Choosing a Compatible NVMe SSD for your macOS Boot Drive

[TijuanaKez]

This is a great resource. It would be nice to keep it current and track some of the other brands and controllers too, as the larger sized WD are pretty pricey.

Some good info here.

Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

Very nice bump in speed and responsiveness with a new SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB I installed yesterday 2015 15" MacBook Pro Apple 512GB SSD SK hynix Gold P31 2TB

forums.macrumors.com

Of note, the SK Hynix P31 Gold range is showing very high performance and compatibility in real Macs.

Others have noted SSDs with SM2262 or SM2263 chipsets also work tend to work well.

 

[Chemari]

Ok a z590 motherboard I hace a WD black 850N, on an Acer Nitro 5 55-515 an XPG Spectrix and haven’t has any issues

Sorry, the corrector.
On a…. had any

 

[c-o-pr]

This is a great resource. It would be nice to keep it current and track some of the other brands and controllers too, as the larger sized WD are pretty pricey.

Some good info here.

Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

Very nice bump in speed and responsiveness with a new SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB I installed yesterday 2015 15" MacBook Pro Apple 512GB SSD SK hynix Gold P31 2TB

forums.macrumors.com

Of note, the SK Hynix P31 Gold range is showing very high performance and compatibility in real Macs.

Others have noted SSDs with SM2262 or SM2263 chipsets also work tend to work well.

The P31 has appeared on at least one list as problematic. But I notice seemingly contradictory reports for some drives over the years. It's impossible to generalize, because makers are always changing things. If anyone has ever reported a problem, I regard that a fair warning.

I took a gamble on P41 Platinum, and it works well for me. But last I looked it's price hasn't dropped as fast as recent WD options.

IMO, P41 it's the top reviewed performer for 2022, notwithstanding that detailed benchmarks show a trade off with 980 Pro in one case: for very long burst (many 100s of Gs) of sequential writes, but on balance of concerns P41 got a top ranking across wide range of measures, so I did it and no regrets.

 

[Superbogey]

This is a great resource. It would be nice to keep it current and track some of the other brands and controllers too, as the larger sized WD are pretty pricey.

Some good info here.

Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

Very nice bump in speed and responsiveness with a new SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB I installed yesterday 2015 15" MacBook Pro Apple 512GB SSD SK hynix Gold P31 2TB

forums.macrumors.com

Of note, the SK Hynix P31 Gold range is showing very high performance and compatibility in real Macs.

Others have noted SSDs with SM2262 or SM2263 chipsets also work tend to work well.

The good news is that prices on NVMe's are dropping fast. I saw an ad for a $99 2TB drive while googling today.

 

[trs96]

$99 2TB drive

Was it the SN570 ? A good budget choice if your board doesn't support PCIe 4.0.

Hard to imagine this price for 2TB just a few years ago.

 

[craighazan]

I would do it!, never had an issue with Kingspec NVMe.

 

[c-o-pr]

Some good info here.

Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

Very nice bump in speed and responsiveness with a new SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB I installed yesterday 2015 15" MacBook Pro Apple 512GB SSD SK hynix Gold P31 2TB

forums.macrumors.com

Of note, the SK Hynix P31 Gold range is showing very high performance and compatibility in real Macs.

Others have noted SSDs with SM2262 or SM2263 chipsets also work tend to work well.

Here is the reference on P31 hazard— It's from Dortania bug tracker, April, 2021:

SSD hall of fame needs new entries · Issue #192 · dortania/bugtracker

Guide Anti-Hackintosh Buyers Guide (link) After our discovery of a severe bug in the TRIM implementation of practically all Samsung SSDs we spent time investigating which SSDs are affected by all k...

github.com

Incompatible with IONVMeFamily (die under heavy load):

GIGABYTE 512 GB M.2 PCIe SSD (e.g. GP-GSM2NE8512GNTD) (need more tests)
ADATA Swordfish 2 TB M.2-2280
SK Hynix HFS001TD9TNG-L5B0B
SK Hynix P31
Samsung PM981 models
Micron 2200V MTFDHBA512TCK
Asgard AN3+ (STAR1000P)
Netac NVME SSD 480

This was at Big Sur. The Sabrent Rocket 4 failures I saw were in April & May 2021.

Maybe macOS at that time had a problem that later got fixed?

 

[Superbogey]

Was it the SN570 ? A good budget choice if your board doesn't support PCIe 4.0.

View attachment 566384
Hard to imagine this price for 2TB just a few years ago.

Winner, winner, some sort of fowl dinner! I bought the 500GB version of it to replace a 128GB SSD I used as my Windows boot drive only a few months ago for not much less than that.

 

[Stork]

I would do it!, never had an issue with Kingspec NVMe.View attachment 566385

As of this time/date, it's $92.

https://www.newegg.com/p/0D9-000D-00151

 

[kirkyuk]

Has anyone had any luck installing Ventura using an ADATA SX8200 Pro NVME drive? I've been using this as a boot drive in Big Sur without issue but when I run the installer for Ventura it doesn't seem to detect the drive?