With Apple's Mac Pro just launched and having just learned about the costs of the SSD upgrade options (which can go up to $2,600), OWC is offering an alternative: the OWC Accelsior 4M2. The units will come in four capacity options, ranging from 1 TB to 8 TB, and will work in the 2019 Mac Pro, but also some earlier Mac Pro's and PCs.
The units plug in to a PCI-Express 3.0 x8 slot, and internally they're just housing four M.2 NVMe SSDs. Set to RAID 0 using the included SoftRAID, OWC says that you should be able to reach speeds of over 6000 MB/s. Sadly, with just 8 lanes in total, each M.2 SSD inside only has access to two lanes -- but adding more could get OWC in trouble with getting access to enough PCI-Express lanes and thus meeting performance promises, depending on the configuration of the respective 2019 Mac Pro. If 6000 MB/s is not good enough for you, OWC says that you can always consider getting two of these to get even better performance.
If you're not afraid of installing a different SSD in your system and migrating the OS over, using an OWC SSD is certainly an option that can save you good money, even more so with an OWC promo code, or you could delve even further into DIY territory.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | OWC Accelsior 4M2 | Apple Mac Pro 2019 SSDs |
| 1 TB | $479.99 | + $400.00 |
| 2 TB | $629.99 | + $800.00 |
| 4 TB | $949.99 | + $1400.00 |
| 8 TB | $1599.99 | + $2600.00 |
Sadly, but no surprise given that the 2019 Mac Pro is based on an Intel system, it doesn't support PCI-Express 4.0, because if you dare venture even further into DIY territory, Gigabyte's Gen4 AIC SSD. It can house up to four M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs with access to four lanes each, though you'll have to ensure it physically fits in your configuration. The big question remains whether it will be compatible -- though PCI-Express 4.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-Express 3.0 hardware, we can't guarantee compatibility with the M.2 SSDs you would pack into this piece of kit.
