouldn’t have to worry about which adapter to get from taobao to not end up with a dud.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

Maybe something was up with the test on page 1... time to weigh up what I can get for the price but I’m less bothered about capacity (with modern macs having SSDs that cant be replaced I probably shouldn’t get used to having more than 512GB onboard let alone more than 1TB else it’ll cost me a fortune to replace this computer...)

Thanks for your tips. If only Sintech shipped to China so I wouldn’t have to worry about which adapter to get from taobao to not end up with a dud.

CAN you shop in the US (or on US websites?)
IF yes, then you should start comparing prices on:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/
and look at the various prices for SSDs - currently HP EX 920 1TB (same as Intel 760P and Adata SX8200 non pro) are a great deal - daily deals are posted.
also, you may setup an alert on slickdeals.net and just put in NVME SSD as an alert - lots of stuff comes up all the time.

Lastly, Sintech has a Chinese website, as evidenced by the .cn ending of the website.
They are based in Shezhen

You mean they only serve Europe and the US/Canada market and don't sell to domestic market??
They would HAVE to sell something very similar via Taobao. Why don't you contact them and ask? (You may have done so already??)

 

[nicho]

CAN you shop in the US (or on US websites?)
IF yes, then you should start comparing prices on:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/
and look at the various prices for SSDs - currently HP EX 920 1TB (same as Intel 760P and Adata SX8200 non pro) are a great deal - daily deals are posted.
also, you may setup an alert on slickdeals.net and just put in NVME SSD as an alert - lots of stuff comes up all the time.

Lastly, Sintech has a Chinese website, as evidenced by the .cn ending of the website.
They are based in Shezhen

You mean they only serve Europe and the US/Canada market and don't sell to domestic market??
They would HAVE to sell something very similar via Taobao. Why don't you contact them and ask? (You may have done so already??)

I don't have any kind of base in the US, and ordering stuff directly into China can be a bit of a minefield. Certain things have import limits that you just can't breach (not even by paying a tarriff on them!) - I nearly had £120 of shoes turned away by customs.

At my feet I've got a bunch of cable boxes i was planning to use to reorganise my desk area... they've been there for 6 months+ now so i should probably stop dragging my feet and just get on with doing something, even if immediate availability (delivery in the next couple of days) is a tiny bit more expensive.

Someone earlier in this thread contacted sintech and got a snarky response. I could try myself, but looking at their parent website it looks like their factory is in a bonded zone and their sales office is in HK. for financial purposes, they probably aren't a Chinese company.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

I have upgraded my Macbook pro 13" Early 2015 with Sabrent rocket 512gb ssd and Long black sintech adapter. All the installation process seems ok.

1. No Sleep or Wake up issues.
2. No Battery drain issues.
3. No SSD nor CPU temperature raising issues.
4. Only one issue the write speed of the ssd is 590MB/s and write 1300MB/s, i am aware of my model has Pcie 2.0 bottleneck x4 lanes and 5GT/s speed. but write speed seems to be bit worrying. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

what are the write speeds with the original OEM SSD?
I have that same model (early 2015 13 inch rMBP)
Can you also run amorphous disk benchmark on it using:
5 runs and 1GB size of testing?

Here is my benchmark of that same early 2015 13 inch which is 95 percent full.
This is with the original Apple OEM drive.
You should be getting double the Write speeds (unless the 512GB Sabrent has different specs than the 1TB one)l
Compare the sequential reads and writes with yours

 

[nicho]

and look at the various prices for SSDs - currently HP EX 920 1TB (same as Intel 760P and Adata SX8200 non pro) are a great deal - daily deals are posted.

Thanks for the tip on this one though - it's a little cheaper than the equivalent intel 760p out here.

 

[amogha]

I am sorry, if I am repeating question again. I read as many pages as I can. But couldn't find answer either in this thread or online.

I have refurbished Macbook Pro 13", Late 2013.

I had 512 GB PCIe drive. I had Mojave installed for few months before hard drive was crashed. When I was searching about buying SSD off-the-market, I saw this option about using NVMe drives.

As my hard drive itself is crashed, has anyone tried directly changing drive and installing a fresh Mac OS, has it worked for anyone?

I did not upgrade firmware / bootRom specially, I am not sure if OS upgrade took care of it automatically. Do I need to upgrade bootRom before I can use drive to install Mac OS? If yes, can I upgrade it using network recovery mode?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Amogha.

 

[Macbookproa1502]

what are the write speeds with the original OEM SSD?
I have that same model (early 2015 13 inch rMBP)
Can you also run amorphous disk benchmark on it using:
5 runs and 1GB size of testing?

Here is my benchmark of that same early 2015 13 inch which is 95 percent full.
This is with the original Apple OEM drive.
You should be getting double the Write speeds (unless the 512GB Sabrent has different specs than the 1TB one)l
Compare the sequential reads and writes with yours

Original apple SSD was the same speed, as soon as i restart the macbook and do test the speed shows 1348 MB/s write and 1350MB/s read but after 2 or 3 tests the write speed stays at 600MB/s.

 

[hjdddzaahjdddzaa]

Maybe something was up with the test on page 1... time to weigh up what I can get for the price but I’m less bothered about capacity (with modern macs having SSDs that cant be replaced I probably shouldn’t get used to having more than 512GB onboard let alone more than 1TB else it’ll cost me a fortune to replace this computer...)

Thanks for your tips. If only Sintech shipped to China so I wouldn’t have to worry about which adapter to get from taobao to not end up with a dud.

I finally choosed this adaptor, hope that would help you.
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.17a52e8d2qt315&id=592214411198&_u=r1veaiqv0cdc
The seller said it's more reliable than other one.
And this is the best seller that has also been considered(99.5% positive review).
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...BvXOE&id=562388724120&ns=1&abbucket=20#detail

Since the total price of these two is much cheaper than sintech, you can buy both of them and see which one is better.
I believe sintech adaptors are made from a factory in Shenzhen or anywhere in south China, so the performance of them should be alike.

 

[hjdddzaahjdddzaa]

Maybe something was up with the test on page 1... time to weigh up what I can get for the price but I’m less bothered about capacity (with modern macs having SSDs that cant be replaced I probably shouldn’t get used to having more than 512GB onboard let alone more than 1TB else it’ll cost me a fortune to replace this computer...)

Thanks for your tips. If only Sintech shipped to China so I wouldn’t have to worry about which adapter to get from taobao to not end up with a dud.

Another thing is that I believe you should choose a larger SSD since the performance of SSD drop significantly while the storage being filled(see the video I post before),and every SSD has this problem.So do not fill up a SSD anytime.

 

[Audit13]

I am sorry, if I am repeating question again. I read as many pages as I can. But couldn't find answer either in this thread or online.

I have refurbished Macbook Pro 13", Late 2013.

I had 512 GB PCIe drive. I had Mojave installed for few months before hard drive was crashed. When I was searching about buying SSD off-the-market, I saw this option about using NVMe drives.

As my hard drive itself is crashed, has anyone tried directly changing drive and installing a fresh Mac OS, has it worked for anyone?

I did not upgrade firmware / bootRom specially, I am not sure if OS upgrade took care of it automatically. Do I need to upgrade bootRom before I can use drive to install Mac OS? If yes, can I upgrade it using network recovery mode?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Amogha.

Upgrading the os should have updated the bootrom.

You can install the nvme SSD and fresh install of Mojave.

Internet recovery should work with the nvme drive.

 

[jackqueenking]

First, 760p is better than 660p. But 660p is far cheaper than 760P.If you have any question about the performance of 660p, I recommend you to watch Linus tech tip (here is the link https://www.bilibili.com/video/av35908680). 660p or 760p or any other nvme ssd are better than the original one in speed ,And I think 660p is enough for me.

I believe 760P is better than 660p dealing with the hot issue according to the Intel advertisement.

The 660p is a QLC drive, and as gilles_polyysoft stated (Which confirms intel's advertisement) the 660p has a QLC implementation such that it needs to write back the contents of whatever you're copying/writing back to the SLC part of the drive. In certain scenarios, you can experience SSD writes for up to 30 minutes after the original data transfer because the SLC part is extremely slow. It also doesn't help that the read/write speeds are slower in the 660p. You might even get worse battery life.

 

[nicho]

I finally choosed this adaptor, hope that would help you.
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.17a52e8d2qt315&id=592214411198&_u=r1veaiqv0cdc
The seller said it's more reliable than other one.
And this is the best seller that has also been considered(99.5% positive review).
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...BvXOE&id=562388724120&ns=1&abbucket=20#detail

Since the total price of these two is much cheaper than sintech, you can buy both of them and see which one is better.
I believe sintech adaptors are made from a factory in Shenzhen or anywhere in south China, so the performance of them should be alike.

I'm going to try the second one I think. Or possibly wait a week or two and see how you get on with the first

The 660p is a QLC drive, and as gilles_polyysoft stated (Which confirms intel's advertisement) the 660p has a QLC implementation such that it needs to write back the contents of whatever you're copying/writing back to the SLC part of the drive. In certain scenarios, you can experience SSD writes for up to 30 minutes after the original data transfer because the SLC part is extremely slow. It also doesn't help that the read/write speeds are slower in the 660p. You might even get worse battery life.

That's me definitely going for the 760p or the HP EX920 then.

 

[Italia321]

I have upgraded my Macbook pro 15" late 2014 with Adata sx8200pro ssd and long black sintech adapter.
I make the HW test with "D" and have the errore VDH002. What is the reason?

 

[Audit13]

I have upgraded my Macbook pro 15" late 2014 with Adata sx8200pro ssd and long black sintech adapter.
I make the HW test with "D" and have the errore VDH002. What is the reason?

According to the code, VDH002 indicates that "There may be an issue with a storage device. " This may be triggered because of the non-Apple SSD.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203747

 

[Italia321]

Thank you for replay
[doublepost=1558969960][/doublepost]I change two adapter and the error is still there

 

[halexber]

That's "safe", yes. The only thing I've noticed with my tests is that certain drives, the Adata, Western digital and HP among them, seem to very quick to jump to temperatures that, if sustained, would be dangerous long-term (around 100 for most of these CPUs as far as I know). Unfortunately in Spain I haven't been able to locate the Sabrent Rocket which also could be fine from what I read here.

But with average use this would probably never be a problem with the main issue being the annoyance of hearing the fan pretty often.

Look for it in Amazon, I bought it there. here is the link for 512gb, but there are other capacities.
https://www.amazon.es/Sabrent-Unida...2&qid=1558982287&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

 

[Audit13]

Thank you for replay
[doublepost=1558969960][/doublepost]I change two adapter and the error is still there

I believe the error will always be present unless you have a 2015 Air or 2015 Pro with an acceptable nvme drive. If everything is working properly, I would not worry about the error code.

I am using a short, green Sintech with an Intel 600p in a 2015 13" Air and short, black Sintech with an HP ex900 in a 2017 Air. Neither combination gives any error when running the built-in diagnostics.

 

[1146331]

Hello

I finally received everything, I even order the soic clip
on the other hand I still do not understand where to find the 2015 efi rom that corespond to my macbook Pro (Retina, 15 pouces, mi-2014)

Nom du modèle : MacBook Pro

Identifiant du modèle : MacBookPro11,2

Nom du processeur : Intel Core i7

Vitesse du processeur : 2,2 GHz

Nombre de processeurs : 1

Nombre total de cœurs : 4

Cache de niveau 2 (par cœur) : 256 Ko

Cache de niveau 3 : 6 Mo

Mémoire : 16 Go

Version de la ROM de démarrage : 151.0.0.0.0


and my English is bad, I have trouble understanding
I would like a simple explanation to know how to extract the rom and patch it with the rom custom
a shame that Gilles AUREJAC @gilles_polysoft
do not answer on twitter because it would be easier for me being French too ^^


thank you for your explanation and your help

Message me on the side, I'll send you a zip file that has pictures of what to do as well as a RTF document. It should be easy to follow.

Your English is much better than most Americans [and Englishmen], so don't worry!

 

[RedTomato]

Hi all,

I'd like to ask you what's the consensus on pmset now? The first post in this thread recommends only

 sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 standby 0 autopoweroff 0

but many people are suggesting:

 sudo pmset -a standby 0 hibernate mode 25

Different people want different things from their MacBooks so maybe we should give examples of different pmsettings.

Can we give a range of different pmset settings in the first post and explain what the different outcomes / problems are?

 

[Tardegard]

Just installed ad aData 512gb on my 2015 MacBook Air 11", put the little heat sink and stuffed it in.
Write speed improved dramatically by 100% and read by 50%. Booting too is twice faster now.
Not feeling any particular heat now but, somehow, I can tell the battery has lost two thirds of its capacity.
When it said to have 9 hours of life (with previous disk) are reduced to only 3 now.
And this only aspect is DEEPLY disappointing.
Any help about it?

 

[Skypalace]

Look for it in Amazon, I bought it there. here is the link for 512gb, but there are other capacities.
https://www.amazon.es/Sabrent-Unida...2&qid=1558982287&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

I just bought the 2TB Rocket on Amazon, haven't installed yet, saved 13% using the code from this website:
https://slickdeals.net/f/13084915-s...15-2tb-260-external-1tb-150-2tb-300-much-more

 

[macgeek01]

It's true that late 2013 to Mid 2014 iMacs (iMac14,1 iMac 14,2 and iMac 14,3) do have a compressed NVMe DXE driver and crash when waking from sleep on a NVMe drive, I have also get the same behaviour.
But this is not the case with the iMac 15,1 and later : they do have the full, uncompressed NVMe driver at least on the BootRom from Mojave, and all the iMac 5K I have tested, when they have their BootRom up to date, behave properly in hibernation.

This is true of Apple NVME but not 3rd party NVME. I have a 27” Late 2015 iMac that works fine with Apple NVME but unable to sleep without crashing with my 2TB Sabrent Rocket. Hibernation is fine so this is a different issue then the DXE driver. Many others have the same issue with iMacs.

 

[coen22]

Hey,

I've got a MacBook Pro 15" mid 2015 base model without GPU and I'd like to upgrade to a 1TB drive.
I'm trying to decide between:

1. Sabrent Rocket
2. Intel 760p
3. Samsung 970 Evo (Pro)
4. WD Black SN750

From the Sabrent I already saw that I performed very well, but I'd like to know how they compare in terms of heat, power and speeds. I especially like to hear about experiences with the Intel 760p. WD Black SN750 seems to have good speeds, but I'm worried it'll be too hot and draw too much power. If there's any better suggestions that'd be great!

Thanks in advance

My current speeds (on a pretty full disk)

 

[mac-Alex]

Hi all,

I have base MacBookPro11,4 2015 15" and recently installed Sabrent Rocket 1Tb drive. So far (a few days) got no issues with sleep, booting and even I used CCC and cloned macOS from old drive to one partition

I've run AmorphousDiskMark and here comes the question - is this random 4k QD32 speed ok for Sabrent? One more strange thing - the bigger size (100Mb->4Gb), the slower speed is, bench for 4Gb even stuck for 20 mins. Old drive (Apple, 512gb but from the MacBook13.3 2014) gives me 640read/710write but about 50Mb/s for 4k QD32 random write with 1Gb, the same speed with sabrent is 16-27Mb (27Mb/s on first run, 16Mb/s after a few benchmarks, may be due to the temperature?)
I've attached a few screenshots (they are for different volumes, because I wanted to eliminate file system factor - it looks like APFS is slower for random read/write). The ones with 4k qd32 > 20Mb/s are for 50/100/500Mb), for 1Gb it is 16-27Mb/s