Only for the cMP of course, because the nMP is about as expandable as a singularity.
The nMP already has USB 3 (x4) as well as 2x faster TB2 (x6) and there are adapters for both to USB C. Upgrades are only needed to upgrade to something a computer doesn't have. This USB C is data only too, not with displayport like on the Mac laptops so no plugging in a display.
People needed RAM upgrades when there was under 4GB of RAM, HDD upgrades when storage was below 128GB, battery replacements when battery life was under 5 hours, IO upgrades when we just had 800Mbits or less. None of this is true any more. Machines ship with 8-16GB RAM with memory compression, SSDs are now 2-3GB/s and 256GB+, batteries last 10 hours, the latest IO is 40Gbits with display output. Upgrades like these PCIe cards are a relic of a bygone era.
The companies that sell IO upgrades can happily survive on a few million in revenue from the few tens of thousands of people who buy them (mostly old Windows PC towers). The only remaining need for PCIe is to get newer GPUs but the integrated approach allows for data and video over the same output and this wouldn't be needed much either if Apple would keep them up to date. Also external GPUs can satisfy some of this audience and once they reach around 4TFLOPs mainstream, 40TFLOP high-end (they are ~1TFLOP at the mainstream level just now), few people are going to bother about GPU upgrades.
Gmgravytrain said: Apple deems expandability and upgradability as worthless for Mac users. Apple's strategy lies in replacing old computers with new ones. I'm not sure why Apple has decided this path but I'm guessing it's to make money by forcing sales of new Macs upon users. It's a very poor strategy for users like myself who can't afford a new Mac at this point. I know I'm not Apple's target customer, so there's no point in stressing over it. It's somewhat sad thinking how all future Macs will be totally closed boxes but maybe that's the best way to maintain a trouble-free platform. It's great for customer service trouble-shooting.
That is really the key issue. If the nMP or the other Mac models were cheaper, there wouldn't be any problems. $3k starting price for a quad-core with 4TFLOP GPU power is far too high but it's low volume so it has higher margins (likely over 40% = $1200 is gross profit). It would be better starting at $2.5k for quad-core or have 6/8-core at $3k. Not that this would make it affordable to everyone but it brings refurb prices down further. Widely affordable is closer to $1.5-2k.
That is why expandability and upgradability are important.
Not really...99.9% of people will not do this. So its really not as important as you think it is. Its just the .1% that bitch the loudest so it seems like its more important that it really is.
i think many people with the old tower MacPros will be looking at this - i've already upgraded our 5,1 to 128 GB of RAM, and 6 G SSD boot drive via PCI card. FC runs on another card, and video is in the top, so i have one more slot to play with - USB C might be multi-function enough, and the speed boost would be nice, as the 5,1 is only USB 2, so apart from the 4 gbps FC, FW800 is the fastest external port it has.
I think we have hit an interesting time in computing, where the performance of systems (at the level of the MacPro) from 2010-2012 will be sufficient for longer than ever before. its why i am glad we have it, and its modest upgradeability, at this point. Without the RAM & SSD, it would not be able to suit our needs, even though the Xeon processors are far more than we really need.
People needed RAM upgrades when there was under 4GB of RAM, HDD upgrades when storage was below 128GB, battery replacements when battery life was under 5 hours, IO upgrades when we just had 800Mbits or less. None of this is true any more. Machines ship with 8-16GB RAM with memory compression, SSDs are now 2-3GB/s and 256GB+, batteries last 10 hours, the latest IO is 40Gbits with display output. Upgrades like these PCIe cards are a relic of a bygone era.
The companies that sell IO upgrades can happily survive on a few million in revenue from the few tens of thousands of people who buy them (mostly old Windows PC towers). The only remaining need for PCIe is to get newer GPUs but the integrated approach allows for data and video over the same output and this wouldn't be needed much either if Apple would keep them up to date. Also external GPUs can satisfy some of this audience and once they reach around 4TFLOPs mainstream, 40TFLOP high-end (they are ~1TFLOP at the mainstream level just now), few people are going to bother about GPU upgrades.
These IO upgrades are most definitely still relevant in 2017. It's not just old Windows PC towers IMO.
As for the cMP, it really is possible to upgrade it to be almost as powerful and functionality rich as the nMP, if not more so in terms of GPU power. It is disheartening that Apple has abandoned this form factor, or more precisely upgradeability of the Mac Pro range. Where are nMP GPU upgrades?
As an example of what is possible, these are the upgrades I've been able to do to my cMPs, and for not very much money. 1.5GB/sec SSD speeds, dedicated USB 3.0 chips on 4 ports, AC WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2, 6 core CPUs and a lot of RAM. Admittedly the GTX1080 only runs in Windows but the GTX680 is pretty good for macOS use. Being able to add USB-C at 10Gbps would be great!
Mac Pro 2010, X5690 3.46GHz, 64GB RAM, XP941 512GB SSD, SM951 512GB SSD, EVGA GTX 680ME, Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3, Apple AC/BT 4.2, macOS
Mac Pro 2010, X5690 3.46GHz, 64GB RAM, XP941 512GB SSD, NVIDIA GTX 1080FE, Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3, Apple AC/BT 4.0, Win 10 Pro
People need them now. Expanding RAM at the 6 year mark to speed things up for a new OS release (provided Apple even gives them for old models anymore…) or a new HDD to cut down on dongles isn't too much to ask. If they can be made at these speeds soldered onto the boards, they can be made the same as connectable I/O at least.
That is really the key issue. If the nMP or the other Mac models were cheaper, there wouldn't be any problems.
It would help, but I still don't like the idea of a three year (or less) disposable cycle for a computer, particularly when it doesn't have to be that way. Chalk it up to Facebook-only nonsense, I guess.
That is why expandability and upgradability are important.
Not really...99.9% of people will not do this. So its really not as important as you think it is. Its just the .1% that bitch the loudest so it seems like its more important that it really is.
And the rest would not have a slot for it because all but one slot (the slow speed slot) would be taken up by graphics cards (x 2) leaving a third one that would already have some third card like a SAS controller running on less than full bandwidth
Gmgravytrain said: Apple deems expandability and upgradability as worthless for Mac users. Apple's strategy lies in replacing old computers with new ones. I'm not sure why Apple has decided this path but I'm guessing it's to make money by forcing sales of new Macs upon users. It's a very poor strategy for users like myself who can't afford a new Mac at this point. I know I'm not Apple's target customer, so there's no point in stressing over it. It's somewhat sad thinking how all future Macs will be totally closed boxes but maybe that's the best way to maintain a trouble-free platform. It's great for customer service trouble-shooting.
That is really the key issue. If the nMP or the other Mac models were cheaper, there wouldn't be any problems. $3k starting price for a quad-core with 4TFLOP GPU power is far too high but it's low volume so it has higher margins (likely over 40% = $1200 is gross profit). It would be better starting at $2.5k for quad-core or have 6/8-core at $3k. Not that this would make it affordable to everyone but it brings refurb prices down further. Widely affordable is closer to $1.5-2k.
This is exactly the problem. For comparison sake, I just priced out a Dell with Dual E5 2630 v4 (20 cores total) with 64GB DDR4 2400mhz Ram, Dual Nvidia Quadro M4000, 512GB PCIe SSD for $5700 where as a 12core, 64GB DDR3 1867mhz Ram, D700, 512GB SSD is $8999. If Dell can sell a better system for considerably less and still make a decent profit, I think your 40% margin assumption is extremely low. If they lowered the price to be even remotely competitive, there wouldn't be nearly as much backlash as there is. If they would have quietly refreshed parts throughout the past few years to stay in line with the likes of Dell and HP, there wouldn't be nearly as much backlash as there is. Choosing to do and say nothing has caused a complete loss of trust with pro users.
I also have no problem that they removed internal upgradability, but with that approach, I expect that they keep the product current so that I can get a machine with the latest processors, graphic cards, Ram, Storage, I/O. By them not allowing us to upgrade the machines ourselves and refusing to do it themselves, leaves us pro's sitting ducks compared to our PC using competitors. Each day this continues is another day that Apple loses pro users, making the product even a lower niche then it already is. At this point, I believe they lost so many pros that I sadly think there is no longer enough people to sustain this market. I sure hope I'm wrong about that.
Judging by the Amazon reviews the quality of this thing is atrocious. Shame.
"does work on the 3,1, 4,1 and 5,1 Mac Pro, and can deliver a full 10 gigabits per second transfer speed from each port."
Mike Wuerthele, I'd like proof of this. Most of what has been written about the ASM1142 based cards is that they do work in Sierra but only at 5Gbps. You've categorically stated that each port works at 10Gbps but I somewhat doubt that. Please prove me wrong.
The article vaguely infers that the Macs are running El Capitan, but not clearly written. So maybe they work better with El Capitan than Sierra.
If they would have quietly refreshed parts throughout the past few years to stay in line with the likes of Dell and HP, there wouldn't be nearly as much backlash as there is. Choosing to do and say nothing has caused a complete loss of trust with pro users.
Then they discontinue the product because "nobody is buying it." Like the Thunderbolt Display. It's hardly a surprise that nobody is buying tech that has aged to second-tier levels at prices higher than up-to-date products from others.
An optimist may argue that products like the Mac Pro are still "good enough" for all but the most demanding users even in their present state. That would certainly be true for someone like me, but the price no longer represents a good value proposition. If a car dealer has a brand-new 2013 model sitting on the lot, the price isn't the same as it was then. If Apple doesn't want to update these aging machines, a price adjustment would seem to be in order.
Apple CAUSES a "lack of demand" through a combination of not keeping products up to date and not adjusting prices downward over time.
If they would have quietly refreshed parts throughout the past few years to stay in line with the likes of Dell and HP, there wouldn't be nearly as much backlash as there is. Choosing to do and say nothing has caused a complete loss of trust with pro users.
Then they discontinue the product because "nobody is buying it." Like the Thunderbolt Display. It's hardly a surprise that nobody is buying tech that has aged to second-tier levels at prices higher than up-to-date products from others.
An optimist may argue that products like the Mac Pro are still "good enough" for all but the most demanding users even in their present state. That would certainly be true for someone like me, but the price no longer represents a good value proposition. If a car dealer has a brand-new 2013 model sitting on the lot, the price isn't the same as it was then. If Apple doesn't want to update these aging machines, a price adjustment would seem to be in order.
Apple CAUSES a "lack of demand" through a combination of not keeping products up to date and not adjusting prices downward over time.
Exactly... I understand that they don't want to lower pricing because its harder to bring them back up when an update is released but then they MUST update them regularly. They can't have it both ways. We've been ready to buy MacPro's for years and haven't (solely because of price/old product) so I guess we are part of the "nobody is buying it". I'm trying to hang on switching but even if there is a new MacPro, I think its too late. They have forced so many pro users to switch, I don't believe there will be enough demand for Apple to continue development. As mentioned the Trust is gone and the smart thing to do is to start transitioning out of Apple if you require MacPro level hardware.
Although many people don't think this is a big deal, I think it is. Software developers develop for pro's that pay big $ for their software. When the pro market dwindles, these developers slowly start dropping support for the Mac. When the scale starts to tip, its just a matter of time before MacOs in general is insignificant. You can get MacOs which has a browser and iPhoto or you can get a windows machine that does that and also has all the pro software. Again, I hope I'm wrong but this is what I see happening in the near future.
I am in the process of setting up a MacPro 3,1 to use the aukey card. I am not seeing an easy way to route power from the optical bay to the PCI card area. It appears I can only go out the from the the optical bay carrier. Running the cable this way blocks the cover from seating correctly. Is there a trick I am missing?
Also, while fiddling I discovered that if your motherboard 6-pin PCI-E power plug is open, then you can use the adapters that convert from that to SATA power. They're about $2 at Newegg. Most of us are using an upgraded video card, and the slot is likely full, though.
This is one of the reasons I didn't detail this -- there's about a thousand ways to get from A to B with power, here, and if you're upgrading a 3,1 to 5,1, then you by definition have to be a little crazy/creative.
— following up on my recent question, can the logic board support something like this:
StarTech 6" Male to Female PCI Express Power Splitter Cable, Yellow
Following up on my experience with Ableconn PUSB31P2A. This card does not require power to function as it pulls 5 volt power from the PCIe connector. Though it does have a sata connector for external power if needed for some reason.
I currently don’t have anything to connect to test beyond 5Gbps. The Plugable USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 dock reads and writes as expected with SSD’s. Over 500MB/s using Black Magic. It reports 5Gbps in System Profiler.
Since I have two IT Mac Pro towers that can benefit from a USB-C PCIe I ordered one of the Aukey’s to test. As Mike pointed out it does require power to function. At present I’m having difficulties finding a proper cable to connect. Either through the Optical or on board PCIe 6-pin. Certainly not plug and play like the Ableconn, which also makes one with Type A and USB-C connectors but out of stock until this week. At which time I’ll try one of those just for easier connecting to USB-C devices and send the Aukey back to AMZN.
I did try a MacBook Pro 2016 in target disk mode to the Ableconn but results were bad. Around 100MB/s. Could be multiple reasons for that which I’m not aware of and don’t need to waste time figuring out. Next week I’ll have a two bay SSD enclosure coming so should be able to test out 10Gbps.
All in all I’m satisfied with the Ableconn. I don’t see any real need to go beyond 5Gbps from USB-C. If I want faster drive speeds our 30+ Mac Pro 2008-2012 with 512GB M2 SSD’s PCIe cards deliver over 1400Mbps. Prices of inexpensive 10GB Ethernet cards connecting to Mac Pro servers with 16 bays easily deliver plenty of speed to work/save over network using CC 2017, whether PhotoShop or 5K editing. Especially with GTX 680 and 980 graphic cards.
Compared to the now outdated 2013 Mac Pro’s, which we only have a few, the old towers do a fine job with some updates. Even the 2008 Mac Pro works well with Sierra and the patcher.
I agree with Altivec88. Unless Apple does something radical with the next Mac Pro, if there is one, we are seeing and hearing a lot of resentment towards Apple and the Pro users. Many have left the platform, others like ourselves are thinking to move. Overpriced, not upgradeable and buggy software are serious problems. Tired of Apple’s keeping us in the dark.
I got everything set up with the aukey card and a Ableconn card on my 3,1 MacPro. Disk Speed Test and xbench shows the performance from a usb 3.1 enclosure, and a usb 3.0 enclosure to be essentially the same. And no improvement over the 3.0 pcie card I have had installed for a while.
So perhaps a 3,1 MacPro does not benefit from USB 3.1?
I got everything set up with the aukey card and a Ableconn card on my 3,1 MacPro. Disk Speed Test and xbench shows the performance from a usb 3.1 enclosure, and a usb 3.0 enclosure to be essentially the same. And no improvement over the 3.0 pcie card I have had installed for a while.
So perhaps a 3,1 MacPro does not benefit from USB 3.1?
It's possible. The speed tests were done on the machine with the SSD PCI-E card, a 5,1 12-core. I'll break out the 3,1 later this week and give it a gander.
I got everything set up with the aukey card and a Ableconn card on my 3,1 MacPro. Disk Speed Test and xbench shows the performance from a usb 3.1 enclosure, and a usb 3.0 enclosure to be essentially the same. And no improvement over the 3.0 pcie card I have had installed for a while.
So perhaps a 3,1 MacPro does not benefit from USB 3.1?
What slot did you put it in? The Mac Pro 3,1 has two PCIe 1.x slots (I think 4 lanes), and two PCIe 2 slots which are preferred for graphics cards.
I believe the theroretical limit for the PCIe 1.x slot is 1 Gigabyte/second - so it would not be surprising that the effective limit for that slot is maybe a slight bit more than 5Gigibits / second after everything is taken into account.... so if you put it in those smaller slots it would not be a surprise.
If you look at System Information/PCI for that card it will probably say 2.5GT/s at 4 lanes. Assuming you have it in Slot 2, as Slot 1 is for Video which will run at X16 5.0GT/s.
If you have it in Slot 3 or 4 it will be a lot slower as those are PCIe v1.1.
We have a bunch of 3,1 Mac Pro's. With a PCIe M.2 SSD in slot 2 the fastest it will go is 750 vs a 4,1 or 5,1 that will hit 1400 in Black Magic Speed Test.
Plus, it is dependent on what you have inside your enclosure. It's speed may be maxed out by hardware limits on your drive. Which wouldn't matter what you put it in.
I have two Mac Pros. One is an "Early 2008" (3,1) and the other is a "Mid 2010" (5,1).
So far, I've only installed the Aukey on the 3,1 unit. I was hoping that it would work without needing the SATA power connection, but even with a self-powered drive, it would not work. I got the necessary cables to start with a Molex Female and end with a SATA Female, ran the cables through the innards of the box and connected it to the card. Then I booted back into El Capitan and... nothing. The card did not work any better with power than without. I tried multiple connections to no avail. I even reinstalled El Capitan, just in case I had some munged files. After several hours of frustration, I gave up.
I then figured I would try installing Sierra on a new hard drive I had put in the 3,1. I had already prepared the Patch Installer on an 8-GB Flash Drive, so I got that started and let it run its course. Everything worked fine and I now had my 3,1 Mac Pro running Sierra. Just for "Grins and Giggles", I tried the Aukey connection: It worked!! I don't know how other folks got the Aukey running on a 3,1 under El Capitan but it would not work for me. But it is working under Sierra. I haven't done any speed tests yet but it does seem to be transferring at a decent pace.
Now - Before I try the Mac Pro 5,1, I wanted to know if folks are having any success powering the Aukey using one of the 6-pin PCI-e connections on the motherboard. One of the two is being used by my graphics card, an ATI Radeon HD 5770, but the other is available. And since it has four hard drives and two optical drives, I don't have any open SATA power connections on this machine. So using the PCI-e connection is very desirable. This Mac is currently still running El Capitan but I'll migrate it to Sierra if necessary.
I'd appreciate any info anyone can provide regarding either Mac. I'd sure like to know why I couldn't get the Aukey card to work on the 3,1 running El Cap. And I really need to know about powering the Aukey card on the 5,1 from the 6-pin connection. It would be very inconvenient to have to remove either a hard drive or an optical drive just to power the Aukey card. And if I can avoid the switch to Sierra for a while, that would also be nice. Thanks for your help!!
Comments
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/312659-guide-unsupported-real-macpro-works-with-sierra-example-of-real-macpro31/
People needed RAM upgrades when there was under 4GB of RAM, HDD upgrades when storage was below 128GB, battery replacements when battery life was under 5 hours, IO upgrades when we just had 800Mbits or less. None of this is true any more. Machines ship with 8-16GB RAM with memory compression, SSDs are now 2-3GB/s and 256GB+, batteries last 10 hours, the latest IO is 40Gbits with display output. Upgrades like these PCIe cards are a relic of a bygone era.
The companies that sell IO upgrades can happily survive on a few million in revenue from the few tens of thousands of people who buy them (mostly old Windows PC towers). The only remaining need for PCIe is to get newer GPUs but the integrated approach allows for data and video over the same output and this wouldn't be needed much either if Apple would keep them up to date. Also external GPUs can satisfy some of this audience and once they reach around 4TFLOPs mainstream, 40TFLOP high-end (they are ~1TFLOP at the mainstream level just now), few people are going to bother about GPU upgrades.
That is really the key issue. If the nMP or the other Mac models were cheaper, there wouldn't be any problems. $3k starting price for a quad-core with 4TFLOP GPU power is far too high but it's low volume so it has higher margins (likely over 40% = $1200 is gross profit). It would be better starting at $2.5k for quad-core or have 6/8-core at $3k. Not that this would make it affordable to everyone but it brings refurb prices down further. Widely affordable is closer to $1.5-2k.
I think we have hit an interesting time in computing, where the performance of systems (at the level of the MacPro) from 2010-2012 will be sufficient for longer than ever before. its why i am glad we have it, and its modest upgradeability, at this point. Without the RAM & SSD, it would not be able to suit our needs, even though the Xeon processors are far more than we really need.
As for the cMP, it really is possible to upgrade it to be almost as powerful and functionality rich as the nMP, if not more so in terms of GPU power.
It is disheartening that Apple has abandoned this form factor, or more precisely upgradeability of the Mac Pro range. Where are nMP GPU upgrades?
As an example of what is possible, these are the upgrades I've been able to do to my cMPs, and for not very much money. 1.5GB/sec SSD speeds, dedicated USB 3.0 chips on 4 ports, AC WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2, 6 core CPUs and a lot of RAM. Admittedly the GTX1080 only runs in Windows but the GTX680 is pretty good for macOS use.
Being able to add USB-C at 10Gbps would be great!
I also have no problem that they removed internal upgradability, but with that approach, I expect that they keep the product current so that I can get a machine with the latest processors, graphic cards, Ram, Storage, I/O. By them not allowing us to upgrade the machines ourselves and refusing to do it themselves, leaves us pro's sitting ducks compared to our PC using competitors. Each day this continues is another day that Apple loses pro users, making the product even a lower niche then it already is. At this point, I believe they lost so many pros that I sadly think there is no longer enough people to sustain this market. I sure hope I'm wrong about that.
An optimist may argue that products like the Mac Pro are still "good enough" for all but the most demanding users even in their present state. That would certainly be true for someone like me, but the price no longer represents a good value proposition. If a car dealer has a brand-new 2013 model sitting on the lot, the price isn't the same as it was then. If Apple doesn't want to update these aging machines, a price adjustment would seem to be in order.
Apple CAUSES a "lack of demand" through a combination of not keeping products up to date and not adjusting prices downward over time.
Although many people don't think this is a big deal, I think it is. Software developers develop for pro's that pay big $ for their software. When the pro market dwindles, these developers slowly start dropping support for the Mac. When the scale starts to tip, its just a matter of time before MacOs in general is insignificant. You can get MacOs which has a browser and iPhoto or you can get a windows machine that does that and also has all the pro software. Again, I hope I'm wrong but this is what I see happening in the near future.
This is one of the reasons I didn't detail this -- there's about a thousand ways to get from A to B with power, here, and if you're upgrading a 3,1 to 5,1, then you by definition have to be a little crazy/creative.
—
following up on my recent question, can the logic board support something like this:
StarTech 6" Male to Female PCI Express Power Splitter Cable, Yellow
http://www.staples.com/StarTech-6-inch-Male-to-Female-PCI-Express-Power-Splitter-Cable-Yellow/product_2418759?cid=PS:GooglePLAs:2418759&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=2418759&KPID=2418759&cvosrc=PLA.google-SALES.Computer Accessories & Peripherals&cvo_crid=39357180702&cvo_campaign=71700000015225244&gclid=CKzo4buhzdECFYGLswod2GsOJQto power both my video card and the aukey card?
So perhaps a 3,1 MacPro does not benefit from USB 3.1?
What slot did you put it in? The Mac Pro 3,1 has two PCIe 1.x slots (I think 4 lanes), and two PCIe 2 slots which are preferred for graphics cards.
I believe the theroretical limit for the PCIe 1.x slot is 1 Gigabyte/second - so it would not be surprising that the effective limit for that slot is maybe a slight bit more than 5Gigibits / second after everything is taken into account.... so if you put it in those smaller slots it would not be a surprise.
If you have it in Slot 3 or 4 it will be a lot slower as those are PCIe v1.1.
We have a bunch of 3,1 Mac Pro's. With a PCIe M.2 SSD in slot 2 the fastest it will go is 750 vs a 4,1 or 5,1 that will hit 1400 in Black Magic Speed Test.
Plus, it is dependent on what you have inside your enclosure. It's speed may be maxed out by hardware limits on your drive. Which wouldn't matter what you put it in.
So far, I've only installed the Aukey on the 3,1 unit. I was hoping that it would work without needing the SATA power connection, but even with a self-powered drive, it would not work. I got the necessary cables to start with a Molex Female and end with a SATA Female, ran the cables through the innards of the box and connected it to the card. Then I booted back into El Capitan and... nothing.
I then figured I would try installing Sierra on a new hard drive I had put in the 3,1. I had already prepared the Patch Installer on an 8-GB Flash Drive, so I got that started and let it run its course. Everything worked fine and I now had my 3,1 Mac Pro running Sierra. Just for "Grins and Giggles", I tried the Aukey connection: It worked!!
Now - Before I try the Mac Pro 5,1, I wanted to know if folks are having any success powering the Aukey using one of the 6-pin PCI-e connections on the motherboard. One of the two is being used by my graphics card, an ATI Radeon HD 5770, but the other is available. And since it has four hard drives and two optical drives, I don't have any open SATA power connections on this machine. So using the PCI-e connection is very desirable. This Mac is currently still running El Capitan but I'll migrate it to Sierra if necessary.
I'd appreciate any info anyone can provide regarding either Mac. I'd sure like to know why I couldn't get the Aukey card to work on the 3,1 running El Cap. And I really need to know about powering the Aukey card on the 5,1 from the 6-pin connection. It would be very inconvenient to have to remove either a hard drive or an optical drive just to power the Aukey card. And if I can avoid the switch to Sierra for a while, that would also be nice. Thanks for your help!!
"The HBA adapter supports Mac OS X 10.9 to 10.10, and 10.12 Sierra; but it does NOT work on OS X 10.11."