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Please recommend USB 3.0 PCiE Cards for Mid 2010 Mac Pro

J

JustinBW

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 5, 2009
93
42
I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro. I have been wanting to get a USB 3 card for this thing for a while. I tried a Lacie one a while back and basically did not work, so I am hoping things hanse changed after a couple of years.

Can anyone recommend good USB 3 cards for this Mac Pro, that function well, don't interrupt bluetooth signals, etc...

Thanks!
 
JustinBW said:
I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro. I have been wanting to get a USB 3 card for this thing for a while. I tried a Lacie one a while back and basically did not work, so I am hoping things hanse changed after a couple of years.

Can anyone recommend good USB 3 cards for this Mac Pro, that function well, don't interrupt bluetooth signals, etc...

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I suggest you have a look at this thread
 
crjackson2134 said:
I suggest you have a look at this thread
Click to expand...

Wow, only 2 cards...

Orico PFU3-4P is $20 on amazon. Will need aux power, which can be "pulled" from the 2nd superdrive slot.
Click to expand...

That's what I was concerned with. Is it fairly simple to do that (pull the power)?

EDIT - I will forward all existing question to the aforementioned thread. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
JustinBW said:
I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro. I have been wanting to get a USB 3 card for this thing for a while. I tried a Lacie one a while back and basically did not work, so I am hoping things hanse changed after a couple of years.

Can anyone recommend good USB 3 cards for this Mac Pro, that function well, don't interrupt bluetooth signals, etc...

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Aside from RocketU 1144CM USB 3.0, Orico PFU3-4P you may also try the Caldigit Fasta 6Gu3-eSata Combo
 
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CalDigit USB3/eSATA

I have the CalDigit card in my 2010 Mac Pro: not the current model, but the previous one that works with Snow Leopard. It works well, using their drivers. I don't have any Bluetooth devices, so I can't comment on whether it causes problems with that. If I were in the market for another such card, I'd look at the NewerTech sold by OWC:

MAXPower 2-port eSATA 6Gb/s & 2-port USB 3.0 PCIe Controller Card for Mac Pro 2006-2012

Works with 10.5.6 and above.
 
^^^^I second this. The only issue I had with the Inateck card was Bluetooth interference which made my Microsoft wireless mouse unusable. I attached a Plugable 7 port powered hub to the card. This provided two benefits:

1. I have access the USB3 from the front of my Mac Pro.

2. The Bluetooth interference, while not completely gone, is reduced to the level of being acceptable.

I highly recommend both products.

Lou
 
ashman70 said:
I'd like to buy this but I'm in Canada and can't find anyone who sells it, pity Amazon.com won't ship it to me either.
Click to expand...

Contact the seller directly and see if arrangements can be made. You won't regret the extra trouble. If they won't help you, contact me by PM and I'll try to help.
 
Last edited:
Thanks I had already seen that card and am considering it although I am also considering an Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 extreme for my SSD drive, it takes up a slot on my motherboard, if I connect my SSD drive to the Caldigit card's SATA port, I should get the same performance as the Apricorn card?
 
^^^^I would assume so. But then you would have the problem of where to mount the internal SSD. With the Velocity x2 the SSD mounts to the card.

Lou
 
I actually already have an SSD mounted in the spare 5.25 bay at the moment, its connected to one of the onboard SATA connectors, plugging it into the Caldigit card would increase my speeds from SATA II to SATA III, and not use up a slot on the MB, I'd just need to find a long SATA cable, but I think I have one.
 
Caldigit card is nice in that the two formats appear on just one card :)

I have gone the Apricorn / Inateck way but have no requirement to keep another
slot free for now ... UAD2 Duo card is in my last PCIe slot.

M
 
Thanks Marty, I am just thinking I can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak and combine the the functions of the Apricorn and Inateck cards in one, unless the Apricorn will give me much better performance then the Caldigit.
 
ashman70 said:
Thanks Marty, I am just thinking I can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak and combine the the functions of the Apricorn and Inateck cards in one, unless the Apricorn will give me much better performance then the Caldigit.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's what I can't tell you but theoretically it SHOULD be as fast.
I was just happy to get a "Trim" supported bootable SATA III card for my lovely
EVO 750gb :) ..... and for only €54 !

It's VERY fast - these Samsung's seem to be really good performers, I am sure
that I posted the Speed Disk result somewhere here, I was hitting read / write
with the EVO of just about 500MB/s !
OK just checked ... 495.8MB/s write and 512.8MB/s read :)

Marty.
 
ashman70 said:
Thanks I had already seen that card and am considering it although I am also considering an Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 extreme for my SSD drive, it takes up a slot on my motherboard, if I connect my SSD drive to the Caldigit card's SATA port, I should get the same performance as the Apricorn card?
Click to expand...

Actually I just red that I can get 10 gigabits per second from the PCIe slot if I use the Apricorn card, so that is obviously faster then 6 gigabits I'd get from the Caldigit.
 
ashman70 said:
Actually I just red that I can get 10 gigabits per second from the PCIe slot if I use the Apricorn card, so that is obviously faster then 6 gigabits I'd get from the Caldigit.
Click to expand...

Could be that 2 x dedicated cards will perform better than one doing two jobs?

Depends on what you want from the upgrade and what's connected to it?

Huge throughput ending at a slow HDD won't improve things right !
- where is the bottleneck? with a great SSD there is none.
M.
 
What I and I think anyone would want from the upgrade is the best possible performance, so if there is a difference of 4GG/s between the Apricorn card and the Caldigit, then I'll choose the Apricorn card. The SSD going on the Apricorn card will have OSX and apps on it, so I think I will see a huge performance increase.
 
ashman70 said:
What I and I think anyone would want from the upgrade is the best possible performance, so if there is a difference of 4GG/s between the Apricorn card and the Caldigit, then I'll choose the Apricorn card. The SSD going on the Apricorn card will have OSX and apps on it, so I think I will see a huge performance increase.
Click to expand...

That's exactly how I use my Apricorn card, and it performs very well :)

I think it's a good choice.

M.
 
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