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

[Antonnn]

The new Sintech revision c also has this new design that covers the pins.
I think it might be slightly taller? I was able to close the back cover but I could see a little bulge on the top right corner. Nothing major but it was there.

I have a rMBP 13 2015 and I got the A-Data drive. My write speed doubled.

Battery drain over night was 14%. A little high, but hopefully it will get back to normal.

My concern is that it’s not the indexing. The drive needs to stay alive during deep sleep, maybe it’s because these drives are not that power efficient and don’t have a super low power mode when in deep sleep?

 

[amenjas]

That does look much better quality. Look forward to your review. My adaptor has arrived, am waiting for the nvme drive to arrive.

installed it with Samsung 970evo 500gb on MacBook Air early 2015 ; 4gb ram. No issues till now. Battery drain during sleep was 5% in 7 hrs 30 mins. No hibernation issues. No kernel panic issues. write speed is around 1400mb/s and read speed is 1500mb/s. I did clean Mojave Mac Os install from beginning.

 

[mbosse]

installed it with Samsung 970evo 500gb on MacBook Air early 2015 ; 4gb ram. No issues till now. Battery drain during sleep was 5% in 7 hrs 30 mins. No hibernation issues. No kernel panic issues. write speed is around 1400mb/s and read speed is 1500mb/s. I did clean Mojave Mac Os install from beginning.

Looks good, encouraging news!

 

[chengjc]

Hi, did you solve the problem?
My 2014 mid mbpr 13 have the same speed in 300MB/s write - 1450MB/s read with intel 760P 256GB and Sintech type B adaptor, I tried in High Sierra or in Mojave with clean SSD and install from beginning , it is the same.
Anyone with intel 760P 256GB can get a high write speed?

Samsung EVO 970 500GB 700 MB/S write (1300 on 2015 MBP) and 1500 MB/s read (1800 on 2115 MBP)
Intel 600p 540 MB/s write - 1200 MB/s read
Intel 760p 500 MB/s write - 1500 MB/s read

 

[filand]

Sharing my set up:

• MacBook Air 11 Mid-2013
• Adapter: CY M.2 NGFF M-Key AHCI SSD to 12+16pin 2014 2015 Macbook Convert Card for A1493 A1502 A1465 A1466
• NVMe SSD: WD Black NVMe SSD (500GB)

Performance increase shown in attached images.

Things were working perfectly until this Sunday. The problem that has cropped up is that Mojave doesn't proceed once I enter the password in the login screen after a hibernation. I am able to enter the password (I can see things are still working at this point as the mouse and cursor move accordingly), but after entering the password it just hangs. I need to force power off the MacBook Air in order for it to work again.

Any suggested fixes for this?

 

[Trunkz]

Hi, did you solve the problem?
My 2014 mid mbpr 13 have the same speed in 300MB/s write - 1450MB/s read with intel 760P 256GB and Sintech type B adaptor, I tried in High Sierra or in Mojave with clean SSD and install from beginning , it is the same.
Anyone with intel 760P 256GB can get a high write speed?

Late 2013 MBPr with Sintech Rev.C adaptor and 512GB Intel 760p running Mojave. 1200/1400 read & write.

 

[ponta pon pon]

Late 2013 MBPr with Sintech Rev.C adaptor and 512GB Intel 760p running Mojave. 1200/1400 read & write.

How's it going about SSD heating and battery life?

 

[itadampf]

installed it with Samsung 970evo 500gb on MacBook Air early 2015 ; 4gb ram. No issues till now. Battery drain during sleep was 5% in 7 hrs 30 mins. No hibernation issues. No kernel panic issues. write speed is around 1400mb/s and read speed is 1500mb/s. I did clean Mojave Mac Os install from beginning.

Hi @amenjas, I am mainly a MacPro user so need a little help with two MacBook Air 2015.

1. Can you share the url of the adapter you have ordered on the sintech website?
Is it this one? http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1139.html

2. About the ssd: I am using a Samsung 970evo 500gb on my MacPro and I love it, but isn't it too hot for a thin laptop?
To put it in another way, does your Air stay at an acceptable temperature? (the Airs are used as normal laptops, browsing, email etc)

3. did you have to change some spleep/hybernate setting?

tia

 

[PowerMike G5]

Hi @amenjas, I am mainly a MacPro user so need a little help with two MacBook Air 2015.

1. Can you share the url of the adapter you have ordered on the sintech website?
Is it this one? http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1139.html

2. About the ssd: I am using a Samsung 970evo 500gb on my MacPro and I love it, but isn't it too hot for a thin laptop?
To put it in another way, does your Air stay at an acceptable temperature? (the Airs are used as normal laptops, browsing, email etc)

3. did you have to change some spleep/hybernate setting?

tia

I recently bought 2 970 EVO drives. One 2TB for my Mac Pro as a media editing drive. Another 500GB to upgrade my boot drive in my mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15". I did get much higher speeds for the MBP (average 2300/MB write & 2200/MB read), but I noticed the heat output was noticeably higher than the stock SSD in the MBP.

Based on experience, what are people's recommendations for a NVMe drive that has the lowest heat output? I feel like the 970 EVO isn't worth it as an upgrade with the added heat to the laptop.

 

[ponta pon pon]

I want to know some infomations about SSD-heating, Battery-life, Read/Write-Rate under Mojave (macOS 10.14.-) in MBPr15’ Late2013 for these 1TB NVMe SSDs listed below. (with Sintech Rev.C adaptor).

ADATA : XPG SX8200 (ASX8200NP-960GT-C)
SANDISK : exttreme pro (SDSSDXPM2-1T00-J25)
Intel : SSD 760p (SSDPEKKW010T8X1)
Intel : SSD 660p (SSDPEKNW010T8X1)
SAMSUNG : 960 EVO (M.2 MZ-V6E1T0B/IT)

 

[erudyne]

So I've spent a week or so messing around with clover in an attempt to circumvent the 2014 hibernate issue and had largely mixed results.

I managed to detect as the 15" 2015 MBP by changing my system id and I could get boot up. However, neither trackpad nor keyboard worked, so I couldn't do anything useful at that point. I probably could have had it working if I plugged in a usb keyboard/mouse at that point, but that's a worse state than lack of hibernation, so I considered it a failure.

I tried a few driver changes to see if I could work out both hibernation and get my keyboard/mouse back, but I couldn't get it to work with the limited set of things that wasn't going to brick my MBP. All c-state changes I attempted resulted in crashes (which isn't surprising) and I didn't even bother getting into trying some of the power management kexts as clover was also causing OSX to crash intermittently (roughly every other boot) even when I had no changes specified in the configuration, which I didn't think was possible.

In the process of doing this, it changed the resolution of the bootloader so that my drive icons are all tiny. I'm guessing it was when I set my system id and it assumed that I had two more inches of screen space so it calculated geometry as such. This has had no real impact beyond cosmetics and resolution is fine once I get back into OSX and OSX detects as a Mid-2014 MBP as expected.

I've now spent a while trying to figure out how to remove it. I wound up removing bootx64.efi and all the files in Boot. This fixed most of the issues, though my Windows partition disappeared from the boot options. Following the steps at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...s-denied/747c4180-7ff3-4bc2-b6cc-81e572d546df fixed that issue. The bootloader resolution is still cranked up and I'm not sure how to correct that yet, or if it's even possible without opening it up and flashing the chip. I'm curious on where that is set, but I don't think I'm going to lose sleep over it.

All things considered, it's been an experience. I've built more than a couple hackintoshes, so I was pretty comfortable with the process, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, especially not if it's your only mac/computer. I was really hoping there would be a way to circumvent the bootloader that way, but if there is, I don't think I'm going to be the one clever enough to figure it out.

Semi off-topic: I've heard people loudly screaming that clover can brick your mac if you run it there, but does anyone actually know if that's 100% true? Does it do anything permanent outside of the EFI partition? If not, I wouldn't think it would be possible for it to make it so you couldn't (worst case) just put your original hard drive back in and recover that way.

Update: Resetting NVRAM (P+R+option+command) fixed the resolution issue. I'm starting to think the answer to my question above is "no".

 

[TokMok3]

I have been reading this thread for some time. As I own a MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2015, no dGPU) that I mainly used as backup until today, I decided to give it some more usability by upgrading the SSD. From this thread, I believe the favoured way to achieve this is with the long black Sintech NGFF M.2 PCIe 2280 SSD-Card adapter. I also got an Intel 760p series 2TB SSD because this uses much less power than most other choices.

My upgrade steps (as recommended elsewhere in this thread):
1) Make a bootable USB stick with a Mojave installer (I already had Mojave on the Macbook)
2) Make a full (bootable) backup with Carbon Copy Cloner to an external HD
3) Replace the original Apple SSD with Sintech-Intel 760p combo
4) Boot from USB, initialise the new SSD with Disk Utility, then install Mojave
5) Boot from external HDD with Carbon Copy Cloner
6) Restore full system with Carbon Copy Cloner

At the end of step 6) I was notified of some read errors in 3 App containers. I deleted the affected Apps and reinstalled these. The read errors seem to be an issue with the old external HDD used.

At first I noticed some higher temperatures (compared to before before upgrade), probably caused by re-indexing the new SSD. After about 1 hour everything is back to normal.

So far everything works as I hoped it would. With the Mid 2015 model I don't expect any sleep issues, but will keep you posted in case some problems should show up (tomorrow?).

I was ready to buy a new 2018 MBP with 2TB SSD, but was reluctant to do so after all the issues the new version seems to suffer from. If the upgrade of my Mid 2015 works well, I will have saved a lot of money.

Hi,

Thank you for sharing the steps for the upgrade, I have a similar MacBook Pro as yours. What is the SSD speed (Write and Read) of your MacBook Pro after the upgrade? Any other issues that you have noticed after the SDD upgrade?

Thank You!

 

[whg]

Hi,

Thank you for sharing the steps for the upgrade, I have a similar MacBook Pro as yours. What is the SSD speed (Write and Read) of your MacBook Pro after the upgrade? Any other issues that you have noticed after the SDD upgrade?

Thank You!

The Intel 760p 2TB with long black Sintech adapter (I didn't look at the revision) in my 2015 MBP 15" has a write speed of about 1000 MB/s, the read speed is about 2800 MB/s, measured with the BlackMagic tool. When I start the measurement, the write speed goes up to about 1400 MB/s, but then settles down to the lower number. The read speed doesn't degrade that much. Others got higher write speeds. I guess the difference comes from the fill grade of the SSD? My SSD is already filled with 1.24 TB (out of 2.04 available).

 

[pcuser01]

I am thinking the same thing like you now.
OWC's case is expensive.
The problem is that the thickness of the SSD with the adapter will fit in that case.

I think you can use this one: http://eshop.sintech.cn/usb-30-28pin-nvme-ssd-adapter-for-ssd-from-2016-macbook-pro-p-1279.html
[doublepost=1540472638][/doublepost]

What do you do with the old Apple nvme SSD? I'm looking for a USB nvme m.2 enclosure to:

- test the new nvme m.2 if I run into installation problems
- to put the old Apple ngff nvme SSD in afterwards

All the cheapish ones I can find say they don't do nvme m.2 ssds.

This seems to be an Apple ngff nvme SSD to M.2 socket adaptor. It might allow moving the Apple SSD into a USB m.2 enclosure, but may not be able to close up the enclosure afterwards.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/2013-MacBook-NGFF-adapter-card/dp/B018KHJHRG

EDIT: I found a usb nvme m.2 enclosure (no idea if it can take an Apple nvme SSD even with the above adaptor):https://www.amazon.com/USB3-1-Type-C-Mobile-10Gbps-Enclosure/dp/B07H6CZRGY

it is clearly no enough space for the enclosure.

 

[TokMok3]

The Intel 760p 2TB with long black Sintech adapter (I didn't look at the revision) in my 2015 MBP 15" has a write speed of about 1000 MB/s, the read speed is about 2800 MB/s, measured with the BlackMagic tool. When I start the measurement, the write speed goes up to about 1400 MB/s, but then settles down to the lower number. The read speed doesn't degrade that much. Others got higher write speeds. I guess the difference comes from the fill grade of the SSD? My SSD is already filled with 1.24 TB (out of 2.04 available).

Thank you for the information, by your research, is there a better option than the Intel 760p SDD which gives faster (write & read) speeds and that is compatible with the MacBook Pro 15 2015?

 

[Angel NN]

I recently bought 2 970 EVO drives. One 2TB for my Mac Pro as a media editing drive. Another 500GB to upgrade my boot drive in my mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15". I did get much higher speeds for the MBP (average 2300/MB write & 2200/MB read), but I noticed the heat output was noticeably higher than the stock SSD in the MBP.

Based on experience, what are people's recommendations for a NVMe drive that has the lowest heat output? I feel like the 970 EVO isn't worth it as an upgrade with the added heat to the laptop.

Hi,
Is the heat issue from the ssd or CPUs give more heat? Have you measured what exactly cost the heat. I think may be the CPUs are much more loaded hence the good speed and the heat problem.

 

[Anden100]

I've been using the Sintech rev. C adapter with a 500gb 960 Evo for the last 7 months or so without any issues but ever since upgrading to Mojave I have run into constant lockups and kernel panics. Has anyone else had problems since upgrading to the latest version of macOS?

I'm on an early 2015 Retina MBP and getting those 500gb of storage is a great improvement in general usability. I really prefer this MacBook over any of the new stupid touch-bar ones

 

[TokMok3]

I've been using the Sintech rev. C adapter with a 500gb 960 Evo for the last 7 months or so without any issues but ever since upgrading to Mojave I have run into constant lockups and kernel panics. Has anyone else had problems since upgrading to the latest version of macOS?

I'm on an early 2015 Retina MBP and getting those 500gb of storage is a great improvement in general usability. I really prefer this MacBook over any of the new stupid touch-bar ones

What are is the reading and writing of the 960 Evo? I want to give more speed to this MacBook if possible to avoid buying a 2018 MacBook Pro. I have a (mid)2015 15 MacBook Pro.

 

[Audit13]

I've been using the Sintech rev. C adapter with a 500gb 960 Evo for the last 7 months or so without any issues but ever since upgrading to Mojave I have run into constant lockups and kernel panics. Has anyone else had problems since upgrading to the latest version of macOS?

I'm on an early 2015 Retina MBP and getting those 500gb of storage is a great improvement in general usability. I really prefer this MacBook over any of the new stupid touch-bar ones

Could it be that the MacBook needs a bootrom update?

 

[flemmingdjensen]

Hi All,

I have just reinstalled my MBP 15" MID 2015 with an EVO 970 1TB and Mojave macOS.

Everything works but Black Magic speed test surprices my though...

I get read speed just under 2200MB/S and write speed of +2500MB/S...

This is strange. I like the write speed but shouldn't the read speed be higher? And even higher than the write speed???

Who else has tried the 970 EVO and what are your findings??

BR Flemming

 

[Antonnn]

The new Sintech revision c also has this new design that covers the pins.
I think it might be slightly taller? I was able to close the back cover but I could see a little bulge on the top right corner. Nothing major but it was there.

I have a rMBP 13 2015 and I got the A-Data drive. My write speed doubled.

Battery drain over night was 14%. A little high, but hopefully it will get back to normal.

My concern is that it’s not the indexing. The drive needs to stay alive during deep sleep, maybe it’s because these drives are not that power efficient and don’t have a super low power mode when in deep sleep?

Alright. Reporting here 3 days later and sad to say that the battery life while in deep sleep (hibernation) has not improved so it's definitely not a "reindexing" issue.

Still loosing about 15% overnight and 15% during the day.

 

[PowerMike G5]

Hi All,

I have just reinstalled my MBP 15" MID 2015 with an EVO 970 1TB and Mojave macOS.

Everything works but Black Magic speed test surprices my though...

I get read speed just under 2200MB/S and write speed of +2500MB/S...

This is strange. I like the write speed but shouldn't the read speed be higher? And even higher than the write speed???

Who else has tried the 970 EVO and what are your findings??

BR Flemming

I had the same results, albeit not as high as yours. 2200 read and 2300 write.
[doublepost=1540508896][/doublepost]

Hi,
Is the heat issue from the ssd or CPUs give more heat? Have you measured what exactly cost the heat. I think may be the CPUs are much more loaded hence the good speed and the heat problem.

Not 100 percent certain, but it seems like the SSD. I've switched back to the original ssd and the temps have gone back to normal.

 

[ponta pon pon]

I had the same results, albeit not as high as yours. 2200 read and 2300 write.
[doublepost=1540508896][/doublepost]

Not 100 percent certain, but it seems like the SSD. I've switched back to the original ssd and the temps have gone back to normal.

Does the MacBook have space to use our SSD and heat sink?
Does anyone know of a thin heat sink suitable for this purpose?

 

[PowerMike G5]

Does the MacBook have space to use our SSD and heat sink?
Does anyone know of a thin heat sink suitable for this purpose?

It doesn't seem to have the space. I've used the latest Sintech rev C adapter and it just fit.

 

[flocked]

I have a MacBook Pro 13" 2015. I got a Samsung 970 with this small adapter: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B073F9LDD5/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 When moving my macbook and especially touching the bottom of my macbook, it often got kernel crashes. The ssd also often switched between 2x and 4x lanes…

I later bought the ST-NGFF2013-C thanks to this thread and since then no more crashing. Very happy. I only feel the macbook loses around 1-2 hours of battery compared to the original apple ssd. Is there a a m2 ssd with less power usage?