OWC Releases Accelsior 4M2 SSD: Quad-M.2 For Over 6000 MB/s
by Anton Shilov on December 23, 2019 1:00 PM EST
Just in time for the launch of Apple's newly redesigned Mac Pro tower, OWC has introduced the ‘fastest SSD [they've] ever built’, the Accelsior 4M2. The high-end solid state drive combines multiple M.2 drives to offer up to 8 TB of storage, with aggregate read/write well over 6000 MB/s.
The OWC Accelsior 4M2 SSD is essentially a PCIe x8 backplane based on the ASMedia ASM2824 PCIe 3.0 switch, which in turn is being used to drive a quartet of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots. The Accelsior then fills out these slots with four of OWC's Aura P12 M.2-2280 drives (Phison’s PS5012-E12 controller with SLC caching support, DRAM, & Toshiba’s 3D TLC NAND memory). To ensure consistent performance as well as to ensure reliability, the SSD is also equipped with a large heat spreader, as four Aura drives can produce a significant amount of heat.
When it comes to capacity, the Accelsior 4M2 storage solution will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, and 8 TB raw capacities. OWC in turn rates the SSD for sequential read speeds up to 6318 MB/s, as well as sequential write speeds up to 6775 MB/s.
As is often the case for high-end OWC drives, the Accelsior 4M2 is meant to be used with OWC’s SoftRAID software, which supports various RAID modes (RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, etc.). Otherwise the drive can also be used in PCs – despite the Mac-focus, it's presented as a generic PCIe card – but PC users will need to supply their own RAID software.
| The OWC Accelsior 4M2 SSDs | |||||||
| 1 TB SSDACL4M201T |
2 TB SSDACL4M202T |
4 TB SSDACL4M204T |
8 TB SSDACL4M204T |
||||
| Formatted Capacity | 931 GiB | 1863 GiB | 3725 GiB | 7451 GiB | |||
| Drives | 4 × OWC Aura P12 M.2-2280 drives Phison’s PS5012-E12 controller, SLC caching support, DRAM cache, Toshiba’s 3D TLC NAND memory (7% overprovisioning) |
||||||
| PCIe Switch | ASMedia ASM2824 | ||||||
| Internal RAID | SoftRAID | ||||||
| Peak Read Speed | 6318 MB/s | ||||||
| Peak Write Speed | 6775 MB/s | ||||||
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x8 | ||||||
| Power | Bus powered | ||||||
| Form-Factor | Full Height Half Length PCIe | ||||||
| Compatibility | macOS 10.13 or later Windows 10 or later |
||||||
| Warranty | 5-year warranty | ||||||
| Price (MSRP) | $479.99 | $629.99 | $949.99 | $1,599.99 | |||
OWC will start shipments of the Accelsior 4M2 SSDs on the week of December 30th. The barebones card is priced at $249.99, the 1 TB version costs $479.99, whereas the top-of-the-range 8 TB model carries a $1,599.99 MSRP.
Related Reading:
- ASMedia Preps ASM2824 PCIe 3.0 Switch
- OWC Launches Aura Pro X2 NVMe SSD Upgrade For Macs
- OWC Ships ThunderBlade External SSDs, Touts SoftRAID Tech for 3800 MB/s Speeds
- GIGABYTE Aorus PCIe x16 M.2: For Four NVMe Drives, X399 Compatible
- Seagate Introduces 10GB/s PCIe SSD And 60TB SAS SSD
Source: OWC
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timecop1818 - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Lulz, 8TB model is half price of what Apple wants for 8TB upgrade on the trashPro.Santoval - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Very underwhelming. Its max sequential read speed is ~500 MB/s slower than just *two* Aura P12 SSDs, while its max sequential write speed is just ~775 MB/s faster than two Aura P12 SSDs (all set in RAID 0 mode apparently). No word about read/write IOPS either, which suggests they are abysmal, i.e. probably worse than those of the individual Aura P12 SSDs.Neither the seq. read speed nor the seq. write speed is bottlenecked from the PCIe 3.0 x8 link (the read is certainly not bottlenecked at all), so where is the bottleneck? In the ASM2824 switch? I have no idea, can a PCIe switch become a bottleneck? Maybe because they weirdly had it kill half the available PCIe lanes (16 incoming lanes from the SSDs, 8 outgoing lanes to the PCIe slot)? Or is OWC's software RAID implementation the bottleneck? Or is MacOS itself the bottleneck? I think I will lose sleep in the coming days contemplating this question :)
s.yu - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Ah, I was wondering that.The_Assimilator - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Hey look it's another piece of overpriced junk from OWC. Must be nice having a captive market that's also stupid and rich.Korguz - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
then just dont buy it... pronlem solvedKorguz - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
problem solved....Spunjji - Friday, December 27, 2019 - link
*facepalm*Korguz - Saturday, December 28, 2019 - link
huh???JKJK - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
This is so stupid. I raided P3700 nvme ssds 5 years ago .... and now, when apple has gotten some decent storage, the speeds are "INSANE".You can get over half this speed with ONE PCI-e 4.0 drive today.
Fucking apple retards.
People are SO stupid.
Tomatotech - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
This isn’t from Apple.That said, some of Apple’s gear has legs on. I recently retrofitted a 2013 MacBook Air, Apple’s cheapest laptop, with an Adata m.2 nvme, and got 1300 mb/s rw. Owner is very happy with it. I don’t know many other 7-year old laptops still in regular use for work.