MP 1,1-5,1 Bought a Sonnet Allegro 3.1 USB-C PCIE card. Now which USB hub?

[Jegriva]

I finally hit the trigger and bought a Sonnet Allegro 3.1 Usb-c PCIE card. I heard it's great for external drives, but has some incompatibilites with USB hubs which deliver at USB2.0 speed. Someone has experience with that? Is there a USB hub that can deliver USB 3.1 speeds (or similar)?

 

[crjackson2134]

I recommend you post USB 3.x questions in the USB 3.x thread.

USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

 

[joevt]

The Sonnet Allegro USB-C PCIe card uses an Asmedia ASM1142 which uses a PCIe 2.0 x2 link (8 Gbps) and is therefore limited to ≈ 757 MB/s

A card that uses an ASM2142 or ASM3142 would be similarly limited because they support a PCIe 3.0 x2 link that can only run at PCIe 2.0 speed in an old Mac Pro. You would need a card that includes a PCIe switch that can convert PCIe 3.0 x2 to PCIe 2.0 x4 to get full 10 Gbps USB performance which allows something like 977 MB/s. A GC-TITAN RIDGE would also work since it's a PCIe 3.0 x4 card that will run at PCIe 2.0 x4.

All the above info can be found in the first post of https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-3-x-pcie-cards-for-classic-mac-pro.1501482/

I have not heard of any problems with USB 2.0 hubs. I have a different ASM1142 based USB card that works with a USB 2.0 hub that I have.

There are some hubs that support USB 3.1 gen 2 (10 Gbps). The HP Thunderbolt Dock G2 is a Thunderbolt Dock that also works with a USB (non-Thunderbolt) connection. You can google other hubs on Amazon. It might help to google a specific USB 3.1 gen 2 hub chip like the "VL820" which is used in the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2. There may exist other USB 3.1 gen 2 hub chips. Using a USB-C to USB-A cable, I connected the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2 to the ASM1142 in my Mac Pro and to the USB ports of a GA-170X Gaming 7 Hackintosh but they only showed the USB 2.0 hub. My Mac mini 2018 was able to also see the USB 3.1 Gen 2 hub. Very strange. Maybe a non-Thunderbolt hub will behave better.