Its well priced and very.If you’re still running an age-old dinosaur system like me (well, make that around six years old), then you’re probably feeling the pinch from not having quite enough USB 3.0 ports. Inateck have been producing some excellent peripherals recently and the Inateck Superspeed 4 port USB 3 card is no exception. For supporting a wide range of equipment, the card is. The extra USB 3.0 ports allow the system to access more printers, external storage drives, internal case fans, and other USB-based gear. The StarTech 7-Port USB 3.0 PCI Express 2.0 x1 Card provides six external USB 3.0 ports as well as one internal USB 3.0 port for desktop systems with an available PCIe 2.0 x1, x4, x8, or x16 slot.The ProductAs expected, the product does not have any real branding or retail packaging to speak of. I was quite happy that the whole thing cost me just AU$10.35 shipped. Having more ports makes much better use of the I/O slot itself and reduces the chance I would need a hub in the future.
The board seems to have nice solid capacitors for each of the ports, and also has the specified Renesas uPD720201 chipset. A search for that seems to show Shenzhen YK-S Technology‘s store has this product, also sold via Newegg.The card itself is branded STAR-UPCIE201-V1.0, but has nothing to do with Startech as far as I can tell. The external writing and label suggest this product has a code of TB01200. Contrast with FB11 where a real ferrite bead was installed, possibly because it was necessary.U3 through U6 DIP packages may have been current sense amplifiers for each of the ports, all of which are unoccupied. Another line of defense, this time against EMI noise, is the ferrite beads which should be mounted on the power lines near the ports – FB12 through FB15 which appear to be substituted for just regular o ohm resistors again. Instead of populating polyfuses, they “shorted” it over using 0 ohm resistors. For one, F1 through F5 appear to be positions for polyfuse protection to protect against USB port overcurrent events by essentially acting as a self-resetting fuse. D5 and D6 are too far away and too small for that current (SS14 are rated at 1A), and it seems D5 is dedicated to the bottom switching converter. I presumed it was a switching converter, but the inductor looks too small to work with the expected 4 ports x 0.9A = 3.6A current. R14, R18).Another interesting change is that D7 and D12 near the switching converters which appear to be reverse polarity protection diodes have also been swapped out with 0 ohm resistors.I couldn’t find any information about the IC labelled U14 – AAW3ZC. Usb 3.0 Pci Card Review Full Height BackplateThe CD also contained drivers for other USB 3.0 based products.As a result, I resorted to the norm of downloading Renesas drivers from station-drivers. As a result, I decided to go ahead and install it and try it out.The first problem was the wretched CD, which was so poorly pressed that the installer could not be read by two different drives. Installing the UnitDespite the fact the components installed seem to suggest this card is a bit of a skimpy nightmare, provided no faulty USB devices are plugged in, it should still work. The CD has the recordable logo on the top, but is a pressed disc. These appear to be places for interference suppressing inductors for the PCI-E differential pairs, but they were never fitted.The rear of the card has no components at all, just a generic QC Passed label.You get a full height backplate, and nicely cut-out holes for the four connectors you were promised.The card accepts a molex plug for power, with the bevelled edges facing the board.It also comes with a generic driver CD wrapped in cellophane. Usb 3.0 Pci Card Review Windows 7 With TheThe loss of reverse polarity diodes won’t normally cause any issues, except for when someone forcibly plugs in the molex connector backwards and possibly fries all their connected USB devices and or motherboard.Of course, most users will just plug it in, find it works properly with proper peripherals and claim the card is just fine. I really don’t want to find out – it could even get dangerous.The loss of the ferrite beads on the port power filtering is probably also not optimal for RF suppression reasons, as now USB cables can radiate digital hash noise from the power rails inside the case. ConclusionWhile peripheral add-on boards are generally very simple devices and low cost is quite normal, it seems that this low cost board cuts corners by using component substitution methods to eliminate what they deem non-essential functionality to reduce costs.As a result, it seems that proper individual port overcurrent protection does not exist on this card – in the best scenario, the 5v is provided by a switching converter and overloading one port causes the converter to shut down due to overcurrent resulting in 4x more current to flow and all ports to lose power.In the worst case, it could just be connected through to the 5V molex connection, meaning a possible transient 48A of current flow (provided the power supply can supply it, and provided the supply is ATX compliant with 240W short circuit power delivery). Upgrading was successful.It was also determined that the card’s coexistence with an older NEC uPD720200 was not a problem, which was good.The performance of the newer chipset was slightly better than the older one under Windows 7 with the Seatay external enclosure and a “dirtied” SSD. The real question to me is how often do you have your USB devices shorting out so this would be an issue? If anything I’m finding more and more USB3 devices that want to draw as much current as they can get.However a manufacturer can skimp too much on components or quality control and you end up with a card that’s unstable, will appear and disappear from the OS which can be a real PITA. In other words don’t rely on a single USB backup device for important documents.As for the omission of fuses, it would be better to have them but 0 ohm surface mount fuses are sometimes considered a viable cheap substitute because they are known to fail at a certain current which can be qualified through testing, though they blow a lot slower. It is safe enough for what it is, with the exception that if it failed while you were copying important documents to a singular USB backup device, it could become corrupted. Just another case of being dangerously cheap.Sergio, the author of this article uses the term “dangerous” very loosely. Lana del rey albumIt has been running great with no problems but I bought the same exact model PCI card (Generic 4-port USB 3.0 to PCI-E Adapter (STAR-UPCIE201-V1.0, TB01200) as reviewed in this article. I have Pent 4, Win7pro, 500gb hd, 4gb Ram, 3.5 mhz Intel processor. Just keep an eye on eBay deals as there are better cards out there, IIRC both Asus and Gigabyte make some that have a higher component count, but of course at an even higher price.I see a lot of concern over how much power USB devices are needing in lot of the comments.
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