USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

[MIKX]

w8ing4intelmacs

Look at how the SATA power cable plugs into the cMP SATA socket.

You only have to 'SNIP' off ONE of those SATA LOCKING Tabs.

If you cut BOTH of the locking TABs OFF then the cable may fall out of the socket.

 

[w8ing4intelmacs]

w8ing4intelmacs

Look at how the SATA power cable plugs into the cMP SATA socket.

You only have to 'SNIP' off ONE of those SATA LOCKING Tabs.

If you cut BOTH of the locking TABs OFF then the cable may fall out of the socket.

good call. But how do other people do this? Is there a cable that doesn’t require clipping?

 

[MIKX]

good call. But how do other people do this? Is there a cable that doesn’t require clipping?

Not that I am aware of. I have three SATA power cables plugged into my cMP SATA ports.
I used a hobby knife to 'pare' off the offending SATA locking tab. It's dead easy, many here have done this.

Somewhere I have a photo of 'which tab' but just at this moment, Just examine the cMP SATA socket, you will see which TAB needs to be snipped off.

! ! FOUND IT ! !

Good idea to keep this photo somewhere for future reference.

Also, whenever I have my cMP shut down and the side cover open, I give all of my SATA power cables a gentle 'nudge' to ensure that they are fully, snugly inserted. Don't do the 'nudge' if your cMP is powered up and running.

 

[w8ing4intelmacs]

Not that I am aware of. I have three SATA power cables plugged into my cMP SATA ports.
I used a hobby knife to 'pare' off the offending SATA locking tab. It's dead easy, many here have done this.

Somewhere I have a photo of 'which tab' but just at this moment, Just examine the cMP SATA socket, you will see which TAB needs to be snipped off.

ok. I’ll do it. I was on the fence in a vacuum but seeing that others have done this makes me feel better about it. Thanks!

 

[iluvmacs99]

ok. I’ll do it. I was on the fence in a vacuum but seeing that others have done this makes me feel better about it. Thanks!

Personally though, I would not recommend this because of the high likelihood of pin misalignment when the Mac Pro is on and there's heat. The idea of the clips is to keep those pins aligned in all conditions and situations. I mean, for $10 (in where I live) to get a proper cable that is safe, secure and aligned and you can forget about it; it is better safe than sorry. But if you are not doing long sustained rendering, like what I use with my Mac Pro, then yes you can cut the clip. However, I used to work in a computer recycling facility where I saw a fair share of blow backplane because the power cable came misaligned. If the Mac Pro's backplane is shorted out, then you'll have another problem on your hands. Just sayin..

 

[joevt]

I’m trying to install a USB 3 PCIe card in my Mac Pro 4,1 (flashed to 5,1 running Mojave). The card appears in System Report and seems to be recognized fine by my Mac, but it doesn’t register anything when I connect a USB device (notably an external drive). I’m thinking the problem is that the card needs AUX power (it has what appears to be a 15 pin SATA power port)

It might use an incompatible controller. What does macOS say the PCIe vendor and device IDs are? I think the pictures show a Fresco? The Fresco Logic FL1100 is known to be compatible.

question: what cable do I use and where do I plug it in? My GPU uses both the six pin power ports on the motherboard. I’m not sure how to connect the optical drive power cable to the card.

Use a cable to split power from one of the Mac Pro's drive bays. You can continue to use the drive bay for a disk or SSD (with some creative mounting changes).

SATA 22 Pin Male to SATA 7 Pin and 2 X 15 Pin SATA Female Connectors - 6

This is a splitter cable allowing the cable to split off power from an existing SATA 22 Pin Power and DATA connection. Perfect for adding an addition SSD drive with limited power sources.

www.microsatacables.com

 

[Macschrauber]

For powering a PCIe USB Card I just soldered a Sata Power cable on a 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch adapter.
No hassle, Sata Port usable, fully reversible

 

[w8ing4intelmacs]

It might use an incompatible controller. What does macOS say the PCIe vendor and device IDs are? I think the pictures show a Fresco? The Fresco Logic FL1100 is known to be compatible.


Use a cable to split power from one of the Mac Pro's drive bays. You can continue to use the drive bay for a disk or SSD (with some creative mounting changes).

SATA 22 Pin Male to SATA 7 Pin and 2 X 15 Pin SATA Female Connectors - 6

This is a splitter cable allowing the cable to split off power from an existing SATA 22 Pin Power and DATA connection. Perfect for adding an addition SSD drive with limited power sources.

www.microsatacables.com

Are you referring to the optical drive bay? How do you thread the cable to the pci card?

by the way, I’ve decided against clipping the cable for now, and see ifI can get it to work without doing so

 

[VaZ]

For powering a PCIe USB Card I just soldered a Sata Power cable on a 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch adapter.
No hassle, Sata Port usable, fully reversible

I don't get why your card needs extra sata power. Old tech?
I have a 5 port usb 3.1/3.0 card with no sata. Check out my sig.

 

[jvlfilms]

I don't get why your card needs extra sata power. Old tech?
I have a 5 port usb 3.1/3.0 card with no sata. Check out my sig.

Really five ports? Curious because my Inateck is still having problems with my external NVMe drive on my cMP.

On my MBP I get full speeds, sometimes up to 700MB/s but only in the 300s on my cMP.

 

[Macschrauber]

I don't get why your card needs extra sata power. Old tech?
I have a 5 port usb 3.1/3.0 card with no sata. Check out my sig.

Does your usb Card support deep sleep? The asm 3.1 cards I tested did not. This is not acceptable for a customer build.

So I took the Inateck KTU3FR-502U card with builtin Hub an therefore it needed extra sata power.

 

[joevt]

Are you referring to the optical drive bay? How do you thread the cable to the pci card?

I am referring to one of the four hard drive bays. The cable I linked connects both SATA power and SATA data. The SATA power is split so you can use it with other devices while the SATA power and SATA data can still be used with a SSD. I linked pictures, didn't I?

 

[pullman]

Hi everyone

I hope it's not rude to ask this at page 108 of this thread.

I've got a Mac Pro 3,1 which has slots 3 and 4 available. They are, I believe PCIe 1.0 x4.

I'd like to put an expansion card to be able to attach an external HDD enclosure to get more space. Ideally I should be able to boot from the enclosure too, just to have an option to do so if internal drives fail.

Would a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 card be an option for this or must I look for a Thunderbolt card or eSata card?

I'm a bit bewildered by all the various options out there.

Thank you very much in advance
Philip

 

[jvlfilms]

Hi everyone

I hope it's not rude to ask this at page 108 of this thread.

I've got a Mac Pro 3,1 which has slots 3 and 4 available. They are, I believe PCIe 1.0 x4.

I'd like to put an expansion card to be able to attach an external HDD enclosure to get more space. Ideally I should be able to boot from the enclosure too, just to have an option to do so if internal drives fail.

Would a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 card be an option for this or must I look for a Thunderbolt card or eSata card?

I'm a bit bewildered by all the various options out there.

Thank you very much in advance
Philip

I don’t think any USB 3.0 PCIE card supports booting to an OS.

 

[joevt]

Hi everyone

I hope it's not rude to ask this at page 108 of this thread.

I've got a Mac Pro 3,1 which has slots 3 and 4 available. They are, I believe PCIe 1.0 x4.

I'd like to put an expansion card to be able to attach an external HDD enclosure to get more space. Ideally I should be able to boot from the enclosure too, just to have an option to do so if internal drives fail.

Would a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 card be an option for this or must I look for a Thunderbolt card or eSata card?

I'm a bit bewildered by all the various options out there.

Thank you very much in advance
Philip

USB 3.x is not bootable on classic Mac Pro. Someone would need to make a classic Mac Pro EFI compatible USB 3.x driver. Then something like rEFInd can load the driver, and boot.

Thunderbolt isn't bootable either unless EFI code is added to enable Thunderbolt at boot. I don't know if classic Mac Pro EFI driver can add PCIe buses or if it's too late in the boot process to do that.

So the simplest solution is a SATA card. Since it will probably be in a PCIe 1.0 x4 slot (1000 MB/s max) and SATA can do 600 MB/s, you should choose a card that is x4 to get full performance (x2 in the cMP PCIe 1.0x4 slot can only do 500 MB/s and actually can only use link width of x1 which is only 250 MB/s). For this purpose, Sonnet had the Tempo SSD Pro but it's no longer being produced. And anyway, adding drives this way usually has some negative effect on other PCIe cards like GPU or whatever when it comes to booting Windows.

 

[w8ing4intelmacs]

I am referring to one of the four hard drive bays. The cable I linked connects both SATA power and SATA data. The SATA power is split so you can use it with other devices while the SATA power and SATA data can still be used with a SSD. I linked pictures, didn't I?

Ugh. You did. I just didn’t see the link. Thanks!

 

[superparati]

As I’m doing some deep cleaning on my macpro I decided to as much as possible remove the frequency interpherence that the board is causing each time I’m using it along with Bluetooth.

I bought some Copper Foil Tape Shielding Single Conductive Adhesive.
My plan was to cover the Wifi/Buetooth Apple card with and maybe the usb 3 controller ship.

Do you think the fact that it say conductive might create more issue than expected?

Andoer Copper Foil Tape, 50mm x 10m One Side Copper Foil Tape EMI Shielding Single Conductive Adhesive for Guitar

Andoer Copper Foil Tape, 50mm x 10m One Side Copper Foil Tape EMI Shielding Single Conductive Adhesive for Guitar

www.amazon.co.uk

Should I consider to protect after with some non conductive tape the all things?

Thanks for your advice.

 

[superparati]

Copper foil tape installer on the wifi card, the 2x USB female port of the PCI card and on each extremity of USB3 cables. It is a bit early to give a conclusion but seems to work.

 

[pullman]

Thank you very much Joe. You've cleared up a number of questions for me, and I am very grateful.

Cheers
Philip

USB 3.x is not bootable on classic Mac Pro. Someone would need to make a classic Mac Pro EFI compatible USB 3.x driver. Then something like rEFInd can load the driver, and boot.

Thunderbolt isn't bootable either unless EFI code is added to enable Thunderbolt at boot. I don't know if classic Mac Pro EFI driver can add PCIe buses or if it's too late in the boot process to do that.

So the simplest solution is a SATA card. Since it will probably be in a PCIe 1.0 x4 slot (1000 MB/s max) and SATA can do 600 MB/s, you should choose a card that is x4 to get full performance (x2 in the cMP PCIe 1.0x4 slot can only do 500 MB/s and actually can only use link width of x1 which is only 250 MB/s). For this purpose, Sonnet had the Tempo SSD Pro but it's no longer being produced. And anyway, adding drives this way usually has some negative effect on other PCIe cards like GPU or whatever when it comes to booting Windows.

 

[Mark Velazquez]

Hi...I own a Mac Pro 5,1 and I must stay at 10.8.5 (I also have a partition that's 10.9.5 and one that's 10.10) The reason I must stay at 10.8.5 is due to a massive collection of audio plugins that would cost a lot to upgrade plus many of the companies are now gone. Has anyone found a way (or drivers) that would allow the RocketU 1344A or Sonnet Allegro USB 3.2 Gen 2 to work in OSX 10.8.5. I know my other partition's will allow the card. Please help.

 

[jscipione]

On OS X 10.8.5 only FL1100-based USB3 will work as those are the only drivers included to support the Mac Pro 6,1 USB3 chipset. The older RocketU 1144D or Sonnet Allegro Pro should work and offer 4x 5gbps transfer rate. 10gbps USB3.1gen2 requires a newer version of macOS at least Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

 

[jscipione]

I’m surprised that a USB 3.1gen2 also sometimes know as USB 3.2gen2 (isn’t usb naming fun?) card would work on 10.9.5. At some point Apple added ASMedia chipset support to macOS even though no Macs ever shipped that use that chipset AFAIK. All 2012 and later Macs have USB3 built into the Intel chipset EXCEPT for the Mac Pro 6,1 trashcan which uses a server chipset with no USB 3.0 chipset support. That’s why 10.8.5 and above has FL1100 USB3 support as Apple added the FL1100 to support the 6,1 for USB3 support on that machine.

Apparently some USB 3.1gen2 cards pick up on drivers that work on 10.9 and 10.10 but only operate at USB 3.1gen1 (also sometimes known as USB 3.0, fun) 5gbps transfer rate. You do need at least OS X 10.11 El Capitan to get the full speeds.

Earlier I wrote that the Highpoint 1144D uses the FL1100 chipset so should work on 10.8.5 but that is not true, it uses 4x ASM1024A chipset and also requires at least OS X 10.9.0. However, the Sonnet Allegro Pro card definitely uses FL1100 and should work on 10.8.5. If you don’t need 4 independent controllers you could get a Sonnet USB3 card, or save some money and get a KT4004.

 

[jack070767]

My Inateck KT4006 has a port on the back.
Can you tell me the function?

 

[jscipione]

KT4006 has 2 USB3 ports on the back and a header for 2 more on the inside. The header on the inside is so you can connect to USB ports built into your case (but Mac Pro doesn’t have any extra ports that need to be plugged in.)

 

[jack070767]

KT4006 has 2 USB3 ports on the back and a header for 2 more on the inside. The header on the inside is so you can connect to USB ports built into your case (but Mac Pro doesn’t have any extra ports that need to be plugged in.)

Thanks!