SintechNGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade 2013-2015 Year Macs(Not Fit Early 2013 MacBook Pro)

Ordered two a while ago.. and Amazon didn't ship both.Vendor responded quickly to my complaint and shipped out missing adapter quickly. I couldn't ask for better service.I'm also pretty sure they've added more guidance to the product listing (this Amazon listing) about supported hardware and troubleshooting since my original purchase, so nice to see them continuing to add to their support documentation.I'll waste some of my plentiful shelter-at-home time with installation tips and my detailed experience with these adapters below.. but I'll wrap up the short-version of my review by saying...Bought two already and I'm ordering more to upgrade additional 'retired' iMacs that have come into my office (University IT Support). There's plenty of usefulness in a 2015 17" iMac after it's got a new NVMe drive in it.Long Version...Installation is not trivial, but that's because of how iMacs are designed and assembled.Read a tear-down webpage, take your time and don't force the screen. They're not that hard to crack (I've done it.. and I'm a professional ;-P ).I find, in addition to a plastic cards (old gift card or similar works well).. I like to use an Exacto Knife so carefully slice through the adhesive foam gasket (slowly slice down into gasket in increasingly deep passes, don't jam blade between glass and case).I also like using increasingly thick guitar picks as shims as I work around from top->down sides.. and look for pull-away tabs at outside of bottom gasket section on newer iMacs.Even thought you have to completely gut the iMac's insides to get to the SSD interface on the back of the board, the actual installation of this adapter is easy so I gave it 5-stars.Oh yea, if you don't want to buy a replacement gasket kit.. don't use double-sided tape instead. It's not thick enough to make contact with screen and case. just wrap some tape around outside edge of glass and case.As for how will it works... Pick a supported SSD, avoid the Samsung drives that they warn against using.. and it just works. You can't ask for more.My own results are mixed so far. .but I don't blame Sintech.. and I believe they recently posted a fix for the one issue I'm still having (I'll try today).- 2017 27" iMac: Even though this isn't listed as a supported Model, the adapter works fine in my 2017 iMac.Before upgrade, it was unstable and I noticed some serious errors with the Fusion Drive B-Tree structure, so I pulled both the disk & Apple SSD and upgraded to a FireCuda NVMe drive. Instability persisted but cleared up after I also pulled a pair of 3rd party SO-DIMMs. I suspect both Fusion Drive issues (which Crash Logs pointed to) and a bad pair of SODIMMs both contributed to original problems. iMac runs better than new now (though still short some RAM).- 2015 27" iMac: Again, I replaced a fusion set that was causing problems in this iMac. This iMac also seemed to be having problems with it's Fusion Drive setup prior to upgrading.Installation and clean-install on new drive went flawlessly and iMac worked great.. except it then started crashing when going to sleep. I've since seen new info here on a possible fix so I'll give that a try.. though it'll take me a while to confirm the issue is gone since it was an intermittent problem.No indication that there's a problem with the adapter/drive while the computer is in use though.One thing to note if you plan to replace a Fusion drive set with this...If you use CarbonCopy Cloner (or presumably Disk Utility too) to clone your Fusion drive Volume to a disk image or to your new NVMe drive, it clones the 2-drive Fusion formatting too. You'll end up with two partitions on your single NVMe.. with one staging new & frequently-used data.. and older data getting migrated to the 2nd partition. It'll look like one Drive from the Finder, but I have suspicions that Apple's data staging code is introducing corruption into Fusion Drive's directory B-Tree so best to not introduce this un-needed complexity.Better options...1. If you've got.an up-to-date TimeMachine backup.. do a clean Mac OS install onto new drive and a data migration from your TimeMachine backup..or...2. Get an external USB NVMe adapter or NVMe USB case..Do an internet recovery (boot w/ Command-R pressed) and install a clean version of MacOS onto the new NVMe drive (usb-connected)..Boot off the NVMe drive and update to latest OS if you need to (I've seen Internet recovery install latest Mac OS release on some Macs, and older versions on others)..Now, do a Data Migration from the Fusion Drive set to the new NVMe.When it's all setup.. then pull the iMac apart and swap the drives.Good luck.. Steve.

Good quality, works as expected.

Good adapter if you want to upgrade the NVMe inside the iMac 27" 2017.The GOOD:- Fits like a glove in the iMac NVMe slot (needs to be pushed slowly until it stops)- Didn't use any tape or insulation to cover the pins- The adapter PCB doesn't have any chips or circuits; it is long just to stay aligned to the screw as the screw will be fixing the NVMe driveThe Not-So:- The PCB is too flexible- The included screw will not be used at all (for my iMac, I used the original screw)The speed is not full for the Crucial P3 Plus I am using, but this might be the iMac fault as it is a Gen3 interface and CPU is 7600K.All in all, a perfect upgrade if you plan to give a new life for your iMac.

There are a few guides out there for installing a PCIe SSD in 2013 vintage 27" iMacs but here's December 2019 report and review that future buyers may find helpful.I successfully installed this adapter on a Late 2013 27" iMac:- iMac 4,2- 3.4ghz i5 processor;- Standard SATA HDD stock storage (later replaced with a SATA SSD). This iMac never had a PCIe or Fusion drive installed.- Samsung Evo 970 (not Plus) 1TB.Installation requires a full teardown to get to the empty PCIe slot, which is a drag (or a great procrastination project, depending on your attitude). iFixit's guides were invaluable for the job. So was Jon Jacobi's Macworld review from May 6 2019. Read those first.Once I got the iMac fully gutted, the adapter slid right in to the open slot without hassle. The SSD itself comfortably slipped right in to the adapter. FWIW, I didn't experience the slight mis-fit Jacobi reported in his Macworld piece.Once re-assembled, MacOS Mojave immediately recognized the presence of an uninitialized disk and formatted it normally with DiskUtility. Then I used stalwart CarbonCopyCloner to clone my old primary drive SATA drive to the PCIe SSD.I was going to complain that this adapter was missing the necessary screw to hold down the adapter (and SSD) because I had to supply one of my own. But, upon closer inspection post-installation, I see that there *was* actually a screw provided in the anti-static bag and I had simply overlooked it. Argh - my bad.This being a 2013 iMac, I had been warned to keep my performance expectations in check since the 2013 implementation of PCIe only provided 2 or 4 'lanes' with a max of 900mbps or 1.5gpbs, far less than the modern theoretical maximums for PCIe/NVMe drives. This meant I didn't feel compelled to buy the newest or most expensive SSD out there (currently the WD Black drive). But, my super-quick initial testing shows that reads and writes are 2-10X what my SATA SSD was giving, so I'm satisfied. (I realize some performance benefit may also come from the larger capacity of the 1TB PCIe SSD vs my SATA SSD... but still).I don't tinker with Macs for a living, but have a decent toolkit at my disposal and have popped open a Macbook or two in my day. The install procedure took me a total of about 40 minutes. YMMV.Anyway, I can now shove a monster 8TB HDD into the hard drive slot for bulk storage and run the OS and apps from my PCIe SSD without cumbersome external drive enclosures. I won't get full SSD silence, but a good performance/capacity setup all around