Apple SSD UPGRADE: Mac Pro 6,1 - A Good Idea in 2020? - Bonus Episode

#2013MacPro #SSDUpgrade #Trashcan
What are your options if you want to upgrade the SSD in the Mac Pro 6,1 Trashcan?

In this episode, I cover three possible upgrade options for larger capacity and better performance. I choose an upgrade for my Mac Pro, install and benchmark.

All products featured were bought with my own money, and therefore my opinions are my own and not sponsored by any company.

[turbooo]

I realize this is an old video, but the SSD metal backer is not a het sink, but a stiffer. I was part of the launch manufacturing team for this system, and we found that in drop tests the SSD would break in certain drop test scenarios. As such the hardware team added the SSD stiffer to aid with overall rigidity. The adhesive is double sided, and very strong (as you noted). You can remove it, if you heat up the SSD stiffer with heat gun. Cheers and love the videos.

[jimrogers]

I got a made for Mac Pro SSD from OWC so that I could replace the original 1TB as well as upgrade to Mac OS 12 (Monterey). It worked quite well and I can get a couple more years out of my Trash Can Mac without the added expense of getting a Mac Studio, at least for now.

[johnh]

Thanks for this video! I took the plunge after your last video and replaced my drive as well. A couple of notes on my experience:
1 - 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe drive for $87 from Amazon.
2 - NVMe adapter for $17 from Amazon.
3 - NVMe external enclosure for $37 from Amazon.
4 - NVMe heat sink $6 from Amazon

I put the EVO in the enclosure and used Carbon Copy to transfer info from old drive to new.
I moved the EVO drive into the Mac Pro.
Done!

I also bought an extra NVMe to put in the enclosure to have another external backup drive.

I also took the plunge and upgraded from the 6 core to 12 core CPU with a used on from eBay.

I also upgraded the RAM from 32GB to 64 GB.

After all that, I don't even notice any difference in day to day use. LOL. Oh well. I feel better at least. I also think the resale value will recover all the cost if I ever sell it.

Cheers!

[denman]

I love my 12 core, 64mbs, 1TB drive for daily use. It's quiet, cool and performs well in photoshop.

[barrycraig]

I've been following along with this as I try and squeeze the most performance possible out of my own 2013 Mac Pro. As well as the SSD, CPU and RAM upgrades I've also recently gone down the eGPU route. My original D300's are absolutely useless, I've "replaced" them with a Vega64 in a Razer Core X. The performance increase is incredible for my uses (Photo and some video editing). The hardware cost a little under £500 and is by far the most noticeable improvement so far.

[rolandgerard]

You go deep on your subjects, i like that.

[iMurasev]

Great series of videos - very detailed and good explained! Thanks a lot!

[WWPTV]

I took the plunge. Yes I am now iOEverything. For me I studied what others are doing for video editing and specifically 1080. I have no desire to go back to 4k anytime soon. I am the leader in my genre so why when no one else is? This was about what can I buy for right at $2000 and I am way less than that before upgrades. But my system is coming with 512GB from the start. So I will need to go from 4 core to 12 and maybe upgrade the D300s down the road or go eGPU in the mean time. I priced the M1 Mac Mini and eGPU at $3800. And that was way more than I wanted at present. And there was no way I was spending $6k plus how much more on a 7, 1. Thank you for you very matter of fact videos. Everything else is very snarky about this system. But it is a classy system I have always admired. And it has to be better than my 2018 Dell XPS with 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM and all the ridiculous file IO errors and lost connections to internet. And I still have $1000 for upgrades or Mac Book Pro for taking my channel on the road. That is why I am building my system with and MVE 2TB SSD for actual files and projects. I am looking at 20TB+ of combining 8 years of 2TB into a NAS that is super reliable. It you have any thoughts or videos please link them to me.

[peregrineclarke]

Thanks for this, I've got a 6, 1 MacPro - 12 core Xeon, 64Gb RAM and D700 cards. I love it! It's not the fastest by any means, but it's got plenty of grunt. It's mainly used for LRC and Photoshop with a bit of 4K video editing. I do need to upgrade the SSD though, probably a 1Tb or something along those lines and your video is exactly what I was looking for. Great work!

[ralflukovic]

As I commented on your Mac Pro upgrade video with my 10 cores CPU... I even updated my drive.
Aura Pro X2 480GB was my choice. I bought a new one.I have similar result as you 1250 write and 1400 read in average.
I even successfully installed Boot Camp for few applications which doesn't work any more in Catalina.
It wasn't easy to get all components to work properly in the beginning and I succeeded in the third attempt.
If you like to play a games Windows use both GPU with excellent performance.Almost double FPS than on Mac.

[guyonamotorcycle]

Just purchased an adapter and an evo 970 1Tb. I was a bit disappointed that I needed to upgrade to 10.13 as I am very happy and everything works fine with 10.11. Thanks for the vids.

[lwa.dev]

Thanks for the very extensive overview of upgrade ssd options…your a legend pal :-)

[NeilParfittMusic]

Thanks for the plug! :)

Yes, the Amfeltec is not for everyone, but it definitely simplifies outside peripherals and has its own PCIe lane vs sharing the 3 x TB busess across 6 external ports - becomes problematic sharing bandwidth if you have multiple 4k monitors and audio interfacing. I also found when I was travelling around with it, you could throw the machine in a bag and not worry about forgetting work drives.

Using those little M.2 adapters - did that interfere with the mount screw position of the SSD? Lookslike it would shift the drive mount position ever so slightly.

[stanlee]

straight to the point... extremely useful ....

[Chickaboom]

Great vid. I will be checking out your other material as well. Recently, needing to upgrade from my current 7 year old iMac graphics workstation, I took advantage of a seller with a base model 6, 1 on eBay that bidding closed out on Christmas morning. No one else was paying attention at the time and I got a fair deal on a newer machine. I upgraded the SSD to Adata 1tb, removed the mismatched 12gb DDR4 and installed a matching set for 64gb as well as the 12-Core CPU kit. After getting everything sorted out and into a (mostly) trouble-free graphics machine, I would have waited out for a D500 or D700 GPU version to pop up. Chatting with others with similar upgrades, apparently the sweet spot for graphics is an 8-core and not the 12. Al told, I am happily under $2k for the whole machine with its misc. add-ons.

[hanswurst]

Not defending the 256Gb base option but: many don‘t want or need more because:
PCIe Card for nvmes (cheap and user replaceable)
Network Storage with 10GBit fast enough to even edit off of

[infinaneek]

I didn’t realise gen4 will run faster on a mac pro

[MacSociety]

Also, I see at the end you chat about external eGPU video down the road. I love the looks of the Blackmagic eGPUs. One would look sweet next to a Mac Pro 2013. I wonder if using a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 connector would allow these newer models to work on older Mac Pro 2013 and how much the newer graphics cards in them could help with video work.

[gregsonberlin]

So - thanks for your inspiration. Job done. Internal SSD capacity doubled, performance more than doubled. Easy job: Samsung EVO 1 TB, adapter and heatsink, with CCC to Samsung T5 cloned, swaped and restored. Finish.

Now I have an 0, 5 TB internal apple SSD here - but the external case from OWC has a real heavy price tag :(

Anyway thanks.

[WarriorsPhoto]

Now that you’ve done all these updates I am more excited for Episode 4. This machine should fly especially in FCPX. Congratulations.