In my previous video I showed you fastest NVMe 32 TB RAID array using addlink S95 8
TB NVMe drives and I squeezed from it over 28 gigabytes per second sequential read speed
and I promised to show you how this monster also works on Apple Mac.
So here I am.
Today I'll show you how it performs in my Mac Pro 2019.
And by the way yes, I still use my Mac Pro 2019 as my main daily driver for 8K multicam
video production despite I have the fully loaded Mac Studio Ultra too.
Is it worth to upgrade the 2019 Mac Pro in time of Apple Silicon?
Watch till the end because I will give you many arguments as clear answer to this question.
Right on the beginning we have immediately a problem and that's PCI Express generation.
The addlink S95 drives are PCI Express Gen 4 NVMe disks but the Mac Pro 2019 has only PCI
Express Gen 3 slots.
Hopefully Apple will finally release the new Apple silicon Mac Pro with PCI Express Gen
4 or 5 slots, but maybe Apple will negative surprise us as already did in the past multiple
times so maybe the Apple silicon Mac Pro will not have any PCI Express slots at all, who
knows.
Theoretical PCIe Gen 4 x 16 bandwidth is 32 gigabytes per second so when in previous video
review I measured 28 gigabytes per second it was exactly on par with some system overhead
counted in.
But Mac Pro 2019 PCI Express gen 3 x 16 bandwidth is only half of that, only 16 gigabytes per
second, so we should in theory see at maximum numbers around 12 gigabytes per second right?
Or not?
Let's find out.
By the way if you are curious how is it possible I have Mac Pro 2019 running without the need
of the outer case then subscribe to my channel hit the bell and enable all notifications
so you won't miss my future video about it.
And to prove you it's really running let me show you
yeah, that's it.
So what do we need?
For my Windows and Linux testing in previous video review I took advantage of PCI Express
bifurcation feature of modern PC motherboards which allows us to use cheap NVMe cards like
this MSI m.2 XPander-Aero Gen 4 card and in BIOS split the x16 interface into into four
individual NVMe pieces each one by four lanes
but Mac Pro 2019 has nothing like that.
That's why we need some card which has onboard PCI Express switch like my favorite Sonnet
m.2 4x4 PCI Express card, the silent version for four NVMe drives.
You can put onto it any m.2 NVMe disks you want.
I just use the best disks I ever tested the addlink S95 8 TB NVMes.
This Sonnet 4x4 card will also work perfectly in any Windows or Linux PC and even in old
MacPro5,1 which is amazing.
Sonnet claims you can get up to 11.7 gigabytes per second from it.
Can I beat it?
I'm sure I can, let's do it.
Disclaimer - this video is not sponsored by Sonnet nor addlink, no money changed hands,
they have no control over what I say, they will see this video first at the same time
as you.
Okay so now I will shut down my Mac Pro to install the Sonnet card inside okay?
I will remove the power, unlock it
bang.
Lock it and secure it
put the power back now let's start it like PC guys right
it's running
that's always good to hear
so to take advantage of any RAID we need to first configure that RAID right? Let's do it.
so let's open Disk Utility
and here we have all addlink m.2 PCI Express gen 4x4 S95 drives, each of them is 8 TB
in size so let's go to RAID assistant, Striped Array, next, let's select all of those four
addlink drives, next, let's call it the addlink 32 TB raid zero and let's do APFS
and chunk size 256K. Capacity 32.01 TBs that's amazing, let's do it, next, yes I want to create it.
mounting disks, done, let's close Disk Utility and here we have it. So as you can see here
32 TB it's empty. So let's start "slowly" using the Blackmagic Speed Test
point it to the 32 TB array and voila
5.9 6 Gigabytes per second 7 gigabytes per second read oh my Lord so six gigs per
second write and almost 7 gigs per second read okay that's not so slow start but not
bad yeah 5.9 something writes and over 7 gigabytes per second reads. Great. So let's shift up a
gear. Let's start AJA System Light. Point it to the addlink storage and again 4K UHD file
64 gigs in size 10 bit and let's see what's gonna happen Okay so six gigabytes per second writes
and 6.6 gigabytes per second reads. Not amazing mind-blowing but it's still freaking good
right? Now let's open ATTO disk benchmark and point it to the 32 TB addlink array and let's
do it and we have roughly 11.8 gigs per second read speed 12.2 gigs per second that is speed
and the roughly 9.6 9.5 gigs per second write speed. So let's shift up even to a higher gear
to the insane territory shall we? So AmorphousDiskMark let's point it to the addlink, yes and bang
over 14 gigabytes per second read speed that's absolutely nuts. Good boy. So to answer the question
if you should get some RAID array like this 32 TB NVMe addlink monster let's break it
up into three main parts. It's overall about 1. capacity 2. about speed and
3. about future. Officially you can buy at maximum 8 TB internal storage for any current
MAC not just the Mac Pro 2019. But that's not at all what I would recommend you to do. First
it's very expensive. Apple will charge you for eight TB internal storage insane two thousand
eight hundred dollars where single addlink 8 TB drive is almost three times cheaper
and second it's overall bad idea to work from a system disk for many reasons. Your data should
be somewhere else than on system disk to get the maximum performance and reliability. So
with the solution like this you can get even 32 TB of super fast NVMe storage which Apple
is not able to deliver at all. Now we are getting to the second point and that's speed
despite the Mac Pro 2019 have only PCI Express gen 3 slots it's still capable of delivering
over 14 gigabytes per second read speed which is still at least more than two times faster
than what you can get on any modern Apple silicon Mac. So for example if you need to
edit let's say many streams of 8K footage at the same time as multicam this 32 TB NVMe
array looks like the only ultimate option. BTW I prepared for you video about
how this Sonnet 4x4 and four 8 TB addlink S95 NVMe drives perform in DaVinci Resolve exactly
on the 8K multicam production. So if you want to see it then subscribe to my channel, hit
the bell and enable all notifications so you won't miss it. Obviously I'm not forcing you
to buy this addlink 8 TB drives at all, you can buy any disks you want and install it
onto the Sonnet 4x4 PCI Express silent card. I just recommended these and that's a big
difference. And why do I recommend it? When I even don't count the fact that these drives
are insanely fast I recommend it mostly because of its huge TBW value which is 5600.
if you don't know yet the TBW stands for Terra Bytes Written, in another words how many TBs of data
you can in total write onto these disks before you will experience some degradation. So in
case of these drives you can 700 times fully overwrite each of these 8 TB addlink
S95 drives which will give you 2 800 TBs or 2.8 petabytes written that's insane. But for
any video, music or 3D production where they need to work with huge data sets it's the
main reason to buy it. Another advantage is because you would work from those NVMe drives
you would not wear out your system disk in the Mac Pro which if you would write significant
amount of data onto it it would simply break apart. Any SSD will die after certain amount
of data being written to it. And the TBW of disks I have in my Mac Pro 2019 is only 600
compared to the 5600 on the addlink S95 drives. So it's better if breaks a disk which you
can easily buy on Amazon and is much cheaper instead of the system Apple disk right? And
third point I called future. You can use this Sonnet 4x4 PCI Express card in any computer
even after your Mac Pro would die or you can buy the new Apple silicon Mac Pro when it's
out and use it there too and all your data will there be waiting for you already. This
Sonnet 4x4 card you can connect also to any current Apple silicon Mac like my Mac Studio
here and by the way yes I tested already for you it's performance when it's connected to
my Mac Studio Ultra so again make sure you're subscribed to my channel so you won't miss
that video. By the way if you would need any help with your Apple Mac, Windows or Linux
computer you can book a live video meeting with me and the remote session directly to
your computer in front of your eyes on my website morgonaut.cloud or on my Patreon. Simply
you can book a video meeting with me in just few clicks and I will help you with any problem
or workflow. So despite the limited bandwidth of the PCI Express gen 3 in the Mac Pro 2019
this macOS and NVMe RAID still kicks ass to anything Apple has to offer. 32 TB of NVMe
storage is a dream of any high-end production. It's insanely fast 14 GB per second
reads in Mac Pro 2019 oh my Lord. And if connected to PCI Express Gen 4 or 5 you could get even
up to 28 GB per second. Thanks to the huge TBW value it's also extremely reliable.
And finally it's future proof, so what you need more? Get the Sonnet m.2 4x4 PCI Express
silent card and those addlink S95 NVMe drives on the links in this video description to
get the best price. Upgrade to the super fast 32 TB NVMe storage and experience the future
of data storage for audio, video 3D or any high demanding professionals already today.