REVIEW: Sonnet Technologies M.2 4x4 PCIe Card For Mac Pro

July 12th, 2019, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

The best way to create a fast storage array for your Mac Pro is to install an M.2 PCIe board populated by multiple M.2 PCIe-based flash modules in a striped array. Perfect example: The NEW Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card. Apple includes it in a list of 'blessed' PCIe boards for the 2019 Mac Pro, but it also works in the 2010 - 2012 Mac Pro. We took it for a 'test drive' in our 2010 Mac Pro 'tower of power.'

GRAPH LEGEND
Four 970 PROs - Four Samsung 970 PRO 512GB PCIe-based flash modules striped (RAID 0) and mounted on the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card
Three 970 PROs- Three Samsung 970 PRO 512GB PCIe-based flash modules striped (RAID 0) and mounted on the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card
Two 970 PROs - Two Samsung 970 PRO 512GB PCIe-based flash modules striped (RAID 0) and mounted on the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card
One 970 PRO - One Samsung 970 PRO 512GB PCIe-based flash module and mounted on the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card

TEST MULE: 2010 Mac Pro tower with 3.33GHz 12-Core Xeon X5680 with 96GB of 1333MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM running macOS Mojave (10.14.5). The Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card was installed in x16 slot 2 just above the GPU.

LARGE SEQUENTIAL
We used AJA System Test to benchmark file level sequential transfer speed using a 16GB test file. HIGHER number in megabytes per second = FASTEST

WHAT DID WE LEARN?
Though the upcoming 2019 Mac Pro is a perfect platform for the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card, the 'obsolete' Mac Pro tower can clearly benefit from the increased storage speed it provides.

Though the PCIe 3.0 x16 slots in the 2019 Mac Pro are capable of up to 12,000 MB/s, the PCIe 2.0 x16 slots in the 2010 Mac Pro are limited to 6000MB/s. That's still fast and useful.

Also, because of the 2010 Mac Pro's PCIe bus speed limit, we observed that three striped 970 PRO modules transferred as fast as four. So that opens the door to using the fourth M.2 flash module as a separate volume. For example, you could have a single module as a boot drive running macOS Mojave and the remaining three striped (RAID 0) modules serving as a very fast read/write working project volume and/or scratch volume.

You may be tempted to purchase the less expensive flash module like the Samsung 970 EVO Plus but be advised it requires a firmware update to be compatible and reliable under macOS.

You can install the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card in an external Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Expansion Box and plug it into your 'recent' Mac mini, MacBook Pro, iMac, or iMac Pro's Thunderbolt 3 port. Sonnet offers the THREE slot Echo Express III-D for that purpose. Keep in mind that you will be limited to Thunderbolt 3's 'real world' max transfer speed of around 2600MB/s.

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WHERE TO BUY THE SONNET M.2 4X4 PCIE CARD
Order direct from Sonnet Technologies or from B&H Photo Video.

WHERE TO BUY PCIe-Based FLASH STORAGE MODULES
Order the Samsung 970 Pro from B&H Photo Video
Order the Aura P12 from Other World Computing

WHERE TO BUY APPLE products:
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copyright 2019 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
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