What's occupying your PCI-e slots?

[WayneStewart]

1-5770
2- controller card for a 256gb HD from a 2013 Macbook air booting 10.13
3- controller card for another 256gb HD from a 2013 Macbook air booting 10.6.8
4- Sonnet USB 3 card


I’d acquired a couple of water damaged 2013 Macbook Airs so I thought I’d try these $8 Chinese cards that I understood would let me use the SSDs for storage but wouldn’t be bootable. When I started the Mac Pro, it booted off the OS on the card. Very quickly.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Never know what you're actually getting with unknown cards. Could be some nifty back doors in there, too. Run Little Snitch lately?

 

[owbp]

Never know what you're actually getting with unknown cards. Could be some nifty back doors in there, too.

Has this happened before or is it just some theoretical threat?

I'm not in any way messing with you, but just looking at cheapest PCIe/SATA cards to free up some native SATA ports and don't wanna buy official recommended cards, since i will end up spending more that way than just buying some AHCI SM951s or Hyper X Predators.

 

[jbarley]

Has this happened before or is it just some theoretical threat?

I'm not in any way messing with you

Could be flint is "messing" with you though.

 

[owbp]

Could be flint is "messing" with you though.

Haha, that would be great
I'm just a click away from ordering dual SATA adapter for 40 bucks.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Completely serious. Not uncommon at all for unknown, or knock off brands to have modified firmware, up to and including back doors. Major suppliers get compromised too.

 

[InuNacho]

1 - EVGA GTX 680
2 - 4 port KT4004
3 - RocketRaid 622 (very inexpensive esata, nothing stellar though)
4 - Empty - At some point either a Blackmagic Intensity or Intensity 4k

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Oooh...I can finally play.

1. Club 3D HD 7950
2. Empty
3. Empty
4. Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.0

 

[DPUser]

Has this happened before or is it just some theoretical threat?

I've been using an (I'm sure Chinese-made) SATA3 card with the ASM1061 SATA chip for several years without any apparent issue. If I put my tinfoil hat on, I could start to worry, but without the hat, life seems to be just fine, although I paid a little over $12.00 for my card and am now feeling somewhat vexed that they can be had for $8.00. Think of what I could have done with the money I saved!

Back on topic, my studio Mac Pro's PCIe slots are thusly occupied:

1. Gigabyte RX 460 4G
2. Aforementioned SATA3 card
3. Universal Audio UAD2 Dual audio accelerator card
4. Firewire 400 card with TI Firewire chip.

Backup MP houses an ATI 5770 only.

 

[owbp]

I've been using an (I'm sure Chinese-made) SATA3 card with the ASM1061 SATA chip for several years without any apparent issue. If I put my tinfoil hat on, I could start to worry, but without the hat, life seems to be just fine, although I paid a little over $12.00 for my card and am now feeling somewhat vexed that they can be had for $8.00. Think of what I could have done with the money I saved!

Thanks for that! I'm looking at much pricier piece, but i really don't anything about it except that it should work from 10.8 up and that it's great and inexpensive way to free up SATA ports for spinners.
I'm gonna use it for dual boot, so PCIe 2.0 x1 won't give me any serious bottleneck.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-SATA-I...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

 

[kohlson]

Original GT120 (had 2x, but just took the other out!)
KT4004

Coming soon:
- SATA to PCIe card for 480GB from 2011 MBA
- controller card for 240GB from 2012 MBA
- RX(something or other) to update GPU

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

1. ASUS GTX 1060 6GB (soon to be Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB)
2. N/A
3. Lycom adapter w/ Samsung 941 250GB PCIe SSD
4. 4-port USB 3.0 card

 

[VillasManzanill]

4. Nada
3. Blocked
2. Asus strix 580 8gb. 2.5 slot
1. Asus strix 480 8gb. 2 slot.

 

[tuchubby]

3x PNY Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB via risers

It would not work with 4

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

1st Mac Pro 6 core 3,33 Ghz 32 GB RAM
slot 1: Geforce 980
slot 2: Geforce 120
slot 3: USB 3.0 card
slot 4: OWC Accelsior PCI-e SATA III with Samsung EVO 850 SSD

2nd Mac Pro 6 core 3,33 Ghz 16 GB RAM
slot 1: ATI Radeon 5870
slot 2: OWC PCI Accelsior E SSD
slot 3: Caldigit USB 3.0 and eSATA
slot 4: OWC Accelsior PCI-e SATA III with Samsung EVO 850 SSD

 

[MarkC426]

Completely serious. Not uncommon at all for unknown, or knock off brands to have modified firmware, up to and including back doors. Major suppliers get compromised too.

Is this sort of thing a problem on a used gpu also?
My paranoia is kicking in, I am looking at getting a used gt120 for boot screen use.

 

[owbp]

Is this sort of thing a problem on a used gpu also?
My paranoia is kicking in, I am looking at getting a used gt120 for boot screen use.

Theoretically speaking, if anyone is up doing this (especially on 5+ years old machines) there would be no point of doing it on such a small scale like stock GPU is.
USB 3 cards would be my pick since everyone has it, but definitely not GT 120 that many are getting rid of... IMO, of course.

I really wouldn't worry so much.

 

[goMac]

Never know what you're actually getting with unknown cards. Could be some nifty back doors in there, too. Run Little Snitch lately?

If someone is doing this (extremely unlikely) it's not happening at the OS level. Little Snitch would be absolutely useless.

But the amount of crawling they'd have to do on the PCIe bus and synchronization would be insane. I'm not even sure a card could start a TCP/IP stack on another device and start talking to other devices. It seems pretty insanely unlikely, or impossible.

The only time I've heard of this is when the device/card in question is itself a network device. So... routers... ethernet cards....

 

[Flint Ironstag]

If someone is doing this (extremely unlikely) it's not happening at the OS level. Little Snitch would be absolutely useless.

But the amount of crawling they'd have to do on the PCIe bus and synchronization would be insane. I'm not even sure a card could start a TCP/IP stack on another device and start talking to other devices. It seems pretty insanely unlikely, or impossible.

The only time I've heard of this is when the device/card in question is itself a network device. So... routers... ethernet cards....

Yes - I don't pretend to know the nuts and bolts, but I've seen it happen in military and civilian acquisitions / supply chains. Bad juju. Not in a position to know what cumulative effect such devices have had - at the worst, lives lost - at minimum, data (correlatable to something actionable or not) leaked.

 

[PowerMike G5]

People were benching 4-digit speeds I think as high as 1500MB/s for a single PCIe storage card and 5900MB/s for the Amfeltec adapter that held 4 cards, but these were synthetic benchmarks. In real life using real applications for real work it seems even with these very fast cards there are other limitations in the system that result in real bandwidth of about 500-600MB/s for write speeds. There are some real-world exceptions that can go faster, like single files with multi-gigabyte size in certain specialized applications, but these exceptions are rare.

So if you are already pushing 550MB/s you are already doing about as well as most real world uses can go and you might not be able to hit your 800-900MB/s goal except in a synthetic benchmark.

It's possible I'm wrong. You are doing a strange setup that I haven't seen performance tests for (RAID spread across SATA and PCIe), and maybe that spread will make a difference. Also my information is from older versions of OS X so perhaps the system bottleneck has been reduced or removed by some new feature, for example APFS.

If you do this, I hope you post the results for everyone. I wish you the best, but just in case, prepare yourself for the possibility of little real world difference.

So following up on this. I've finally had the time to install this card and run an initial test and it seems that my theory of spreading the 4 drive RAID 0 between both the 2-internal SATA ports on the Caldigit Pro card and 2 internal cMP SATA ports to exceed the cMP's 600MBs ICH bandwidth limit has worked! I ran a quick BlackMagic speed test, one first with all 4 drives using all the internal slots, then again with the card setup above. And the speed jumped up from 500MBs to around 830MBs! And this is with my RAID 0 almost at full capacity, so I'd imagine it would run even faster say at 50% capacity.

This is great cause it has allowed me to increase the speed of my raid, while keeping the USB 3/eSATA all on on PCIE card. Perfect for my machine given I have no space anywhere for any other upgrading.

 

[MassMacMan]

1. GTX 970 card with 4 monitors attached
2. Empty
3. USB-3 card with 4 USB slots
4. Apricorn Velocity X2 with 1.5TB SSD

 

[TheStork]

2008 Mac Pro (3,1)
Slot 1: EVGA GTX 680 (self flashed PC graphics Reference Card)
Slot 2: Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 with single Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD
Slot 3: HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB 3.0 card
Slot 4: empty

2010 Mac Pro (5,1)
Slot 1: Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Graphics Card (MacVidCards flashed PC graphics Reference Card)
Slot 2: AngelBird Wings PX1 NVMe PCIe card with Samsung 970 EVO 500GB SSD
Slot 3: Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 with single Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD & Team 120GB SSD
Slot 4: HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB 3.0 card

 

[bokkow]

2010 Mac Pro (5,1)
Slot 1: EVGA GTX680 4GB (flashed)
Slot 2: Empty
Slot 3: HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB 3.0 card
Slot 4: Lycom M.2 PCI-e adaptor with SM951 256GB

I'm actually in need of a bit of advice. I have 4 SSD's that I want to get most out of; a SM951 256GB, a 256GB SSD out of a MBPr 15" Early 2013 and two 840 Pro 512GB's. What would you guys suggest to do? What combination of PCI cards should I use? I've been eyeballing the Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 but then I'm left with the SSD out of that MBPr :/

 

[h9826790]

Update:

Slot 4: Sonnet Tempo SSD (with a Samsung 840 Evo 1TB, and a Seagate ST1000LM024)
Slot 3: Inateck KT4004
Slot 2: Empty (for possible better GPU cooling)
Slot 1: PNY 1080Ti XLR8

 

[mattspace]

Update:

Slot 4: Sonnet Tempo SSD (with a Samsung 840 Evo 1TB, and a Seagate ST1000LM024)

Could those two drives be used to boot one from macOS, the other from Windows, or do they have to be some sort of RAID conglomeration?