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Mac Pro 5,1 - High Sierra - 970 EVO Plus NVMe on 4x PCIe adapter - getting periodic kernel panic “NVMe: Command timed-out and request found in the completion queue…”

Hi. I’ve been trying to upgrade the storage and RAM in my Mac Pro 5,1 (Mid 2010).


After installing a 970 EVO Plus 1TB NVMe blade (https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evoplus/) in a Micro Connectors Low-Profile M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 adapter (http://microconnectors.com/micro-connectors-low-profile-m-2-nvme-ssd-to-pcie-x4-adapter-with-heat-sink-for-1u )


I am periodically getting the following kernel panic:


panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f9d993e2b): nvme: " NVMe: Command timed-out and request found in the completion queue \n”@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/IONVMeFamily-356.71.1/IONVMeController.cpp:5184


I can trigger this 100% of the time by running Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the 970 NVMe APFS Volume - during which the Write test will start to ramp up the speedometer (to approx 600-750) and then hang and 15-30 seconds later the Mac Pro reboots.


Periodically the panic will just occur spontaneously without any user interaction with the NVMe volume.


I’ve also copied 100GB of directories/files to/from/within the APFS Volume on the 970 NVMe and sometimes that works ok and sometimes it hits the same stall/timeout/panic.


When running AJA System Test Lite, the write test will sometimes (but not always) stall for 1-2 seconds and then proceed to complete - leaving the write rate in the 700 range rather than 1500 - but it has never done a stall/panic as of yet.


Notes:

  • the cMP is quite bare-bones right now (HD 5780 / 1x SATA SSD in HDD tray / 970 NVMe blade in PCIe 4x adapter card / 48GB RAM)
  • ROM version is currently 140.0.0.0.0 - I started to update to Mojave and did the corresponding ROM update - but then decided I’d rather have access to the boot screen/options since the HD 5780 gives me sufficient display resolution - so I’m booting High Sierra 10.13.6 from a SSD in a HDD tray right now (eventually will put it in a PCIe/SSD-SATA card)
  • There is NO heatsink installed on the 970 NVMe blade - but it is barely warm anyways.
  • Panic issue occurs with either the HD 5780 card installed or a GT120 card installed
  • Panic issue occurs with either the original 4x 4GB RAM sticks or with the upgraded 3x 16GB RAM sticks in slots 1/2/3 (and I ran memtest overnight with the 16GB sticks without any errors)
  • I’ve done a reinstall of High Sierra and also reset NVRAM/SMC multiple times
  • I moved the 970 NVMe stick/PCIe-card over to a Win7 box - deleted the partitions (diskpart) - created an NTFS volume - ran Samsung Magician which says the 970 firmware is the Latest - ran the Samsung Magician performance test with no issues - ran the “winsat disk -drive <drive-letter> ” disk performance test a few times with no issues - copied 50GB-100GB of data to/from/within the NVMe volume with no issues - also tried to run the Win version of Blackmagic, but without any actually Blackmagic cards install was unable to select a target drive
  • I also tried another Micro Connectors NVME PCIe x4 adapter and the issue still occurs (http://microconnectors.com/m-2-nvme-80mm-ssd-pcie-x4-adapter-with-covered-heat-sink/)
  • I do have a Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe card arriving tomorrow and will test with that (though I doubt that will resolve things given that it looks to be just a pass-through between the NVMe blade and the MB PCIe x4 slot)


Does anyone have any suggestions on next steps?


Thanks,

Jim


(posting full panic report in the next post - seems to be hitting a 5000 char posting limit)


Anonymous UUID:       0F0C8485-1791-E425-4AEA-25C524345D04

Fri Mar  8 09:06:49 2019

*** Panic Report ***

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f9d993e2b): nvme: " NVMe: Command timed-out and request found in the completion queue \n"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/IONVMeFamily-356.71.1/IONVMeController.cpp:5184

Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address

...


Posted on Mar 8, 2019 4:30 PM

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Mar 18, 2019 2:56 PM in response to jdub9

Ok, I just installed a 970 PRO NVMe 1TB in a Lycom DT-120 PCIe card in my Mac Pro 2010 and it works OK (i.e. NO kernel panics due to NVMe command timeouts)


I'm averaging Write 1430 MB/s and Read 1490 MB/s in BlackMagic Disk Speed Test.


Sure does look like the new 970 EVO Plus NVMe might have a firmware issue or at least some newly-introduced incompatibility with the Apple NVMe drivers (at least on a cMP running High Sierra 10.13.6).

A 970 PRO NVMe worked OK for me and other posts above had mentioned that the previous generation 970 EVO NVMe (not "Plus") also worked ok in a cMP.


Thx for all the replies and help.

Mac Pro 5,1 - High Sierra - 970 EVO Plus NVMe on 4x PCIe adapter - getting periodic kernel panic “NVMe: Command timed-out and request found in the completion queue…”

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