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) |
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| 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 |
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| 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.
Source: OWC