Poll: *** The official Mac Studio thread (it has Apple Silicon, lots of ports and everything!) ***

Are you going to buy an Apple Studio?


  • Total voters
    83
I did that recently.

6KiUPqG.jpg

As you can see, I returned them. Performance was utterly awful. Carbon Copy Cloner was estimating 27 hours for the initial backup. I tried different ports and cables on my Studio.

I've got UGreen enclosures (Sabrent PCIe controller) and several different SSDs (ranging from DRAM-less QLC to WD black), performance has always been exactly what I was expecting to get. I'm never buying Orico products as I've always had an awful experience with them.
 
I'm never buying Orico products as I've always had an awful experience with them.
I don’t know if it was the enclosure or the ssd itself that was the cause of the slowdown but as you see, I just returned them both because I couldn’t be arsed to investigate further at the time. I bought the Orico enclosure because that specific one was mentioned on LTT.

I’ve got a couple of 2.5” UGReen caddies and they’ve always been good so perhaps I’ll look again.

My aim is for a 2Tb drive attached to the Studio so I can do daily CCC backups. I do the same with my iMac and my MBA so it makes sense to do it on the Studio as well. That’s as well as Time Machine, of course.

/edit - would this be a decent enclosure?

DzNlxgK.jpg
 
I don’t know if it was the enclosure or the ssd itself that was the cause of the slowdown but as you see, I just returned them both because I couldn’t be arsed to investigate further at the time. I bought the Orico enclosure because that specific one was mentioned on LTT.

I’ve got a couple of 2.5” UGReen caddies and they’ve always been good so perhaps I’ll look again.

My aim is for a 2Tb drive attached to the Studio so I can do daily CCC backups. I do the same with my iMac and my MBA so it makes sense to do it on the Studio as well. That’s as well as Time Machine, of course.

/edit - would this be a decent enclosure?

DzNlxgK.jpg

I've got an older revision but this looks like a newer one. There's a cheaper one as well (looks to be the same unit but only with type C cable and about £8 cheaper with a voucher).
 
There's a cheaper one as well (looks to be the same unit but only with type C cable and about £8 cheaper with a voucher).
Ahh yes, I see. I've just ordered it. I'm away for a few days so will go nvme hunting when I get back.

As per tom's hardware, the big negative is sustained write performance
Good spot. I won't buy another one of those then ;)
 
I used Prime Day to procure myself an external SSD enclosure and 2TB M.2 drive. I went for the WD Black SN850X SSD and the ROG Strix Arion M.2 NVME enclosure. The combo is a beast.
 
I got this combo ready for when i get a new Mac. I felt 5000mb/s is plenty fast enough for an external storage, the enclosure can actually handle double that (on paper). 2TB + case for £100.

iTZfN2u.jpg

That's an even worse drive than the one @Feek tried - under sustained writes it can drop as low as 100MBps - that's slower than most hard drives!

Again no DRAM cache (but this time paired with even worse QLC NAND)
 
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That's an even worse drive than the one @Feek tried - under sustained writes it can drop as low as 100MBps - that's slower than most hard drives!

Again no DRAM cache (but this time paired with even worse QLC NAND)
Will relegate that to something else then.

What would you recommend?
 
Any of these should be good choices, as all have DRAM

Crucial P5 Plus is what I use for my PS5, as was recommended as having DRAM/good NAND and often on offer.
(Even when all of the caching is exhausted, it still delivers 1.8GBps)


(Also don't be tempted by PCI-E 5.0 NVME drives - they run too hot and throttle at the minute - assuming there are even enclosures that would support the faster speeds)


My basket at OcUK:

Total: £721.86 (includes delivery: £7.99)​




There's a decent list here that details a lot of the Specs of common SSDs, so you can search for DRAM=yes, NAND type = (not QLC), and see various notes on different products
 
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Any of these should be good choices, as all have DRAM

Crucial P5 Plus is what I use for my PS5, as was recommended as having DRAM/good NAND and often on offer.
(Even when all of the caching is exhausted, it still delivers 1.8GBps)


(Also don't be tempted by PCI-E 5.0 NVME drives - they run too hot and throttle at the minute - assuming there are even enclosures that would support the faster speeds)


My basket at OcUK:

Total: £721.86 (includes delivery: £7.99)​




There's a decent list here that details a lot of the Specs of common SSDs, so you can search for DRAM=yes, NAND type = (not QLC), and see various notes on different products

What about the

Samsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 (up to 7450 MB/s) NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-V9P2T0BW)​

?
 
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