I/O CREST SI-PEX40129 Dual M.2 NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-Bifurcation Motherboard

easy install and can now boot from NVMe on my MacPro 5,1.

I have 2 firecuda 2tb 520 SSDs connected to this and the speed is excellent. There was some high pitched whine from the fan but I just tighten the screws and it seemed to cure the problem a bit. It has a controller chip on it for bifurcation ideal for motherboard with only one slot that has it, that is usually the GPU slot.

I own several similar cards by StarTech which are far more stable and give better performance over My recent gift by iocrest, at first glance the iocrest looks great but that's smoke and mirrors as when close inspected you will see poor finish and fit, bad soldering and poor parts especially the nvme mounting and PCIe cinnector. It installed OK but I have trouble with my computer always seeing the 2 drives installed. Often I simple just loose the drives especially when transferring data. It constantly connects and disconnected during data access.. It's become impossible to use. I have checked everything from bios settings to drivers and pc settings yet find zero faults or conflicts... As such I have replaced it with another StarTech without issue... Yes the StarTech looks basic but it works great and reliable to 100%... The only plus for the iocrest is the fact it looks good... With the StarTech I fitted 2 aftermarket cooling and it was great. The fact is my StarTech version is reliable and cheaper by 50 pounds so it's a no brainer... I did return my iocrest and I have no regrets... As such I do not reconmend the iocrest... Avoid as its far too unstable.. PS I tested this on Windows 7,8,and 10 and funny enough the very old win 7 worked the most stable performance with some tweaking and persistence BUT Windows 10 21h2 was the most unstable which is very disappointing, I did also test on a beta win 11 and had nothing but trouble.... It is not possible that the card is faulty as it worked flawlessly on windows 7 my old test rig dating back a good 10 years.

Works like a charm on my Mac Pro 5,1. In fact it's so good I've purchased another one from Amazon for my other Mac Pro 5,1.

Just upgrade my machine from a single Qaud processor to a dual 12 Core 3.46 and ordered this and 2 x 1 TB Samsung EVO 970 Plus on Friday and got it Saturday afternoon so shipping was fast and snappy. Packaging was good and documentation was sparse but I get that. Shiny brochure instructions mean additional costs. The only thing that let this products down is the screw removal process to separate the heatsink from the board. Approach removing the screws with caution as to avoid a stressful upgrade session! The screws are so small and really not that deep to get a screwdriver into and for them all out except for two which due to the weak format of the screws stripped. Really annoyed at prospect of having a bit of kit that I was not going to be able to ultimately use as i couldn't open the thing and at the same cursing the way the screws were inserted at source / designed to strip if you use a normal amount of force to untighten. 1 of the stripped screws somehow managed to swivel out and eventually came free, however one of them was just too stripped to have anything fit and be removed and this 1 decided to try and thwart the plan .... however the design of the card meant that I could swivel it in a way that got everything out into the open and i was able to install the blades and remove the sticky blue tape coverlid the heat absorption material that looks like chewing gum ( I am making a conscious effort to not leave a super technical review so even a layman can understand ). Important to note that if your a first timer tinkering with this type of things, the slightly bigger gold screws in the bag are like mounting pillars to get your NvME put to eh same level as the connector that its plugs into, so you put one of them under the blade and then screw into it from the other side so its firmly and securely held into place. Before I install the device, I went through the process of updating my 2009 CMP to the Move firmware. This is different form flashing a 4.1 to a 5.1 and involves you downloading the Mojave installer and then updating firmware by following the instructions. If you are NOT wanting to install Mojave when your computer restarts then click cancel when your machine reboots and it enters into the Mojave installation dialog. Once I confirmed that my firmware was updated, I then installed the card into the second x16 slot as my graphics card was larger and occupied the bottom space and once everything was seated and secured correclty, I rebooted the machine and was happy to see that the disk were both recognised and I erase/ formatted them and ran a speed test using Blackmagicdesign Speedtest and the result for an 11 year old Classic Mac Pro are nothing short of fantastic and for me personally, I feel it solidifies the Classic Mac Pro as the greatest desktop Apple ever built as the scope for upgrade through this lovely bit of kit is nothing short of amazing. Enjoy !

this is the third of this type i have bought yes its a bit expensive but it works good build quality well worth the money