Warning - Not All 3rd Party PCIe Cards Work In An Apple 2019 Mac Pro?
While many argue about the value proposition and the high $5,999 starting price point, nobody is arguing about the usefulness of PCIe slots, which in addition to cards like the Avid HDX cards with a wide variety of other cards enable users to expand their computer. But with the 2019 Mac Pro being so new and there not having been any PCIe cards produced for new Macs since 2013, will newer and more recent cards work in Apple’s latest computer, with its many PCIe card slots?
Will a PCIe NVMe SSD work inside of Mac Pro? What about a 4K Capture Card to use in Blackmagic Design’s Davinci Resolve or OBS for streaming? Or, how about a USB expansion card to add more USB3 I/O on type A connectors? In this video Youtuber, Snazzy Labs attempts to answer the questions and more to see what devices work inside of Mac Pro and macOS.
There are a couple of errors in the video which Snazzy Labs corrected in the video notes…
At 5:18, I moderately imply that U.2 drives are not PCIe drives. They are. I knew this and apologize for the lack of specificity.
At 5:25, I incorrectly state that there are PCIe x8+ drives available and there are not yet. At least, not really. Some adapters are available for M.2 drives that assign 4x pins to each M.2 in a caddy but that’s it.
In the video, Snazzy Labs refers to audio interfaces from Focusrite and Schiit (not Sh_t!)
Here are the products Snazzy Labs used in this video…
In the comments, it was suggested that there are USB3 cards that don’t need separate power leads like this one.