Components , cMP

This RAID card provides two internal 6G Mini-SAS ports for the internal installation of a very high capacity and extremely fast RAID array within your classic Mac Pro as your high performance working drive , with additional mounting hardware required ( please inquire ) . 6G Mini-SAS is an interface that can out-perform Thunderbolt 2 in real world operations . Is an excellent part of a high resolution ( 4K+ ) video editing system , as well as for audio and still image editing . MacOS friendly , although non-bootable . This is a software RAID based card with a web manager .

This RAID card provides two external 6G Mini-SAS ports for high speed data transfer with high capacity external drive enclosures connected to your classic Mac Pro . 6G Mini-SAS is an interface that can out-perform Thunderbolt 2 in real world operations . Is an excellent part of a high resolution ( 4K+ ) video editing system , as well as for audio and still image editing . Make certain you use drives that are qualified for your particular external enclosure . MacOS friendly , although non-bootable . This is a software RAID based card with a web manager .

This RAID card provides one internal and one external 6G Mini-SAS port in your classic Mac Pro . Allows high speed data transfer with high capacity external drive enclosures connected to your classic Mac Pro . Also allows the internal installation of a RAID array within your classic Mac Pro as your high performance working drive , with additional mounting hardware required ( please inquire ) . 6G Mini-SAS is an interface that can out-perform Thunderbolt 2 in real world operations . Is an excellent part of a high resolution ( 4K+ ) video editing system , as well as for audio and still image editing . Make certain you use drives that are qualified for your particular external enclosure . MacOS friendly , although non-bootable . This is a software RAID based card with a web manager .

SATA / eSATA Drive Interface Cards , PCIe :

This card allows the installation of two standard 6G SATA SSDs . With a software RAID application or utility , they can form a RAID 0 ( striped ) array for high performance sequential throughput of between 850 to 960 MB/s . The magic is from it's PLX switch chip , which provides remarkably consistent throughput across a wide range of macOS versions . Bootable with macOS ( single drive and RAID array ) . Windows is not bootable with this card in a Mac Pro . Output your data with one of this card's two 6G eSATA ports . Recommended installed drives are a pair of Samsung 850 PRO SATA SSDs . With a pair of 4 TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSDs in a RAID 0 array , a total capacity of 8 TB is possible .

This graphics card provides entry level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes or for projector systems . It should not be used for GPU accelerated editing projects . EFI Mac Edition with 512 MB Vram and one DL-DVI port and one mini DisplayPort port .

This graphics card provides entry to mid level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes . It should not be used for GPU accelerated editing projects . EFI Mac Edition with 1 GB Vram and one DL-DVI port and one mini DisplayPort port .

This graphics card provides mid level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes and some low end GPU accelerated still image editing projects . With the right adapters and displays , this card can push a signal to three HD displays concurrently . EFI Mac Edition with 1 GB Vram and one DL-DVI port and two mini DisplayPort ports .

This graphics card provides mid level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes and some low end GPU accelerated still image editing projects . It is up to twice as powerful as a 5770 . With the right adapters and displays , this card can push a signal to three HD displays concurrently . EFI Mac Edition with 1 GB Vram and one DL-DVI port and two mini DisplayPort ports .

This graphics card provides mid level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes and GPU accelerated still image and low end video editing projects . With the right adapters and displays , this card can push a signal to four HD displays concurrently . EFI Mac Edition with 2 GB Vram and two DL-DVI ports , one standard DisplayPort port and one HDMI port . 4K capable .

This graphics card provides higher level performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes and GPU accelerated still image and video editing projects . With the right adapters and displays , this card can push a signal to four HD displays concurrently . EFI Mac Edition with 3 GB Vram and one DL-DVI port , one standard HDMI port and two mini DisplayPort ports . This card is basically equivalent to a single D700 . 4K capable .

This graphics card provides an extremely high level of performance and is good for User Interface ( UI ) purposes and demanding GPU accelerated still image and video editing projects . With the right adapters and displays , this card can push a signal to four HD displays concurrently . A non-EFI card with 6 GB Vram and one DL-DVI port , one standard HDMI port and three standard DisplayPort ports . This card is basically equivalent to a nVidia Titan , with not as much Vram . 4K capable .

Secondary Storage Devices :

The Western Digital "Black" Series of SATA 7200 RPM Hard Disk Drives are premium mechanical drives for use by professional Creatives . Great for mass storage usage , these drives offer much higher capacities and lower cost per GB than SSDs . These drives are much faster and larger than the hard disk drives that originally shipped with the Classic Mac Pros from the factory .

The Seagate IronWolf SATA 7200 RPM Hard Disk Drive is the largest mass storage drive installable in a classic Mac Pro . It's primary advantage is the immense amount of storage capacity . This mechanical NAS drive can be installed as a stand alone drive or in a RAID array .

The Samsung "850 Pro" Series of SATA Solid State Drives are premium drives for use by professional Creatives . Very fast , they are the preferred drive to install OSes and applications upon . Great also for dedicated cache , scratch and plugin / instrument drives for enhanced System performance . They also scale nicely in RAID arrays for wicked fast high capacity data drives to write your projects to . Consider installing these drives onto a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus PCIe card or , even better , attached to a Mini-SAS PCIe card for a superior project data drive .

This remarkable drive can playback Blu-Ray movies ( including 3D format ) and burn Blu-Ray optical disks up to 128 GB in capacity , making it an excellent archival system for music and still image files . Model LG WH14NS40 . BD-R (writer) up to 14x and BD-RE (re-writer) up to 2x . Blu-Ray movie playback requires purchase of the third party application , Macgo Blu-ray Player . Blu-Ray writing requires purchase of the third party application , Roxio Toast .

USB Cards , PCIe :

This card has the fastest USB interface possible in a classic Mac Pro , at up to 420 MB/s . ( Your classic Mac Pro's factory installed USB ports have transfer speeds up to 37 MB/s , making this card a significant upgrade ) . This card comes with two external standard Type A ports and requires macOS Yosemite or Sierra . This card is not compatible with El Capitan . This card will achieve its highest performance connected to adapter cables , docks and drive enclosures with an ASM1351 controller chip and high quality SSDs . It is strongly advised to use AC power adapters with externally connected devices .

Software :

With Apple's intermittent support for software based RAID , with the advancement of more sophisticated RAID levels and the special requirements of solid state devices , a program like SoftRAID is a necessity for high performance drive subsystems within macOS Systems . SoftRAID is a RAID creation and management macOS program . It will verify , certify and monitor the health of your drive arrays . SMART drive checking is supported for internally mounted devices . TRIM support occurs on all RAID levels in order to improve array performance . Choose the full version of SoftRAID for RAID 0 ( striped ) , RAID 1 ( mirrored ) , RAID 4 , RAID 5 and RAID 10 ( striped and mirrored ) arrays . The full version also provides email notification of errors , command line access and free tech support from SoftRAID OWC . Choose the Lite version for support for just RAID 0 ( striped ) and RAID 1 ( mirrored ) arrays . The Lite version does not provide email notifications of errors or command line access and support is provided on SoftRAID OWC's online forum . Either version is highly recommended for users of Creation Machines built macOS workstations .