Sonnets M.2 4×4 PCIe Card silent comes in an x ​​16 slot and offers four places for common SSDs (M.2 modules) with NVMe protocol. If a PCIe slot is occupied, this allows internal and very fast memory space expansion by up to 32 TByte. An internal switch shares the 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes of the card in 4 × 4. With a software RAID you can speed up access (RAID 0) or increase data security by mirroring (RAID 1).

The PCIe The card is suitable for use with macOS, Windows and Linux, but seems to be primarily designed for Apple’s Mac Pro: Apple can only increase additional SSD capacity by removing the old modules and replacing them with new, also very expensive cards – for 8 For example, TByte gives Apple a good 3. 200 Euro. Many users find it more practical to expand the storage space with PCIe cards.

Fast in RAID With only one Samsung SSD 970 We were able to use Evo Plus 1 TByte in the Mac Pro (year of manufacture 2019) Data already with 2544 Write MByte / s and read with 3011. With two of the small memory bars in RAID 0, the transfer rates increased to 5217 and 5105 MByte / s, with three Evos on 6338 and 6750 MByte / s and with four on fantastic 6884 and 7928 MByte / s. For comparison: A SATA SSD creates around the 450 MByte / s.

M.2 4×4 PCIe Card silent (PCIe card for 4 PCIe SSDs) Manufacturer Sonnet Capacity 4 × PCIe SSD with NVMe protocol and M.2 form factor System requirement PCIe x 16 – Slot Price (manufacturer) 450 € Buyers of the Sonnet card must procure the SSDs themselves. Which SSDs are suitable can be found in the manufacturer’s list, which you should follow. Unfortunately, macOS can only be booted from the Sonnet card if no RAID has been set up on it. In addition, it is recommended to only use SSDs of the same type for a RAID, as different cache strategies and controllers can significantly reduce performance in practice.

Faster in Windows – 10 – PC As the suffix silent suggests , the card works without a fan. Instead, a large heat sink with thermal pads dissipates heat to the general airflow inside the Mac Pro. According to the manufacturer, the card also works in Thunderbolt 3 boxes or the Mac Pro from 2012, but then slower. However, it was faster in a PC under Windows 10, where we write about 8.4 GB / s with four SSDs in RAID 0 and 13, 4 could read.

Sonnet’s fanless card is designed for the Mac Pro, but does not achieve its maximum performance in it due to the slowing software RAID of macOS. 8 GByte / s helps a bit and is sure to be gladly accepted by every video creator. In our test of Apple’s Afterburner with several 8K streams, the card with four SSDs was not the limiting factor.

(lbe)