Q: Fastest bootable SSD for the Mac Pro 5,1
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Apr 23, 2016 5:09 AMby Pheidius1,I am working on the same issue right now. Right now I think it is the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus. It is a PCIe carrier card for two 6 gb SSD which can be hardware put into Raid O. If you go to their performance page for this card which I believe is on their main web site, not the Store portal it puts a two card raid o at 950 read and 750 write if you put the card in slot 4(16 x lanes). That is about par for most solutions I have seen. The biggest surprise was the two carrier each with two SSD each. They can share the bandwidth between the 16 times lane in slot 4 and the 4 times slot three. The 4 times slot obviously carries throughput overhead but the speeds as confirmed by Bare Feats are 1700 read and 1325 write. BTW don't buy the one with external Thunderbolt if you want to boot. Only the esata external configuration will boot right now. They say there will be a fix but...
The other card I was looking at was the OWC card excelsior option but it, while cheaper, is barely above the SATA 2 speeds. Their technical support says you can't use two between the 16times lane. In fact, there is no difference in speed between the 16 times lane and the 4.
Then you have the price consideration. The Sonnet double drive card is 299.00 USD without an SSD. So you have 600 dollars into both carrier cards out of the gate. Say you buy 4 I TB SSD from OWC at 379 times 4 that would make 2116 USD all in. 1519 if you go with the 480 GB size. Still that would make a 2TB made of two hardware raid 0 comb indeed with OS X software raid O. Other than price, that is my main concern. I wonder if anyone knows about the long term data integrity of such a setup.
Decisions decisions, I was just going to buy the 649 OWC blade solution because I like their customer service but 1700 read and 1325 puts the OMP right up there with the nMP.
I was able to buy a refurb 2010 dual 2.4 in HK for 2500 USD(Brand new from the look of it). I found two boxed 3.43 X5690 Xeons for 600 each with a three year warranty so my core rig is under a three year umbrella. The SSD have a 5 year warranty from OWC. If I max out the ram at 128 GB from OWC that runs 878.
Hmm.... 2500+249 Apple care+ 878 128 GB is 3627. If I add in the Sonnet at 2,000 that makes 5627 and I still have to upgrade the HD I am slow whatever it ships with. I can get an EVGA GTX 980 for 55 new on Amazon and have macvid flash it for 170 USD. That rig should bench almost equal to the NMP. So 720 for all those Cuda cores. That makes 6327 all in. That is 3,000 USD less than Bare Feats Beauty V the Beast test and, at that time, neither this card nor the drive speeds were available.
6327..... anyway I am rambling now. If anyone has any feedback on macvids gtx 980 EFI flash it would help. I also wonder if anyone has any feedback about software raid on top of hardware raid.
Hehe a USB three card in slot 2?
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Apr 23, 2016 6:09 AMby Pheidius1,Dang, I forgot to add the processors. I would be at 7547 with a 4 TB boot drive. 4 TB for a boot drive would be overkill with all the sata slots. 4 times 149.99 for the 240 GB size so 1200 USD instead of 2000 brings me back to 6747. So double the price for more than double the bandwidth compared to an excelsior 1 TB.
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May 6, 2016 2:38 AMby John Lockwood,I have a genuine Apple 2015 model SSD a custom Samsung SSBUX fitted on a PCIe adapter card designed specifically for Apple's proprietary SSD connector. I get over 1400MBps with this and it does support booting in to OS X and also has native Apple TRIM support being a genuine Apple SSD. I believe this is still the fastest single SSD solution for a classic Mac Pro. It is the same SSD as used in the latest MacBook Pro Retina, iMac, and I believe latest Mac Pros.
Note: Most PCIe adapters are 4x lanes only and are therefore limited to about 1500MBps maximum throughput.
There is now a new 16 lane PCIe adapter designed to accept up to four M2 connector SSD drives like the Samsung 951. This cards supports using Apple's software RAID0 and with this you can get much, much faster speeds. See http://barefeats.com/hard210.html and http://amfeltec.com/products/pci-express-carrier-board-for-m-2-ssd-modules/
This Amfeltec Squid adapter does support booting in to OS X but if as intended you setup an Apple Software RAID on it then it cannot be used with FileVault2 or provide a RecoveryHD partition. I have no idea about Boot Camp support.
Therefore currently the above Amfeltec Squid solution would provide the fastest boot drive for OS X of any Mac in current existence, if fitted to either slot 1 or slot 2 in a classic Mac Pro.
With regards to NVMe there is now a driver to allow mounting and using such a drive but it cannot be booted from as the Mac EFI firmware does not include NVMe support. See http://www.macvidcards.com/nvme-driver1.html
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May 9, 2016 11:25 AMby nbritton,I'm running with FileVault full disk encryption.
Nikolass-Pro:current nbritton$ ./iozone -a Iozone: Performance Test of File I/O Version $Revision: 3.434 $ Compiled for 64 bit mode. Build: macosx Contributors:William Norcott, Don Capps, Isom Crawford, Kirby Collins Al Slater, Scott Rhine, Mike Wisner, Ken Goss Steve Landherr, Brad Smith, Mark Kelly, Dr. Alain CYR, Randy Dunlap, Mark Montague, Dan Million, Gavin Brebner, Jean-Marc Zucconi, Jeff Blomberg, Benny Halevy, Dave Boone, Erik Habbinga, Kris Strecker, Walter Wong, Joshua Root, Fabrice Bacchella, Zhenghua Xue, Qin Li, Darren Sawyer, Vangel Bojaxhi, Ben England, Vikentsi Lapa, Alexey Skidanov. Run began: Mon May 9 13:18:59 2016 Auto Mode Command line used: ./iozone -a Output is in kBytes/sec Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds. Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes. Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes. File stride size set to 17 * record size. random random bkwd record stride kB reclen write rewrite read reread read write read rewrite read fwrite frewrite fread freread 64 4 633392 3588436 3203069 4274062 2892445 2923952 1421755 2923952 3363612 2689580 1879725 1991276 3203069 64 8 969761 4988978 4897948 6421025 4274062 4564786 3057153 4988978 3203069 2923952 4564786 2052169 4274062 64 16 1226821 2561267 3541098 9006179 4564786 5283570 4018152 5860307 5389653 5389653 5283570 2379626 4897948 64 32 1421755 2662899 4274062 3791156 6271021 5735102 1679761 7100397 6271021 6421025 2561267 1933893 5860307 64 64 1780008 3057153 10402178 10402178 7100397 9006179 4897948 7940539 2467108 6421025 4564786 1363961 5283570 128 4 744820 1663139 2784517 4267461 3199360 2920861 1152564 3359523 2511022 2784517 1543594 2673584 3053774 128 8 824932 2464907 3759450 5122535 4557257 4759253 2098744 5122535 5122535 4934216 3867787 2367096 4135958 128 16 1561553 3560017 6406138 7917784 6045455 6114306 2985839 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65536 4096 1536860 1591762 3952245 4027290 3915148 3913754 3810033 7791808 7028902 1257770 1615381 2492640 2323413 65536 8192 1546283 1213831 3149423 3080009 3149278 1583600 3093214 3050172 3190659 1605287 1575910 1777007 1773980 65536 16384 1543617 1402740 2922187 2982298 2929880 1552431 3067018 1985512 2856711 1573682 1570930 1741962 1739141 131072 64 1278175 1491167 4191336 4178116 4112205 4148386 4043457 9781469 4044320 1495743 1497316 3417608 3336933 131072 128 1277866 1493731 4227856 4227726 4122288 4016427 4350235 9513024 4272642 1482765 1493683 3223848 3138541 131072 256 1447667 1512500 3954030 3982271 3975993 4113589 3993176 8553341 3993408 1419370 1445243 2982441 2988212 131072 512 1477350 1368369 3937040 3997677 4009427 4156541 4077012 8730467 4043784 1507250 1326759 2994691 3113038 131072 1024 1463070 1322250 4080825 4039061 4149826 4154028 4024307 8613513 4018894 1518621 1517895 2971286 3065510 131072 2048 1488744 1523617 3986747 3862006 3777175 4138798 4009924 8649833 4011884 1519990 1525159 3013156 3085503 131072 4096 1493034 1523081 3967184 3998171 3906074 4000732 3897711 7849078 3874663 1522908 1507858 2504824 2596055 131072 8192 1490742 1498168 3180282 3208701 3128361 1549826 3033155 3414678 3274347 1510289 1522570 1798463 1789891 131072 16384 1481758 1505137 2966108 3041327 3007140 1513358 2979515 1924640 2968398 1514809 1491741 1759872 1751033 262144 64 1436035 1446718 4115881 4214936 4031002 4072962 3941780 10203355 4072826 1399080 1447013 3385823 3392216 262144 128 1449847 1240841 4195507 4315485 4117422 4030130 4177336 9540826 4108314 1421404 1468602 3233555 3257254 262144 256 1467352 1484949 3998663 4008693 3896727 4127996 3966237 8636775 3976522 1472222 1485638 3099723 3111134 262144 512 1463101 1417422 3945330 4062683 4005071 4180576 3999448 8608711 4085978 1353923 1479375 3032877 3064261 262144 1024 1473829 1442188 4065312 4139605 4114510 4245861 4021301 8582504 3938518 1482229 1474956 3092200 3110245 262144 2048 1463044 1363613 4008678 4045254 3938702 4170807 3990985 8446164 4013346 1267675 1241405 2981081 3025109 262144 4096 1483611 1347300 3952535 3968928 3928611 4042741 3886713 7932709 3953672 1238860 1474584 2532399 2629380 262144 8192 1476035 1295779 3108328 3120608 3085033 1396870 3058108 3357033 3065620 1374814 1471669 1802186 1800365 262144 16384 1398460 1458633 3002655 3020928 3004763 1439924 2998225 1942871 3003754 1454278 1360783 1721212 1763805 524288 64 1442614 1436335 4449763 4416216 4124162 2640331 4264236 10105582 4145972 1436999 1433553 3592982 3568401 524288 128 1435901 1432900 4473216 4453873 4341718 2983705 4329273 9247177 4373408 1434165 1437449 3346339 3371081 524288 256 1438230 1440173 4246728 4116519 4058842 3178211 4217480 8721409 4057644 1435685 1439912 3116141 3119200 524288 512 1439259 1443258 4186567 4224619 4095230 3274466 4146801 8694375 4134568 1434321 1442102 3138960 3237605 524288 1024 1444029 1432661 4149853 4202609 4159429 2986972 4163130 8562314 4148632 1425707 1434228 3121095 3160929 524288 2048 1436138 1435661 4189950 4124711 4116357 3010274 4138256 8501505 4170481 1423588 1430905 3163771 3217675 524288 4096 1433702 1426796 4067686 4107937 4018640 2933341 4054883 7778046 4010797 1426867 1429497 2582432 2607322 524288 8192 1424431 1425536 3158305 3187933 3143083 1481077 3160911 3421306 3126380 1426276 1425052 1865368 1890824 524288 16384 1439960 1432681 3048099 3082360 3089536 1472045 3082758 1937802 2885888 1410112 1433761 1781971 1792977 iozone test complete.
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May 9, 2016 11:48 AMby nbritton,If speed is what you are after then get two 512GB Samsung SM951 AHCI and two Lycom DT-120 PCIe adapters and put them in a RAID 0 configuration, that should double your throughput. Anyway, did you see the iozone numbers?
iozone averaged in megabytes per second:
random random bkwd record stride write rewrite read reread read write read rewrite read fwrite frewrite fread freread 1820 3512 4748 5629 5197 4744 4183 7130 5030 3662 3524 2935 3747 -
May 9, 2016 4:01 PMby Pheidius1,http://barefeats.com/hard210.html
Did you see this adapter? I did not buy it because the board revision is literally 1.o with only a six months warranty. Has Bare Feats ever tested the Lycome board? What revision is your board? What is the warranty? How much did it set you back on money? I will be buying two boards like this as you say but wan to wait until I know the tech is stable. I can wait 6 months to a year if need be. This is cutting edge tech.
