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OS X Driver for NVMe M.2 Solid State Drives Released

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...just want to share my Experience with that kext:
I have a Samsung 951 NVMe.
Installation worked fine. Speeds are insane: 1135 read, 1984 write.

I'm just having one Problem: The shutdown/restart thing.

I just saw this cure for the shutdown/restart problem. It bares watching the result. Start here. (I'm unable to test this procedure at this time.)

After reading that, I thought it solved the Problem.
But my Hack keeps getting Kernel Panics during shutdown.

I think I'll get a normal SSD, since that bothers me a bit and there no fix in sight.
Thank you for the feed back. I'll correct my post.
 
Thanks guys for the advice.

I was aware of that drive, but on Amazon in Germany it's about 50% more expensive than the NVMe version and I always thought that the AHCI version is way slower, but from the benchmarks I've seen now, it could be even faster.
I think I'll order one from another store. Then there's one issue less.
 
Interestingly, I get different read speeds on the same 950 Pro drive on different machines. Maybe a bandwidth limit to the slot?

On the left is the Broadwell NUC5i5RYK, and on the right is the Skylake ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac:

View attachment 167791 View attachment 167792

I'm pretty sure your NUC is PCIe 2 and is a generation behind. I have a Broadwell i5 NUC with an SM951 (AHCI not NVMe version), and I know an additional bottleneck is that it only has two PCIe lanes - hence my opting for AHCI SSD. It's been my assumption gen 3 was the first to allow 4 lanes and doubled 16 to 32 Gb/sec) as a standard for storage devices absent some sort of PCIe adapter card. I found it hard to get a decent manuak / spec detail from Intel, but i gathered that much.
 
1. Your mobo should already have NVMe support in its firmware, so you only need NvmExpressDxe-64.efi in legacy drivers64 — not drivers64UEFI
2. What is the last thing that appears on the screen before the reboot? Or is it so immediate that as soon as you select El Cap it reboots?
3. Without NVMeGeneric, can you boot into El Cap on your 940 Pro?
4. Is CSM enabled?

I have a similar setup and I can boot directly from Clover installed on the 950 Pro NVMe ESP into El Cap on the same drive. I'm guessing it comes down to UEFI settings and/or Clover configuration, but more information would be helpful.


can you help a brother out? i used to be able to boot from 950 pro all day long in Yosemite but now it doesn't work well at all in El Cap. i'm thinking something in my config might be to blame.. or a kext thing?
 
Hi,
I saw many posts about nvme, some says it works as boot drive, some have issues... I'm totally lost.
I'm building a new hackintosh with a GA-Z170-UD5-TH, is the 950 pro really works as boot drive, and which ssd will be the best choice between the SM951 AHCI and the 950 pro?
 
Hi,
I saw many posts about nvme, some says it works as boot drive, some have issues... I'm totally lost.
I'm building a new hackintosh with a GA-Z170-UD5-TH, is the 950 pro really works as boot drive, and which ssd will be the best choice between the SM951 AHCI and the 950 pro?
The 950 Pro definitely works as a boot drive, but for me it caused the Shutdown/Restart bug. I sent it back to Amazon and got the SM951 AHCI instead. It works great, with no Shutdown/Restart issue. And according to my limited testing, it's actually faster than the 950 Pro.
 
Hi,
I saw many posts about nvme, some says it works as boot drive, some have issues... I'm totally lost.
I'm building a new hackintosh with a GA-Z170-UD5-TH, is the 950 pro really works as boot drive, and which ssd will be the best choice between the SM951 AHCI and the 950 pro?

I would stick with the SM951 AHCI for native driver support. The kext released by JimJ for NVMe drives was not intended for boot drives, so it seems to lack power management features. YMMV.
 
Ok, thanks for the replies.
I will go to the SM951, the biggest problem for me is the PCB color, that green is so ugly!! Maybe I will try to put a heatsink on it.
 
Ok, thanks for the replies.
I will go to the SM951, the biggest problem for me is the PCB color, that green is so ugly!! Maybe I will try to put a heatsink on it.

Yes I had the same dilemma. I went with the much "slower" 850 Pro because I couldn't stand the green. You might want to check out the Kingston HyperX Predator. It's a slightly-dated PCIe 2.0 M.2 drive. And it's black. :)
 
Hi,
I saw many posts about nvme, some says it works as boot drive, some have issues... I'm totally lost.
I'm building a new hackintosh with a GA-Z170-UD5-TH, is the 950 pro really works as boot drive, and which ssd will be the best choice between the SM951 AHCI and the 950 pro?

SM951/AHCI will be less hassle with very similar performance.
 
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