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Where can I get a pci card for my SSD's in the UK

juliancs said:
I'm getting my first SSD today, and plugging it in to my second optical drive slot. I have a 2009 MP so assume it will be limited.
Click to expand...
IIRC the MP offers Sata-300, which only a few SSD's will exceed significantly these days. If you purchased a "mainstream" SSD you would probably not notice a difference between it running on a dedicated 6G card or the onboard SATA, unless you are planning to use 2 SSD's in parallel with a RAID-0 (Striping).
 
Neodym said:
IIRC the MP offers Sata-300, which only a few SSD's will exceed significantly these days. If you purchased a "mainstream" SSD you would probably not notice a difference between it running on a dedicated 6G card or the onboard SATA, unless you are planning to use 2 SSD's in parallel with a RAID-0 (Striping).
Click to expand...

+1 on that. It's not cost effective to buy a 6Gb/s controller card for a single SSD.
 
Does a 2-channl mean I can put a maximum of 2 drives on it?
I will be adding more drives in the future, once I get more cash together.
 
juliancs said:
Does a 2-channel mean I can put a maximum of 2 drives on it?
I will be adding more drives in the future, once I get more cash together.
Click to expand...
If you use a Port Multiplier based enclosure, you can get up to 10 disks on the card (up to 5 per port). Without the PM enclosure however, the limit is 2 (or lack of PM support, as not all do).

Also understand, that these cards are only 1x PCIe lanes (PCIe 2.0 spec), so the max throughput limit is 500MB/s.

If you plan to run multiple SSD's simultaneously, you'd want a different card (unfortunately, past 2 ports and more PCIe lanes to handle the throughput is on the expensive side).
 
I would not recommend the HP 620. This model seems to be a better choice

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/08/increasing-disk-performance-sata-6gbs.html

I just got it in the mail today and lo and behold, it's bootable!!! Have been running the SSD for several hours now and no problems ;)
I got it from eBay for ~$20

I have used the HP620 earlier and though it performs pretty well, it's not bootable. You could probably use both in the same time to get more ports but if that's the case I'd recommend you following the OWC guide that popped up today on how to make your ordinary sled-bays to SATA 6Gbps instead (note that the sled bays will not be bootable so if you also want 6Gbps to boot from you'd still need to use the pci-e-card that is mentioned on the tonymac-site).

http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0

.. or you can follow my post on how to use a pci-e-SSD in a mac pro to get a real monster in there (also stolen from tonymacx86, nifty page that.. )
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1246308/
 
Boomhowler said:
I have used the HP620 earlier and though it performs pretty well, it's not bootable.
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Odd.

Another member, seisend, tested the 620 and it was bootable in his system. Wonder what the deal is... (suspect it's to do with the system firmware between the different MP models). :confused:

My reason for recommending the HPT RR620/622 was availability in the UK.

As it happens though, the card you've linked is available in ebay.co.uk (here), and it's cheaper than the HPT. Seems a no-brainer at this point. ;) :D
 
Ah yes nanofrog, you are correct. I remember that thread. Indeed I believe that the problem was that the 2009 have some extras that the 2008 hasn't and that made it impossible to boot on the 2008. I am not sure of the specific differences and as you say; the Syba model is cheaper so it's kind of a no-brainer unless it shows some really large performance degradations etc (which I have not seen anything of.. yet ).
 
Boomhowler said:
I would not recommend the HP 620. This model seems to be a better choice

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/08/increasing-disk-performance-sata-6gbs.html

I just got it in the mail today and lo and behold, it's bootable!!! Have been running the SSD for several hours now and no problems ;)
I got it from eBay for ~$20
Click to expand...

Did you do anything special to get it working?
I bought it installed it, tried it in SL and it didn't work. Installed Lion, but it also doesn't work. :confused:
 
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Hmm, not really. I didn't do the installation via the pci card, i just switched the sata cables to the pci card and booted.

however, i did recently install the drivers mentioned in the pci-card link above (https://forums.macrumors.com/wap/GetThread.php?PHPSESSID=badedfea5d2c07941ac4917b5dfb8e86&t=1246308). You can try to install those aswell. I havent tried booting from a
 
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