OWC Announces First 1TB and 2TB SSD Upgrades for 2013 Mac Pro

Other World Computing (OWC) today announced new 1TB and 2TB Aura SSD upgrades designed for the Mac Pro, offering Mac Pro owners a way to upgrade the storage in their machines without needing to purchase upgrades directly from Apple.

owcupgrade

Apple's 1TB upgrade option costs $800 over the base 256GB SSD option, and while OWC's 1TB upgrade option is priced slightly higher at $899, it gives users an option to convert their existing SSD into an external USB 3.0 drive.

Apple offers a maximum of 1TB of storage, so OWC's 2TB solution, priced at $1,479, is a good solution for users who are looking for additional storage for their Mac Pros. The 2TB option also comes with a kit for converting an existing SSD into an external USB 3.0 drive.

The kits, which are available for pre-order, come equipped with the tools needed for a do-it-yourself storage upgrade, a step-by-step installation video, and tech support provided by OWC. The kits are expected to ship in two to three weeks.

Top Rated Comments

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Piggie

51 months ago

Can someone please explain to me why Apple decided to only put a storage bay on the back of ONE of the Pro's GPUs? It's baffled me from day one and I've still yet to find an answer.

2015 Mac Pro :)

Rating: 9 Votes

PhiLLoW

51 months ago

Where are the graphics cards upgrades for the 2013 Mac Pro? ;-(

Where are the SSD upgrades for 2013-2014 MacBook models!?

Where are the RAM Upgrades for the iPhones?

Rating: 7 Votes

joecool99

51 months ago

trim ?

native trim support ?

Rating: 6 Votes

logicstudiouser

51 months ago

I saw 2TB SSD in the title and jumped out of my seat...until I saw 'for mac pro'.
I have been waiting so long for a macbook pro 2TB SSD. ADATA promised one in the 4th quarter of this year at two tech events (one in Janurary and one in June). Still no 2TB SSD for laptops by any company! :(

Rating: 4 Votes

Mr. Retrofire

51 months ago

A properly designed SSD doesn't need trim support. Trim is a low cost half assed solution to a problem better handled by the drive itself.

That is just an assertion without substance. Of course, you know more about SSDs and flash memory than the engineers behind the SATA and TRIM command specification and all SSD manufacturers + firmware developers together. :rolleyes:

Rating: 4 Votes

Keerock

51 months ago

Worth it?

Is the internal BUS so much faster than using SSD via external thunderbolt that you should spend $1500? Yeah, I know, the system should be on the internal but man, I don;t get the bang for the buck here.

Rating: 3 Votes

Peace

51 months ago

I'd like to know exactly what SSD's they are using because my 256GB SSD is much faster than what they advertise their 1TB drive to be.

From their page :

Performance

Read: 730MB/s
Write: 698MB/s

------------------------

My Mac Pro :

Rating: 3 Votes

Hurda

51 months ago

native trim support ?

Guess. ;)

A properly designed SSD doesn't need trim support. Trim is a low cost half assed solution to a problem better handled by the drive itself.

Educate yourself how GC works, educate yourself about its shortcomings regarding filesystems and deleted files, and finally educate yourself how TRIM is mitigating these shortcominigs and why GC without TRIM is not a viable alternative.

Then reevalute your posting.

Have a nice day. :)

PS: If TRIM really were a "low cost half assed solution", why is Apple enabling it for all its SSDs? ;)

Rating: 3 Votes

jduncan

51 months ago

Can someone please explain to me why Apple decided to only put a storage bay on the back of ONE of the Pro's GPUs? It's baffled me from day one and I've still yet to find an answer.

It as combination of two facts:
1. Apple decided to design a pro workstation with only one CPU slot.
2. Intel does not have actual competency to Xeon, so they keep it with minimal investment and old architectures.

Why is so?
1. Each Xeon has only 40 lanes of PCIe. So if apple wants hight performance flash they have to accommodate for the lanes they have. So it will be (2) 16 Lanes for the graphics cards, and 4 for the PCIe flash storage and 4 for all the rest including 3 thunderbolt controllers. This decision by Apple has other negative connotations like low clock rate of the 12 core option (it could be tow 3.5ghz 6 cores). In the other hand it keeps power and costs down and the next generation Xeon will have up to 18 cores.

2. Even some personal computer chips on the Intel line have 40 PCIe lanes, so, one will have expected that since they keep Xeons one or two generations bellow their best, they will improve server related things. Memory bandwidth and IO are key performance components of server and workstation performance.They do not improve either. Go to intel ARC and you will see that Xeon supports lots of memory but is "low speed" memory. Some costumer processors also support 64GB of 1866 memory per socket.

Since Apple is not changing the mac pro enclosure any time soon, what we really need is AMD to launch a competitive server platform (unlikely).

Rating: 2 Votes

jduncan

51 months ago

Probably a crappy 2 Lane PCIe that is common in the PC word. They should have gone 4PCIe lanes even is more expensive. But they wanted to "look" like a cheaper alternative when they are not. Even the price difference is not that big. If you buy the 1TB option for the mac pro you get a SSD that is around 30% faster
and you pay 100$ less. Of course then you don't have the 256GB ssd but a 256GB ssd is about 100$ so what's the point again ? It's only for people that did not but enough storage to begin with and maybe for some that want fully internal storage even if it means a slow one.

The only good part is that they cracked the interface.

Apple is been stupid with the trim stuff. They are becoming Microsoft like trying to force crap into users. An example: they try to force people to sync the iPhones via the then subpar net services (blocking USB). For a time it was easier to sync the iPhone with with a Windows machine.

The discontinuation of Aperture is other point, Apple can have a product that is not rentable. But a new story of trowing pros under the rug (Shake anyone?) point in one direction: Should a company invest in FCPx?

I understand that Adobe use Photoshop's monopolistic power all the time (quarkxpress, Macromedia, Apple Aperture) but they should have move the cost to the Mac division or give Photos all the power that Aperture has now even if they leave the pro market to Adobe.

Best regards,

Rating: 2 Votes

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