the sales literature and installation literature do not mention this. if you have a newer computer with a SATA power supply, then you will need an adapter consisting of a male SATA power plug on one end and a LP4 Molex 4 pin female plug on the other end to power up the card with at least 5vdc It will probably need to be at least a foot long to function in most computer desktop cases. if you have an older computer, all you will need is a pigtail from the computer power supply that has a LP4 molex plug that will reach the card Plugable PCI Express to SuperSpeed USB 3.0 2-Port Expansion Card (NEC/Renesas Chipset)
This PCI Express USB 3.0 is easy to install. It took me less 10 minutes to install the card & the Windows driver included.
I ran a comparison test on a desktop PC (3 year old HP mc8227c, 3GB RAM) and a laptop (Thinkpad w510, 8GB RAM). I copied a folder with 6.8GB files (around 20 files, the largest about 1GB). The write/read transfer rates on USB 3.0 are around 40MB/second & 80MB/second; USB 2.0 20MB/second & 40MB/second; So if you decide to buy this card, you should expect this card is twice as fast as a USB 2.0. If you expect it to be 10x based on technical specifications, it is not realistic. Good luck with your purchase.
This card works just as well as my Buffalo SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe card, but at a far lower cost. Plugable customer service was quick to respond to my inquiry as to whether it was advisable to supply power to the molex connector on the card (suggesting yes).
This addon card works well. Provides USB 3.0 Interface. Had a USB 3.0 external SATA drive connected. Transfer speeds were considerably faster then using USB 2.0. Appeared faster then eSATA. I am using an older MB. I failed to record the actual transfer rates. If you want to try USB 3.0 I recommend this card. I plan on obtaining additional USB 3.0 external drive enclosures. Allows for faster drive clone/backup and transfer of video files
This PCI-Express card worked great in my ASUS Evo Motherboard. I have sweet onboard video, so I did not need the slot. This card showed me how much faster USB 3.0 is compared to E-SATA, and I was impressed. 300GB transferred in less than one hour from a Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm drive in a Vantec external USB 3.0 enclosure. One slight issue I take with the card, is that I could not FULLY seat the card in the pci-express slot. In fact, if you take a look at even the pic on this page you can see a very slight angle in the mounting. However, the tabs on the card are more than deep enough to maintain connection, even with the slight angle, I'm just a bit old school on the tech, and prefer everything fit snug and proper. I also appreciate their use of the standard 4-pin molex connector for power. I had never heard of Plugable previously as a brand, but them seemed to do well with this card.
For the price this card does a great job. On my older motherboard, an ASUS M3A78-EM with an AMD Phenom X4 9550 Quad Core Processor, I measured the time to create a file on various drives, as well as on a new external USB 3.0 drive. This motherboard has only USB 2.0 available but has a slot open that this card fits. In quick tests I am getting anywhere from 70 to over 80 megabytes per second on file creates with this card and a new 2TB USB 3.0 external drive. My other drives including a 1 TB eSATA external drive are only getting from 20 - 50 megabytes per second on file creates.
So, this inexpensive card allowed me to buy and use a 2 TB USB 3.0 external drive on an older system, that I will be able to use if/when I get a system that fully supports USB 3.0, and to boot I get significantly faster disk speed. Everything worked out of the box fine, there were no installation problems at all.
There are others that said they had driver issues, the card installed with very little issues. I rebooted after the install just to make sure and it worked like a champ. The data rates through the card are what most are saying, which is pretty good for USB 3.0. I would highly recommend the product and would buy again.
I wanted a USB 3.0 port to go with my new external drive. This one performs well, and is somewhat cheaper than others on Amazon. Hardware installation was simple, but the driver installation is another matter. This is the first piece of hardware for which I have been unable to get a driver from Windows 7 Driver Update. One MUST use the included CD in order for the port to be recognized. I was very surprised by this. The manufacturer should provide drivers to the Microsoft folks so that this hardware is easier to use.
Recommended.
I own several cards from different vendors and this one stood out for it's packaging and price. Very nice card with a led that indicates power to the port which my other cards do not provide. Contains the standard NEC/Renesas chipset which is probably the most mature chipset for USB 3.0 on the market which reduces the chances of incompatibilities. - Usb 3 0 - External Hard Drive'
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