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iMac 2017 27" and the not so simple M.2 upgrade

hgedorn
By hgedorn
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hello everybody. 

 

As my warranty is about to expire, and the Samsung M.2 pricing just dropped, I'm considering an upgrade of my fusion drive. Well, I was until I learned that Apples SSDs are PCIe and the Samsung M.2 wouldn't fit. 

A quick googling revealed a potential adapter from NGFF <-> M.2 NVME may be a solution. In this forum there are a number of old posts regarding desktop adapters, hence I start this new one. 

 

Is there a potential tradeoffs and which of the plenty NGFF Adapters should I get? Does anyone have any experience with this? 

Cheers. hgedorn 

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Posted
  • Author

Running a fast M.2 SSD via SATA would be painful I assume. So you are right, I need to clarify:

 

Currently I'm running a FusionDrive with a 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD and a regular 2TB 3.5" HardDrive. 

My plan is to replace the 128GB PCIe with a Samsung 970 PRO 1 TB and maybe the 3.5" with a Samsung 860 Pro 2.5 SATA

 

Adapters I considered where similar to this one: https://www.amazon.ca/Rivo-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2016-2013-2015/dp/B07N4HS69S/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=1F1VYCKCKQU2A&amp;keywords=ngff+m.2+nvme&amp;qid=1552312243&amp;s=electronics&amp;sprefix=NGFF+%2Celectronics%2C235&amp;sr=1-2-spons&amp;psc=1

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  • 1 month later...
Posted

Hi hgedorn, 

  

Have you updated to m2? Did you succeed? I have an iMac 2017 27 'and i will make the change in the i7700k processor, hd ssd crucial 2tb. Memory changed to 64 ddr4.
I await your information and comments to buy the 2tb m2; I want to access the system through this component and if it works out with you I will buy the board.
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Those Apple drives do speak NVMe over PCIe, but they used a special physical connector. You may be able to install your M.2 drive into your iMac using an adapter board that gives you a M.2 2280 from the proprietary Apple connector. Or you can hunt for MacBook Pro parts, which are often compatible.

The Fruit Pie: Core i7-9700K ~ 2x Team Force Vulkan 16GB DDR4-3200 ~ Gigabyte Z390 UD ~ XFX RX 480 Reference 8GB ~ WD Black NVMe 1TB ~ WD Black 2TB ~ macOS Monterey amd64

The Warship: Core i7-10700K ~ 2x G.Skill 16GB DDR4-3200 ~ Asus ROG Strix Z490-G Gaming Wi-Fi ~ PNY RTX 3060 12GB LHR ~ Samsung PM981 1.92TB ~ Windows 11 Education amd64
The ThreadStripper: 2x Xeon E5-2696v2 ~ 8x Kingston KVR 16GB DDR3-1600 Registered ECC ~ Asus Z9PE-D16 ~ Sapphire RX 480 Reference 8GB ~ WD Black NVMe 1TB ~ Ubuntu Linux 20.04 amd64

The Question Mark? Core i9-11900K ~ 2x Corsair Vengence 16GB DDR4-3000 @ DDR4-2933 ~ MSI Z590-A Pro ~ Sapphire Nitro RX 580 8GB ~ Samsung PM981A 960GB ~ Windows 11 Education amd64
Home server: Xeon E3-1231v3 ~ 2x Samsung 8GB DDR3-1600 Unbuffered ECC ~ Asus P9D-M ~ nVidia Tesla K20X 6GB ~ Broadcom MegaRAID 9271-8iCC ~ Gigabyte 480GB SATA SSD ~ 8x Mixed HDD 2TB ~ 16x Mixed HDD 3TB ~ Proxmox VE amd64

Laptop 1: Dell Latitude 3500 ~ Core i7-8565U ~ NVS 130 ~ 2x Samsung 16GB DDR4-2400 SO-DIMM ~ Samsung 960 Pro 512GB ~ Samsung 850 Evo 1TB ~ Windows 11 Education amd64
Laptop 2: Apple MacBookPro9.2 ~ Core i5-3210M ~ 2x Samsung 8GB DDR3L-1600 SO-DIMM ~ Intel SSD 520 Series 480GB ~ macOS Catalina amd64

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Posted 
Match, Do you think this board is compatible with the Samsung 970 Evo 2tb - Nvme Pcie M.2 2280 Mz-v7e2t0bw?

I will use the Sintech adapter, due to its compatibility and the most appropriate.
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