The hatter
Level 9 (60,935 points)

Q: Fastest SSD in Mac Pro 2006 thru 2012, Leopard and above

PCIe-SSD which surpass SATA III speeds can mean a lot, and for a 1,1 is the only way to boot from PCIe (whether SATA III or not).

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/index.html#d17feb2015

 

Samsung XP941 256GB PCIe 2.0 x4 M.2 SSD MZHPU256HCGL

M.2 Interface: PCIe Gen2 5Gb/s, up to 4 lanes

512MB LPDDR2 DRAM Buffer Memory

Support TRIM Command

Sequential Read: 1080MB/s, Sequential Write: 800 MB/s,

Random Read (QD=32): 120K IOPS, Random Write (QD=32): 60K IOPS

Works with (all)  Mac Pro. Not compatible with the MacBook Air or Retina MacBook Pro

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-XP941-256GB-PCIe-MZHPU256HCGL/dp/B00J9V53M6/

 

A smaller XP941 128GB that 'only' gets 450MB/sec writes instead of the 800-900MB/sec

http://www.amazon.com/NGFF-PCI-Express-SATA-Adapter/dp/B00M8HC5JC/

 

Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYCQP38/

 

http://barefeats.com/hard183.html

 

SATA Express meets the ( '09 ) MacPro - Bootable NGFF PCIE SSD

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1685821

 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/08/samsung-sm941-pcie-ssd/

 

Next generation from Samsung:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150106006600/en/Samsung-Electronics-Mass -Producing-Extremely-Fast-Low-powered#.VOO5NoI5CUk

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), ATI 5770 16GB Samsung SSD Sonnet 6G

Posted on Feb 17, 2015 2:06 PM

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The hatter

Q: Fastest SSD in Mac Pro 2006 thru 2012, Leopard and above

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  • Helpful answers

  • by 13th Crowned,

    13th Crowned 13th Crowned Feb 27, 2015 7:07 AM in response to The hatter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2015 7:07 AM in response to The hatter

    Good day Hatter,

     

    I can't for the life of me see where I can send a PM to you. I don't want to take up space on a particular subject talking about something unrelated to the subject of the post. Long story short, my situation with the 5,1 took a twist since my last post, and I'm SERIOUSLY thinking about doing a U-Turn. The seller wasn't 100% honest with me....NOT COOL.

     

    Send me a PM, so I can fill you in on the situation offline. If you'd rather me use this forum, let me know as well.

     

    As usual, thanks for your time.

  • by The hatter,

    The hatter The hatter Feb 27, 2015 8:01 AM in response to 13th Crowned
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Feb 27, 2015 8:01 AM in response to 13th Crowned

    One of those 4,1's upgraded to 5,1 I assume? Something else?

    People should be made aware.

     

    I would say this, return it any way you can. RMA, BBB, cancel or stop payment etc.

    Make the most of the 1,1 you have now, and plan on APPLE Special or OWC only

     

    If you are not on MacRumors (or another), do that and take it there.

     

    I couldn't really talk today anyway and I have never done DM or "off site" help and support.

     

    PS: would have preferred you tagged or posted to your other thread rather than on this which I use to link to and bookmarked for reference purposes.

  • by Craig Cooper1,

    Craig Cooper1 Craig Cooper1 Dec 1, 2015 2:23 PM in response to The hatter
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 1, 2015 2:23 PM in response to The hatter

    Hello, Hatter,

     

    Just saw your thread about SSDs for older Mac Pros and hope I didn't buy the wrong thing. I have an early 2009 Mac Pro 2 X 2.26 GHz Quad Core. OriginaI 650gb Mac HD still chugging along, I have 14gb of RAM on board.

     

    I just purchased a Samsung 850 EVO 500gb, which I plan to make my boot/application drive. I see you referring to PCIe drives, and honestly don't know the difference between that and the drive I just got. I was assuming I would just plug the SSD in, since I have a slot available on my Hard Drive bank. Am I missing something about plugging this drive into a hard drive slot (with the proper adapter/sled?)

     

    Thanks.

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Dec 1, 2015 2:48 PM in response to Craig Cooper1
    Level 10 (188,131 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 1, 2015 2:48 PM in response to Craig Cooper1

    The silver-tower Mac Pros only have SATA II and thus anly drive your directly connect to a SATA bus is limited to SATA II (3GB/s) while the 2 1/2 inch Evo drive y have is SATA III (6 GB/sec).

    You can get PCle cards that will accept 2 1/2 inch SSDS that will operate them at SATA II speeds.

     

    The blade  SSD drives discussed in the original post operate at much faster that SATA III speeds

  • by Jean-Baptiste Bocle,

    Jean-Baptiste Bocle Jean-Baptiste Bocle Dec 1, 2015 11:25 PM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Dec 1, 2015 11:25 PM in response to lllaass

    Hello, I heard about this working great in older Mac Pros (in this case 4,1 & 5,1) with up to 4x M.2 SSD modules

    on a PCIe card:

    http://amfeltec.com/products/pci-express-carrier-board-for-m-2-ssd-modules/

    The setup described was with 4 x Samsung SM951 in a striped RAID with the Amfeltec PCIe on the number 2 slot of a 5,1 MacPro

    (apparently much faster than SSD's on SATA III ).

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Dec 2, 2015 6:43 AM in response to Jean-Baptiste Bocle
    Level 6 (9,260 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Dec 2, 2015 6:43 AM in response to Jean-Baptiste Bocle

    The Amfeltec card is now potentially the fastest possible solution for a classic Mac Pro. It allows up to four PCIe SSD modules to be 'stripped' together in a RAID0 configuration and give a staggering throughput of 5900MBps. See http://barefeats.com/hard210.html

     

    As a comparison the fastest single SSD PCIe option is around 1500MBps.

     

    Note: It uses Software RAID, the Barefeats test was I believe done using Apple's Software RAID. Hypothetically SoftRAID5.1 would be faster and also support RAID5 although RAID5 would not be at 5900MBps and would be more like 1500Mbps.

     

    Note: The use of a capital B in MBps means we are talking mega bytes per second not mega bits per second.