USB 3.0 upgrade

[RJK]

Hi, your thoughts on USB 3.0 would be muchly appreciated.

My aunty needs a backup hd, (for her Asrock AliveNF7G-Full HD rev.3.0 based
PC), so to speed things up I thought I'd bung her in a PCIe x1 card with USB
3.0 ports on it, and treat her to a USB 3.0 ext. hd.

After a bit of a rummage on the web, I spotted someone saying that the
Seagate USB 3.0 hd wouldn't work for him, on his USB 3.0 ports - worked okay
on his USB 2.0 ports though !
....and someone else said that it would be nice if Windows recognized the
card instead of having to install the 3rd party drivers that came on a CD
with it ! I'd already gathered that USB 3.0 can be a bit of a 'hit or miss'
affair.

also, after looking at USB 3.0 PCIe x1 cards on ebuyer.com, they all seem to
have a four pin molex power connector on them !!!
....and somewhere I spotted that one card supplied 5w/900ma on each of it's
two USB ports !
....so it appears that these cards can't suck enough current out of the
motherboard PCIe x1 slot ???

....so who in here has bunged in a PCIe x1 USB 3.0 card, and did you have to
connect a molex to it, and which external hard disk case worked for you ?



regards, Richard

 

[Paul]

Hi, your thoughts on USB 3.0 would be muchly appreciated.

My aunty needs a backup hd, (for her Asrock AliveNF7G-Full HD rev.3.0 based
PC), so to speed things up I thought I'd bung her in a PCIe x1 card with USB
3.0 ports on it, and treat her to a USB 3.0 ext. hd.

After a bit of a rummage on the web, I spotted someone saying that the
Seagate USB 3.0 hd wouldn't work for him, on his USB 3.0 ports - worked okay
on his USB 2.0 ports though !
...and someone else said that it would be nice if Windows recognized the
card instead of having to install the 3rd party drivers that came on a CD
with it ! I'd already gathered that USB 3.0 can be a bit of a 'hit or miss'
affair.

also, after looking at USB 3.0 PCIe x1 cards on ebuyer.com, they all seem to
have a four pin molex power connector on them !!!
...and somewhere I spotted that one card supplied 5w/900ma on each of it's
two USB ports !
...so it appears that these cards can't suck enough current out of the
motherboard PCIe x1 slot ???

...so who in here has bunged in a PCIe x1 USB 3.0 card, and did you have to
connect a molex to it, and which external hard disk case worked for you ?



regards, Richard

The PCI Express slots have +12V and +3.3V. Those are supposed to be
the main power sources for the electronics on the card. The 12V is used
when a lot of power is needed (and the card will convert the 12V to
some other voltage). The 12V is used heavily on video cards.
A video card might convert 12V to 1.0V at 100 amps of current,
as an example. And in such a case, the video card uses the 2x3 and 2x4 connectors
to handle the extra current on +12V. The card slot pins are limited,
as to how much they can supply. Notice the size of the "power section"
on the PCI Express connectors, doesn't change with lane count. The x1 sloy
has the same power section, as the x16 slot.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070322...om/2004/11/22/sli_is_coming/pcie-slot-big.gif

The easiest way to pick up +5V, is with the Molex, or with a SATA 15 contact
power connector. I like the Molex better, because it was designed for
power. The SATA 15 pin power is weak by comparison. If the manufacturer
played by the rules, and used +12V and included power conversion,
that would cost a few bucks.

Example of one here. With a NEC (Renesas) chip. Notice that where the
auxiliary power connector is located, the PCB is "dual footprint" design.
If they wanted, they could make a card with Molex 1x4 soldered in place,
or pull that out and put the SATA 15 pin one. The Molex is rated for
more current.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158354

By going to the company site, they tell us the chip. Not all
card makers do that. Some will hide the fact they're using an
Etron branded one. There are way too many chips, for me to keep
track of them all. Some are even hard to find benchmarks for them.

http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapt...e-SuperSpeed-USB-3-Controller-Card~PEXUSB3S4V

"NEC uPD720201"

(Chip Brochure)

http://documentation.renesas.com/doc/products/soc/r19pf0043ej0200_usb.pdf

As you'd expect, there are cases where certain combinations of enclosures
and host card chip types, don't work out. So you just have to do your
best, selecting reviews with lots of comments, to figure out which
ones are good. The example I picked there, the card only has four
reviews, which isn't enough. But if you find some other NEC based
cards, you'll get a better idea if there are driver problems.

Paul