M.2 NVMe SSDs in the 2023 Mac Pro. Use a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card

<<. At this moment it’s unclear how many PCIe lanes the Pro can accommodate, >>

The Mac Pro can get very close to full performance, full duplex, for every PCIe device you can install. It is common to modestly over-configure the PCIe slots, knowing that EVERY device running full duplex at exactly the same instant is extremely unlikely, and if that does occur, it will only be a momentary slowdown. So the configurator allows to to modestly over-configure.

When Apple telephone support people have a training day, they are trained about how to be nicer to customers. Deep training the advanced bus performance of their highest-end systems is never the subject of their training. So of course they cannot provide the assurances you are looking for.

If you NEVER want to encounter the situation when traffic gets momentarily slowed, then configure STRICTLY within the ability of each set of Busses bus to provide 100 percent support on each bus set, A and B. The configurator tells you that information.

Your 'getting completely booted off' airline analogy is not applicable here. This is more like a situation where, if completely overbooked, you arrival time will be delayed by 1/1000 second. And 'overbooking' would requires EVERY device, including the boot drive, to be Reading AND Writing as fast as possible at exactly the same time.

I understand your point, Grant, but what's interesting is that nobody at Apple who talks to anyone in the public knows the basic specs of these machines, which is much less than good. They made no allowances for anyone who isn't a casual user on any tier of what's available. And since the thing has "pro" in the name, I don't think it's unreasonable for pro people to want to know what the specs of a machine are. I can't think of a single good reason why the number of PCIe lanes isn't published.

In my realm it's not good to have more variables than are strictly necessary - the machine doing something "clever" in the background can result in some visual or audible artifact when I least want it. I can appreciate if this is simply not an issue for you - I don't know your use case - but let's be clear about analogies - they aren't the thing to be argued about. What I say still stands - the airline saying "there will be a short delay" (no matter how short) is not the same as "we did what we said we'd do". It is absolutely possible to use the Mac Pro within its specs and get absolutely full performance, with headroom, but one would not get that by filling it with 8x and 16x cards - one would get the moderated PCIe switch situation, which is fine for some and less than fine for others. I'd rather have seen a board with fewer slots or a CPU with more lanes.

<< There have been multiple posts about this issue but Apple seems to be ignoring it. >>

This is the Apple User-to-User Support Community. Apple is not monitoring these forums, except to ensure civility and provide answers to posts that go completely un-answered.

There are no standard mechanisms for escalating problems to Apple Support from here, and Apple Engineering and Marketing Movers and Shakers do NOT monitor these forums looking for trends and outstanding issues. If other users can not help you think of a fix, No further help is likely to be forthcoming using this medium. 

If the suggestions already posted here are not adequate to solve your problem, and you have tried:

• creating a new Account/Userid and logging in with that new Account to eliminate Account issues

• Restarting in Safe Mode to eliminate third-party add-on issues --

Then you may have a very complex issue or have discovered a bug. We can't fix (or even track) bugs from the forums. Engineering effort to fix bugs is applied only in response to Bug Reports. 

Get Support

Be polite and professional. 

But do not let them tell you "it's fine", unless it really IS fine.

Work with them until:

•  the problem is solved -OR-

•  they file a Bug Report -OR-

•  they forward you to specialist who solves the problem or files a Bug report.

To file a Bug Report, contact support, work with the first responder to go through their checklist of obvious issues (¿is it plugged in properly?). 

if no solution, be polite and professional, and ASK FOR A SPECIALIST.

The specialist will probably have to contact you again later.

Specialists are more knowledgeable in their areas of expertise, but far less patient. You can freely reference things posted on the forums, but they never take out word for things, they have their own more rigorous methods for data collection and analysis. 

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If you want to send your suggestions or opinions directly to Apple use the feedback links:

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Hi Grant. I was googling info on SSD drives for my new Mac Pro 2023 and came across this group....wondering if you could assist me? I've just bought a Mac Pro 2023 refurb from Apple for Music Production which I do profesisonally. Orinially I wanted to keep things simple by buying PCIE SSD's to just sot into the 5 available PCIE slots....however, I read somewhere that it's best to use as chassis such as the Sonettech 4 slot PCIE....loaded with 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD or similar......I've spoken to numerous sellers and everybody suggests different options...whoch doesn't help me as I'm not technical at all so I can't understand the jargon! I was interested to read what you said about not needing the fastest drives for music production...I'd certainly rather not spend money unnecessarily having shelled out for the Mac Pro! So.....can you recommend some solutions that would work in the mac Pro based on a single 4TB and 2 x 2TB SSD drives, either directly mounted in the PCIE slots, or via a chassis of some kind?

Many thanks

Pascal

Your symptoms, man! Post your symptoms.

<< external HDs mostly in OWC USB 3.2 cases. they are very slow. >>

How slow is slow?

{in my opinion] if you configure up to 100 percent on each of A and B, you get full performance without relying on any trickery or overbooking.

But knowing what 100 percent is is the trick, right?

purplepaul1 wrote:

Not compatible with sonoma yet...PCIe 4.0

sonnet states on its web site that card is Sonoma compatible.

¿what are you talking about?

i guess i got confused by the question..the newest sonnet 8x4 gen 4

is not yet compatible...stated on sonnets website.

No, it specifically says it is compatible.

Following this as I'm in a simlar position