What's occupying your PCI-e slots?

[LorenK]

1. 5770

2. Apricorn Velocity Solo 2

3. A USB 3.0 card

4. An eSATA card (connecting two IcyDock four bay external drives)

 

[Sko]

1. MSI R9 280X
2. empty
3. empty
4. Inateck KT4006 USB 3.0

 

[Filin]

4 - Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0
3 - Asus hyper M.2. adapter + SM951
2 -
1 - EVGA GTX 980 (MVC-flashed)

 

[Mago]

despite GPU/Storage/USB PCIe, all what I see are legacy Capture cards, get current with USB-C (3.1) or Thunderbolt 2/3

 

[flowrider]

1. Gigabyte WindForce 3 fan Nvidia GTX780 with EFI by MacVidCards
2. Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 (Samsung 840 500 GB)
3. Old USB 2 Four Port Card
4. Inateck KT4004 USB 3 Four Port Card

Above - My post from 4 years ago - Now

1. Gigabyte WindForce GTX 1080 with EFI by MVC - coming. GTX 780 there for the present
2. Apricorn Velocity Duo x2 with Samsung 840 Pro and 840 Evo (both 500GB)
3. HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB 3 four port card
4. Angelbird Wings PX1 with Samsung SM951, 500 GB

Lou

 

[bplein]

Updating my prior post:
MacPro 4,1
Flashed to 5,1
Updated with Intel Xeon W3670 @ 3.20GHz 6-core
VMware ESXi 6.5

1. NVIDIA GeForce GT120
2. Fusion-io ioScale 3.20TB
3. Fusion-io ioDrive2 Duo 2.41TB
4. Empty

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Update

1. EVGA GTX-670 FTW 4GB
--
2. Apricorn Velocity DUO X2 Not leaving my MP 5.1 (TY Apricorn!)
3. NVidia 8800 GT Mac Edition 512MB
4. empty -> Inateck KT-4004 USB 3.0 (?)

UPDATE cMP 5.1

#1. Nvidia GTX-680-4GB-FTW flashed with MacRumors ROM, thanks guys!

#2. Apricorn Velocity DUO x2 - 1TB & 500GB Samsung 840 EVO

#3. Apricorn Velocity DUO x2 - 500GB & 500GB Samsung 840 EVO

#4. CalDigit FastPro eSATA & USB 3.0

Still running like clockwork!

Cheers

 

[kalex]

1) Nvidia GTX 980 TI
2) OWC OWC Accelsior S PCIe with 1TB evo 850 SSd
3) USB 3.0 controller
4) Lycom DT120 with SM951 SSD

 

[JedNZ]

1. Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9 380X 4GB GPU
2. Accelsior S Sata III with Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD - for boot and apps
3. Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe SSD (in a FD with WD Black Caviar 2TB spinner)
4. NVIDIA GeForce GT120 512MB GPU

 

[ugru]

MacPro 5.1 quad core uptated to a 3,33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

#1. MSI RX 480 GAMING X 8GB

#2. Empty

#3. Empty

#4. CalDigit USB 3.0

Add-on
Optical 1 standard Superdrive
Optical 2 Blu-Ray Disk burner

 

[deconstruct60]

I just noticed that Apple's Feedback form has the question "How many PCI slots do you use?" That's interesting to me, considering they don't sell a single computer with PCI slots any more.

As should be obvious by now it isn't like Apple stopped taking surveys of what current Mac Pro owners ( all the Mac Pro users deployed operationally that happen to stop by. It is not only the ones those who are on the newest product (and probably least likeliest to buy in the short term. )

I eyeballed several pages of this thread and it should be obvious to anyone who sits down and does the quantitate numbers that stuff other than GPUs is occupying more of those 2-4 slots. More than one SSD drive or leveraged RAID is quite common. Newer I/O ( USB 3.0) is another common reoccurrence ( USB 2 relatively sucking badly at this point is the primary root cause issue. USB 2 was old when the Mac Pro sitting on came out. ) . Imagine if USB 3.1 gen 2 came with the system. There are a decent number of empty also.

Throw on top the likely skewed geeky, tech lust demographics of this forum to the sampling dynamics (Apple probably has better sampling. ). 1-2 GPUs probably is about what most of the Mac Pro market is utilizing.


Two pci SSDs , TB v3 ( with 40Gbps and USB 3.1 gen 2 ) , and perhaps 10GbE is quite healthy coverage of slots 2-4 in this survey. Couple that with perhaps one secondary x16 slot for some GPU options that Apple doesn't cover in a timely manor and it is even higher coverage.

 

[irked]

• 7950
• Highpoint 1144D USB3 card
• Blackmagic Design Mini Recorder 4k SDI/HDMI capture card
• Syba Msata/RAID card loaded up with 2x1TB 850 evo (raid 0, content) and 1x256GB 850 evo (boot)

Like I said in another thread somewhere, a modern machine would let me free up two of those slots, which means I could finally hop onto 10G ethernet.

 

[Kaspin]

1. Radeon 7950 (official sapphire card)
2. CalDigit FASRA-6GU3 Plus (usb 3.1)
3. Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k
4. Blackmagic Intensity Pro (old version)

I'll probably replace the old intensity pro with a SDI mini recorder sometime soon.

despite GPU/Storage/USB PCIe, all what I see are legacy Capture cards, get current with USB-C (3.1) or Thunderbolt 2/3

When you need multiple capture devices, the single usb host device has issues and you need to start adding pcie usb adapters anyways. Thunderbolt is a bit better in this regard, but there aren't many affordable TB capture devices targeted for consumers out there.

 

[PowerMike G5]

1. Nvidia GTX Titan X 12GB
2. Amfeltec x16 Squid Carrier with four SM951 M.2 SSDs
3. AJA Kona 4 Uncompressed 4K I/O Card
4. Highpoint 1144D USB 3.0 Card

 

[Mago]

but there aren't many affordable TB capture devices targeted for consumers out there.

That shouldn't be a complaint for anybody buying a 4000$+ Macintosh Pro

 

[ix9]

Fun game

My Mac dual boots OSX and Windows for games.

4) EVGA GTX680 Mac Edition
3) USB 3.0 PCI Card
2) Addonics Quad mSATA Card
1) EVGA GTX 1070 SC

Answers to commonly asked questions about this setup.

1. Yes, PCI-E power splitters to both cards from the motherboard outputs only.
2. No, I don't use both cards at once.
3. No I don't have drive bays 3 & 4 populated.
4. Yes I had to cut a bit of the GTX680's metal mount for it to fit.

 

[redheeler]

Since I moved to the 2010 Mac Pro last fall things have gotten a bit more exciting.

1 - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 - PCIe 16x (Probably overkill, but nice to have.)
2 - GeForce GT 120 - PCIe 16x (Not used often, for backup/bootscreens/Snow Leopard.)
3 - Sedna SATA III SSD Adapter + 512 GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD - PCIe 1x (Improvement over on-board SATA II, but not huge. May one day invest in a PCIe SSD.)
4 - Inateck USB 3 (2-port) - PCIe 1x

 

[whwang]

MacPro5,1

• nVidia GTX 980
• ATTO 2-port 10Gb Ethernet card
• CalDigit USB3 card
• OWC Accelsior 480GB

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Fun game

My Mac dual boots OSX and Windows for games.

4) EVGA GTX680 Mac Edition
3) USB 3.0 PCI Card
2) Addonics Quad mSATA Card
1) EVGA GTX 1070 SC

Answers to commonly asked questions about this setup.

1. Yes, PCI-E power splitters to both cards from the motherboard outputs only.
2. No, I don't use both cards at once.
3. No I don't have drive bays 3 & 4 populated.
4. Yes I had to cut a bit of the GTX680's metal mount for it to fit.

Yeah! I'm a hybrid too, using Windows for gaming.

Cheers

 

[natjonesart]

1- EVGA GTX 680 2GB (EFI Flashed)
2- Aukey USB 3.1
3- Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB
4- Samsung SM951 AHCI M.2 (Boot)

 

[lowendlinux]

Top to bottom:
1: I have a WiFi card JIC
2/3: RX 480
4: eSATA insert running off 2 SATA ports
5/6: RX480 <---on it's way
7: Sound Blaster Z

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Top to bottom:
1: I have a WiFi card JIC
2/3: RX 480
4: eSATA insert running off 2 SATA ports
5/6: RX480 <---on it's way
7: Sound Blaster Z

Do you have a PCIe expansion and which?

Cheers

 

[ActionableMango]

Top to bottom:
1: I have a WiFi card JIC
2/3: RX 480
4: eSATA insert running off 2 SATA ports
5/6: RX480 <---on it's way
7: Sound Blaster Z

You must have bought one of those rare, double-tall Mac Pros.

 

[JoSch]

Slot 1: Sapphire RX480
Slot 2: eSata slot bracket
Slot 3: XFX HD5770
Slot 4: Orinoco USB3 card

 

[pastrychef]

By the time I sold my Mac Pro, I had:

1. GTX 980
2. SolarFlare 10GbE
3. SSUBX adaptor
4. USB 3