Latest thoughts on 500 GB SSD for Mac Pro 5

[b mcgibney]

I've spent a few hours going through all the posts I could find but no really current posts showed up. Looking for a recommendation for a 500 GB SSD drive to run Protools /Final Cut/melodyne etc Machine is a 2010 Mac Pro 6 core machine with 32 gb Ram. Samsung? Adata? others?

TIA

Brian

[panamajack]

Although the technology has moved past the type of SSD that plugs into a hard drive bay, Mac Pro towers will still benefit from SSD drives. There are a few choices...

Although the SATA sockets in a Mac Pro run at 3Gbs instead of the more recent 6Gbs, even an SSD into a hard drive bay is an improvement. Consequently, a Samsung 850 EVO or Pro will read and write about twice as fast as a spinning drive, it just might not achieve top speed of 520 MB/s write and 520 MB/s read.

In addition to SATA II (3Gbs) vs SATA III (6Gbs), another limitation of the Mac Pro is its PCIe 2.0 expansion slots. To achieve top speed from the M.2 cards requires PCIe 3.0 slots. But an add-on card from MacSales.com can give an additional boost.

Check out the OWC Mercury Accelsior S or the faster Accelsior E2 for superior throughput. These slot-based cards bring SATA 6Gbs performance to the towers. You might not get top performance as you would from a PCIe 3.0 machine, but it is a nice speed bump, about 4x what a typical spinner can provide.

The proprietary SSDs in the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro laptops achieve their top speeds due to the PCIe 3.0 bus. The 2015 MBPs had a 4-lane PCIe bus.

[b mcgibney]

[
Thanks for those thoughts. I was just going to plug in to the SATA 2 but maybe I will look into the PCIe expansion option.

Although the SATA sockets in a Mac Pro run at 3Gbs instead of the more recent 6Gbs, even an SSD into a hard drive bay is an improvement. Consequently, a Samsung 850 EVO or Pro will read and write about three times as fast as a spinning drive, it just might not achieve top speed of 520 MB/s write and 520 MB/s read.

In addition to SATA II (3Gbs) vs SATA III (6Gbs), another limitation of the Mac Pro is its PCIe 2.0 expansion slots. To achieve top speed from the M.2 cards requires PCIe 3.0 slots. But an add-on card from MacSales.com can give an additional boost.

Check out the OWC Mercury Accelsior S or the faster Accelsior E2 for superior throughput. These slot-based cards bring SATA 6Gbs performance to the towers. You might not get top performance as you would from a PCIe 3.0 machine, but it is a nice speed bump, almost 5x what a typical spinner can provide.

The proprietary SSDs in the MacBook Pro laptops achieve their top speeds due to the PCIe 3.0 bus.[/QUOTE]

[Darryl Ramm]

Current SATA SSDs are effectively limited by SATA III bus performance, you are giving up a decent amount of performance using SATA II. You can install a SATA III card in the Mac Pro and depending on the card install the SSD on that card, or run SATA cables elsewhere, like the optical bay.

But if performance is important then, as already mentioned, PCIe SSDs (including the Samsung SM951 M.2 running on PCIe slot adapter cards) offer significantly higher performance, event when current PCIe 3.0 based SSDs running at the slower PCIe 2.0 speed provided by the Cheesegrater.

Once Apple actually releases a new real Workstation hopefully we'll have multiple PCIe 3.0 slots and multiple M.2 slots (or worse case Apple's proprietary twist on that)for PCIe/NVMe SSD drives.

[panamajack]

I stopped short of buying an M.2 card, but have an early 2015 MacBook Pro (PCIe 2.0 4-lane -- same as trash can) with a speedy upgrade I included for comparison. The 2016 and 2017 MBP 15" models have soldered on SSDs, but feature PCIe 3.0 technology. The 13" non-touchbar models are reported to have upgradable (but Apple proprietary) SSDs. A few performance numbers below:

2009 Mac Pro 6-core 3.47 (4,1 flashed to 5,1):

Seagate Constellation 1TB spinner: Write 169.4, read 153.3
Hitachi 1TB spinner: Write 128.1, 132 read
Vertex 4 128 GB SATA III 6Gbs (in a SATA II drive bay): Write 258.2, read 262.1
Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB in a PCIe slot (in an OWC Accelsior adapter): Write 501.6, read 516.4

2010 Mac Pro 12-core 2.6 (stock 5,1):

Seagate "Hybrid" spinner 2TB 7200 rpm (larger than normal cache, see below*): Write 180, read 208
Western Digital "Black" 1TB 7200 rpm: Write 171.9, read 173.7
Apple SSD 512GB (original boot drive) Write 155.4, read 217.2
Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB (in a SATA II drive bay) Write 257.1, read 270.0

Early 2015 MacBook Pro 2.7 (i5 dual core):

Note: This version allows replacing the SSD with a replacement from the 2013 "Trash Can" -- It came with a 128GB SSD which I upgraded with a late 2016 Trash Can SSD 512GB (Apple proprietary connection).

Early 2015 MacBook Pro has PCIe 2.0 4-lane technology: Write: 1,359, read 1,381.7. The late 2013 and mid 2014 MBPs shipped as PCIe 2.0 2-lane, but will recognize a PCIe 2.0 4-lane from a black cylinder Mac if swapped out (per everymac.com).

external drives on the MBP:

Seagate BU+ 4TB connected to USB 3.0 (spinner): Write 143.5, read 158.0
G-Technology G-Raid Studio 6TB connected to Thunderbolt: (2) 7200 spinners configured in RAID "0" Write 287.7, read 291.9
G-Technology G-Drive SSD ev512 GB connected to USB 3.0: Write 404.6, read 417.4

Tests were with the Blackmagic Design drive test.

Another possibility for the Mac Pro towers would be adding a Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.0 PCIe card into a slot, and connecting one to four G-Technology ev512 GB SSD external drives. (There are two Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 add-on cards, the "Pro" has separate controllers for each of the four USB 3.0 ports. I have considered doing this for the MP 3.47 GHz tower as it has an Avid Native card and the Accelsior card, but still has an available slot (I also have a LaCie "2big" 6TB external RAID 0 (pair of 7200rpm spinners) that has both Thunderbolt 2 and a USB 3.0 connection as well). The Sonnet card supports transfer speeds up to 1,800 MB/s (450 MB/s per port).

FYI: 1,800 MB/s = 14.4 Gbps

A single USB 3.0 port at 450 MB/s converts to 3.5 Gbps, or roughtly SATA II. SATA III (6Gbps) converts to 750 MB/s.

So many choices, so little time, so little money...

* From Seagate: http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights...shd-master-ti/

The Seagate Hybrid SSHD drives use 8GB of NAND flash as the performance cache at the heart of the technology. Adaptive Memory technology is the brains of the system that chooses which data to store in this relatively small amount of flash...
...High-definition video editing and computer-aided design are two types of computer applications that use large, rapidly changing data sets. Such applications would not derive significant benefits from the use of SSHD technology.