NVMe M2 Samsung SSD 960 Pro

[TonyH69]

Ive done some searching, and reading, but a lot of the threads seem to be a year or more old right now, so I guess I have two real questions about $subject.

1. From everything I've read, these M2 SSDs seem to create more headache than benefit in the hackintosh world. Is that still the case or have things improved. I'm not a dedicated hacker and prefer less hack than more. Should I just stick with something like the EVO 850 2.5?

2. Will I even see the speed benefit from this M2 if I can get it to work on a GA-z170x-UD5 board, or will I need a 270 board for that?

I won't be buying for a couple of weeks probably but I wanted to make the right choice. So far this is the only questionable thing I've thought about getting, all the other components have been chosen from the "safe" list.

Cheers

Tony

 

[pastrychef]

2. Will I even see the speed benefit from this M2 if I can get it to work on a GA-z170x-UD5 board, or will I need a 270 board for that?

Yes, you will see the speed benefits of an NVMe with a Z170 motherboard.

 

[TonyH69]

Ive done some searching, and reading, but a lot of the threads seem to be a year or more old right now, so I guess I have two real questions about $subject.

1. From everything I've read, these M2 SSDs seem to create more headache than benefit in the hackintosh world. Is that still the case or have things improved. I'm not a dedicated hacker and prefer less hack than more. Should I just stick with something like the EVO 850 2.5?

Cheers

Tony

Can anyone comment on the difficulty of setting one of these up for a complete newbie?

 

[pastrychef]

From what I've read, macOS 10.12.6 will have support for NVMe and we will no longer need to go through all the additional steps to use them. So, I think it would be a good idea to wait for 10.12.6's release.

 

[Stork]

From what I've read, NVMe support comes in 10.13 High Sierra. Kaby Lake support comes in 10.12.6.

 

[pastrychef]

Ah yes, you're right NVMe support for High Sierra.

 

[Stork]

However, I'm running two systems (Gene and Thunderball) with Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 SSDs using RehabMan's Spoofing method to great success.

 

[TonyH69]

The wait isn't a huge deal for me, I'm building the system over a couple/few months, so I plan to install a kaby lake, I can hold off on the M2 for a couple of months until high sierra is out if that's the case; the prices will only come down in the meantime.

I'll take a look at the spoofing link you posted to see how much effort is involved.

 

[TonyH69]

As some background, this machine will be replacing my dual processor 2010 cheese grater macpro, as my primary audio workstation, I figure any latency I can reduce will be a good thing. I'll have the M2 for OS and apps, and a separate 850 EVO (which I already own) to write work to until I can justify another M2 for the second slot, and probably a 4TB spinning disk for the sample libraries.

 

[Exway8]

I'm searching and reading too, but i have the older board Z77-DS3H with 3770K and I found that ivy bridge supports NVMe, but can someone confirm that with an adapter ASUS HYPER M.2 X4 it will perform on max capacity ?