Test Setup
The Mac Pro Late 2013 we are using has had a CPU update in the past, but all other elements are stock including the operating system, Mojave. We have included some screenshots of the base configuration after the Test Setup table, which shows the hardware details and configuration according to the Operating system. We’ll include some upgrade screenshots after we have completed the upgrade, which will show the newer NVMe configuration.
| Test Platform | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 3.30 GHz Base Clock Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz 25MB L3 cache |
| Operating System | MacOS Mojave 10.14 |
| Memory | 32GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory |
| Graphics | Dual AMD FirePro D300 with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM each |
| Storage (Stock) | Apple SM0512F 512GB Samsung Proprietary 12+16 Pin MZ-JPU512T/0A6 AHCI PCIe-based SSD |
| File System | Apple APFS |
The stock Samsung model MZ-JPU512T/0A6 is an AHCI PCIe based SSD, which is supported by macOS version 10.11, or “El Capitan” on our trashcan Mac out of the box. We will be benchmarking the Transcend JetDrive 850 against this drive as it’s a good representation of the typical Mac Pro (Late 2013) storage option that we see a lot in the various version of the Mac Pro.
We’ve kept with macOS Mojave for this review, most of our testing was carried out on Mojave and it’s still early doors for macOS Catalina, so we feel Mojave is still relevant for most users. We will not go into compatibility and OS installation, except to say the hardware install is very simple, but you will need to be on a recent Mac OS to take advantage of this drive. We used a combination of Carbon Copy and Time Machine to reinstall our OS. More information here.