Stage XXXII: Workstation Upgrade II

After working some months with my upgrade Apple Mac Pro Workstation from Stage XXVIII: Workstation 5K it was time to upgrade again….

I love my workstation….

I really love that machine, working with the two 5K displays and the 10GbE Thunderbolt connection is superb, but….. You know me…. There are some tuning options available:

I ordered the machine in the past with the 8 Core 3,00GHz CPU, so what option are on the CPU side:

12 Core 2,7GHz or 6 Core 3,70GHz?

More Cores for Multi-Tasking or more Power for Single Threads?

I chose the Power Option with 6 Cores and 3,70 GHz

Turbo Speed of 4,0GHz
Not so easy to get to the CPU….

The Upgrade was not so easy, I had to rip the whole thing to get to the CPU.

Before placing everything back in, I decided to upgrade the memory as well….

32GB before, now 64GB

I could upgrade the machine in the future to 128GB memory…..

After the succesful startup I checked the next tuning option: Local Storage

The factory installed SSD with 512GB Capacity was attached only via SAS, not NVMe…. Time to change that

I searched the internet for a good local storage replacement and I found the Amfeltec SSD Carrier!

Basically a PCIe switch for NVMe SSDs

It is basically a carrier board for 2 x M.2 SSDs including NVMe devices and the factory installed SSD. I searched again some forums and found out, that it is possible to install 3 x M.2 NVMe SSDs with an additional adapter. Let’s do it!!!

I bought 3 x 2TB NVMe SSDs, Intel 660p Series with these Specs:

Quite nice with three of these babies…..

The performance of my Mac Pro Workstation is absolutely amazing! I love working on that machine every single day.

10GbE SFP+ from a previous Stage

Check out my next HomeLab/HomeDC journey Stage XXXIII: NSX-T