I continue to recommend keeping around 15 - 20% of the SSD free if you want to keep performance at a relatively high level. As long as you’re careful not to completely fill the drive you should be ok from an IO consistency standpoint as well. Samsung’s SSD architectures have evolved pretty well over the years. I believe this is a 2-bit-per-cell MLC design with a 512MB LPDDR2-1066 DRAM. My review sample had a 512GB Samsung XP941 based drive. The result is faster peak sequential speeds.Ĭustom SSD behind the GPU board on the left
Unlike the new MacBook Pros, the Mac Pro SSDs only ship in a x4 PCIe configuration. The connector looks similar to what’s in the new MacBook Pro but I haven’t verified compatibility. There’s a single proprietary Apple PCIe SSD connector and module inside the new Mac Pro. You could argue wanting more internal PCIe storage, but hard drives don’t belong inside this machine - for that there’s Thunderbolt 2. The new Mac Pro does the right thing and abandons internal hard drives in favor of high-speed PCIe based storage.
