OWC to Bring Aftermarket SF3700 PCIe SSD Upgrades to 2013 Macs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 10, 2014 7:43 PM EST
I was pleasantly surprised to drop by OWC's booth at CES to see a mechanical sample of its forthcoming LSI SF3700 based PCIe SSD. OWC plans on offering aftermarket SF3700 SSD upgrades for all Haswell Macs and the late 2013 Mac Pro. Unlike OWC's SF-2xxx based upgrades, I'm hoping/expecting the SF3700 drives will be competitive in idle power consumption with the drives you get directly from Apple.
OWC will be producing these drives with the right proprietary connector for all of Apple's 2013 Macs with PCIe SSDs. We'll see x2 and x4 versions, just like what Apple offers today. As with other SF3700 vendors, we'll likely see Toshiba 19nm NAND used although OWC reminded me that they still buy some Micron NAND.
It's too early to talk about pricing, but I'd expect something a bit cheaper than Apple's upgrade costs (plus the fact that you get to keep the drive you bought your machine with).
The bad news is you'll have to wait until sometime in Q3 of this year to get the drives. OWC has historically been able to deliver SandForce based SSDs very quickly, so as soon as the firmware is production worthy I'm sure we'll see these drives on the market.
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TheeGooch - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
I kind of need it now, lol. I went with 256GB because I didn't plan on dual booting Windows apps/games when I bought my Macbook Air 3 months ago. Now that I am, I need a lot more storage space.Note to self, next time you buy a Macbook, max out storage.
Gehard - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
I am now VERY skeptical of the OWC SSD's. I got an MBA w/ 126 GB SSD in 2010. I replaced the drive w/ OWC's 240GB one. Since then two SSD's went bad and I am now on the third one. Is this usual or acceptable? I would like to know... On top of that, the OWC has a policy that requires you to send the bad unit to them first before getting a warranty replacement! What kind of logic is that? So, am I supposed to stop what I am doing, get the drive out, send it to them, wait until they verify that the drive is indeed bad, and wait more until they ship the replacement? Do they think I use a Mac for a hobby? I want to know the others' experience with the OWC drives' reliability. What's AnadTech's opinion on this?phillyry - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Good question. I've been considering buying and the upgrading a rMBP with an OWC drive to get the extra external but this and the power use are both pretty key. I'd check OWC forums or elsewhere for the reliability of their drives. I know that with a first gen SF Corsair drive, I had to send it back before they sent me a new one. Rediculous.Maryinuz - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
@Gehard: Try the 'new' Transcend Jetdrive upgrade kits, I was about to order one until I finally realised that my Macbook is a 2013 one and not compatible.I did go through the whole thread on macrumors.com, Transcend offers a good package at fair price.