I’m sure most of you have noticed that
2010 seems to be the year when USB 3.0 finally goes mainstream. We’re
seeing motherboards now that incorporate it, but not too many really.
If you want to jump on the USB 3.0 bandwagon you’ve got two choices,
the expensive one in both time and money where you would buy a new
motherboard, or an easy and rather inexpensive choice that would be
to get a PCIE add-in card that will give you USB 3.0 right now in
your current system. I’ve been running UBS 3.0 add-in cards in a
couple of my computers for a couple months now actually, and I love
it, there a big difference in the speeds over USB 2.0. I also found
that using a USB 2.0 product on the USB 3.0 interface will actually
speed it up a little bit too.

Today for review our friends at
USBFever have sent me over two products to take a look at. One is a
USB 3.0 PCIE card adapter and the other is the compliment to the
card, a USB 3.0 extension cable. You really can’t have one without
the other right? So read on to learn more about these two products
and see how USB 3.0 compares to USB 2.0.

Product
Name: 2
Port PCI-e Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter and USB
3.0 Extension Cable

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: USBFever

Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

USB
3.0 A Male to A Female Cable Assembly (2 meters)

Product Code#:UFAF001157

Price: US$9.99

Features:

– USB 3.0 SuperSpeed

– It is Duplex, it means it can
simultaneously send and receive data

– It is 10 times faster than
USB 2.0

– Fully Shield to reduce
interference

– Construct with twisted pair,
help to reduce cross-talk

– Compliant with USB 1.0, USB
1.1 and USB 2.0

– Inter-mateable with USB 2.0,
USB 1.1 and USB 1.0

– PC and Mac compatible

– Connectors : USB 3.0 A Male
– USB 3.0 A Female

Color:

– Blue

Options: Length

– Around 2 meters (or 6 feet)

==

2
Port PCI-e Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter

Product Code#:UFAE001452

Price: US$52.99

Introductions:

It is superSpeed Era, it is USB
3.0 era.

Features:

-USB 3.0 SuperSpeed

– It is Duplex, it means it can
simultaneously send and receive data

– It is 10 times faster than
USB 2.0

– NEC Chip used

– Additional port for Power

Connector:

USB 3.0 A Female x 2

Package Contents:

– 2 Port PCI Express SuperSpeed
USB 3.0 Card Adapter x 1

A
Better Look at Things:

I’ve got two products here today,
so let’s look at them separately.

We’ll start with the PCIE card, it
comes in a nice little box with brief instruction manual and driver
cd.

It’s a mini-PCIE style card so it
has the small connection on the bottom. It’s green colored, and
doesn’t really look all that exciting.

It features the NEC chipset and
there’s a female molex connection on the top edge.

On the PCI slot side you’ll find
two blue colored USB 3.0 ports.

Next is the cable, it comes just
in a plastic bag.

It’s quite a bit thicker and more
stiff than a USB2.0 extension cable, it does after all have twice the
wires inside of it. There’s a male and female connection and the ends
are labeled as well so you won’t confuse it with your USB 2.0 cable.

{mospagebreak title= Installation, Testing and Comparison}

Installation,
Testing and Comparison:

For installation of the cable,
there’s nothing to that it’s just plug it in and you’re done.

The cord though does require you
to open up your PC and find an open mini-PCIE slot, for me that was a
tight fit between two very large ATI 4870 video cards. You’ll also
need a free Molex power connection to provide additional power to the
USB 3.0 card.

I’ve already made the move to USB
3.0, so I’m fortunate enough to have some USB 3.0 stuff lying around
for testing.

I figured why not compare USB 2.0
to USB 3.0 to see the differences in speed.

I’ve
got two Seagate
BlackAmor PS 110 2.5”
portable hard drives. One is the USB 2.0 version and the other is the
new USB 3.0 style. The new BlackArmor is a bit different though than
the original, besides being USB 3.0 it also has a 720RPM drive in it
as opposed to the 5400RPM drive of the original. So I tested a bit
differently taking this into consideration.

The first test I ran was using
HDTune Pro on just the BlackArmor USB 3.0 drive comparing it to the
old UBS 2.0 interface.

Looking at the results we see an
average speed of almost three faster than the UBS 2.0 interface, and
the burst rate is over three times that of USB 2.0. Not too bad….

The next set of tests involves
ATTO DiskBench. For this test I took the original USB2.0 BlackArmor
and compared the results running on the USB2.0 interface versus the
USB3.0 interface to see if there was any improvement. I also ran the
same test on the BlackArmor USB3.0 drive as well just out of
curiosity.

Here’s the first set of tests
using the original USB2.0 BlackArmor on both interfaces:

The read speeds actually dropped
slightly but we see a good improvement in the write speeds when
moving to the UBS3.0 interface. We gained almost 10MB/s more on the
write speeds when using the USB3.0 interface.

Here’s the results using the
USB3.0 enabled BlackArmor drive on both interfaces:

The charts look odd, it’s because
the program had to change the graphing to fit the faster speeds of
the USB3.0 in there. As you can see the using USB 3.0 shows a nice
improvement over using the USB 2.0 interface.

The price of the PCIE card is
$52.99 which is about the average price right now for one of these
cards, which isn’t that bad really.

The extension cable is only $10
which is well worth it so you don’t have to be reaching around behind
your computer to find the USB port.

I’ve been using both for the last
two weeks and have had no issues at all with them.

Summary
and Comments:

The PCIE card works and works
well, it’s also very easy to install, just pop it in then plug in the
power connection, install the drivers and you’re ready to go.

My system is a bit cramped, so you
might run into that depending on your configuration and the size of
your videos cards.

The USB 3.0 Extension cable is
well made, it’s nice and thick and more than long enough for most any
setup I’m sure.

All in all I can’t find anything
wrong with either of these products, they’re both well made and do
exactly what they’re supposed to do.

DragonSteelMods gives the 2 Port
PCI-e Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter and USB 3.0 Extension
Cable both a 5 out of 5 score.

Pros:

+Very easy installation

+Both seem well made

+Nice fast speeds

Cons:

-None really

review# 644

Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review by the company
for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for
the review, we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment
from companies to review their products.

To
learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
please see this page.