Because Apple's internal upgrade kits require technical pairing procedures, many modern Mac Pro users choose to leave their factory Apple SSD modules alone to run the core operating system, expanding their storage via the tower's open PCIe slots instead.
Using standard PCIe carrier cards—such as the OWC Accelsior 8M2 or Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card—professionals install standard, off-the-shelf consumer M.2 NVMe SSDs (like the Samsung 990 Pro or Western Digital Black SN850X). These third-party drives bypass Apple’s proprietary secure controller entirely, running on native macOS NVMe drivers to deliver lightning-fast scratch disk storage without any DFU restrictions.
