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Review on M 2 Adapter Aluminum Heatsink Solution by Carlos Burrows

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Added NVMe in 2010 Mac Pro 5.1

Was on a Mac Pro update during quarantine. I watched some videos on how to add an NVMe M.2 SSD so I decided to give it a try. Attaching the thermal pad and heatsink to the Samsung EVO 970 1TB was easy. While it's intuitive if you've upgraded your computer before, there were instructions just in case. The instructions are hard to read but it might just be my eyesight. I then inserted the finished SSD into the adapter and tightened it with the supplied screw. I popped it into slot 4 of the Mac Pro and that's it. I reinstalled Mojave on the SSD and everything went as expected. There are plenty of videos on how to install an NVMe SSD in a Mac Pro and this is a good guide if you're up for it. This adapter is designed for 3.0 x 4 so there will be a drop in speed. I've read other posts about using the x16 adapter but some of them are quite expensive. From the information I've read, a PCIe 3.0 x4 card running in a 2.0 x4 slot effectively halves the bandwidth. Which seems to correlate with the benchmark I posted. For a $13 card, I'm happy with the results. It boots as expected, although Mac Pro 5.1 boots slowly. About 60 seconds.

Pros
  • ➤Support NVMe SSD such as Samsung 950Pro/960EVO/XP941/PM951/PM961/SM951/SM961, Plextor M6e series, Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 SSD etc.
Cons
  • No performance