Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

Status
The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
transfers

I'm finding transfers between USB drives are much faster with the Orico USB 3.0 BokCore 4-port hub than with the standard built-in USB 2.0 ports.

Also seeing no interference with Apple Magic Mouse or Apple Wireless keyboard.

Still finding that all USB 3.0 devices are not created equal; some no-name USB 3.0 flash keys still don't even mount on the desktop if plugged into either the Orico hub or PCIe card.
 
I received my Orico card today, so decided to install it.

The Mac sees it, but not anything plugged into it. Even a mouse.

I just remembered, though, reports that you have to provide power. I'll try to see if my cable will reach this weekend.
 
Patriot

Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0, 32 GB in Orico 4-port hub, hooked up to PFU3-4P card.. the slim black plastic one, not the rubbery coated one. Standard FAT formatting, freshly wiped with Disk Utility.

Black Magic Disk Speed Test, set to 1 GB, after 5 minutes:

Read: 125.1 MB/sec
Write: 63.3 MB/sec

not bad..

----------
crjackson2134 said:
That's probably because it's seen as a regular drive. Look in GO>Computer and see if it's there.
Click to expand...

Which OS are you running?!
 
Just to confirm that this Inateck card works well. I bought it for just £15.99 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B6ZCNGM/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It is the same Fresco FL1100 Chip as the slightly more expensive Orico http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008V3THAC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It does require power which threw me slightly at first as I was expecting a Molex connector whereas the nice red circuit board actually has a SATA connector but a Molex->SATA adaptor cable is shipped in the box with it.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I am using the Caldigit USB 3.0 card with 2 eSata ports and 2 USB 3.0 ports and works fine on my Mac Pro 4.1 and 5.1. I read from another thread here problems when the Mac Pro is put to sleep and error messages appear. I could not comment on that as I do a complete shut down. I am satisifed with this card that does not need an external power supply. The USB 3.0 I get may not be the maximum speed but I am okay with that. Here's a BMagic speed test.

urYc2Eg.jpg


There's another YouTube video on a guy who also did various speed tests for USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSata. His test results below and here is the Youtube Url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Uo-KS8kAE

SoQA30S.jpg
 
does anyone with the 2 or 4 port orico have the problem when on boot the expansion fans revs to 1500rpm then slows down to about 1000rpm and stays there. without the card this doesn't happen and the fans stay at 800rpm...im getting these readings from istat menus and on 10.8.4
 
RoastingPig said:
does anyone with the 2 or 4 port orico have the problem when on boot the expansion fans revs to 1500rpm then slows down to about 1000rpm and stays there. without the card this doesn't happen and the fans stay at 800rpm...im getting these readings from istat menus and on 10.8.4
Click to expand...

I haven't heard of that yet for any USB 3.0 card. I would try uninstalling iStat Menus. It seemed to be causing problems for this guy, and I see in another thread you recently just started playing around with fan speeds in iStat.
 
ActionableMango said:
I haven't heard of that yet for any USB 3.0 card. I would try uninstalling iStat Menus. It seemed to be causing problems for this guy, and I see in another thread you recently just started playing around with fan speeds in iStat.
Click to expand...

i just removed the usb card and booted to the 1500rpm expansion fan noise..unistalled istat menus and i still hear that noise..disconnected the sata to molex and still the noise...hmmmmm? but after removing the card the fans did simmer back down slowly too 800 over 45 seconds of time from boot
 
RoastingPig said:
does anyone with the 2 or 4 port orico have the problem when on boot the expansion fans revs to 1500rpm then slows down to about 1000rpm and stays there. without the card this doesn't happen and the fans stay at 800rpm...im getting these readings from istat menus and on 10.8.4
Click to expand...

Yes I had that problem, reset the SMC and it should go away. It did for me, but I'm using a different card now.
 
crjackson2134 said:
Yes I had that problem, reset the SMC and it should go away. It did for me, but I'm using a different card now.
Click to expand...

didn't work i tried smc, pram and reinstalling istat. the only thing that works is removing the card. i might just remove and install whenever im i need of fast usb 3.0 goodness.

This is idle for me with the orico PFU3-2P:
dvea.png
 
Last edited:
RoastingPig said:
didn't work i tried smc, pram and reinstalling istat. the only thing that works is removing the card. i might just remove and install whenever im i need of fast usb 3.0 goodness.

This is idle for me with the orico PFU3-2P:
Image

*UPDATE i removed a 4gb stick of OWC 1066 ram and the fan rev went away.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, what video card are you using? This problem is most heavily reported among those with aftermarket video cards.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1566964/
 
New possible option for 10.8.4 and later

Looks like Amazon started selling this card ("IO Crest USB 3.0 4 Port PCI-e x4 Card Etron Chipset SI-PEX20148"):

http://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-PCI-e-Chipset-SI-PEX20148/dp/B00E1HBEE4/

This card has an Etron EJ198H chip, which appears to be supported by the stock Apple drivers beginning in 10.8.4. See here and search for Etron, note the device ID of 0x7052, then compare here. In that Apple source you're looking at the list of PCI vendor and device IDs and (in some cases) revisions that are supported out of the box, without having to use the AllowAnyXHCI plist key.

One possible advantage of this chip is that it has a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface to the host (see here, although that page has some errors), so it should be able to support more simultaneous USB traffic than the usual chips with an x1 interface. Here's some discussion from when the chip was announced. The Amazon description for the card is confusing--it says "single-lane" but also "4x", which I guess is the physical connector size--but in the photo you can clearly see the two lanes wired up to the edge connector (the two pairs of traces going to the part of the connector "behind" the gap).

Please note, I have NOT tested this, nor do I know anyone who has. And I can report that the Orico PFU3-4P seems to be working well for my dad (2009 Mac Pro), so that's another check in the "safe bet" column for that one, which is also cheaper at the moment. But if somebody wants to roll the dice and try for some extra speed, it would be interesting to know how well this one works. :)
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Eltron card

Someone posted the first review of this card on Amazon, I'll let you decide for yourselves:

Jim on Amazon said:
I've been looking for a 4-port USB3 card that will allow me to hook up 4 hard drives and write to all drives at their max speed. This review compares the IO Crest card to a cheap generic / cheap 4-port USB card.

The cheap $10-15 USB3 cards are usually PCIe x1 cards. The x1 means it uses 1 "lane" of the PCI bus. For PCIe 1.0, this limits you to 250MB/s. For PCIe 2.0, the limit per lane is 500MB/s. The cheap $10 card could read from 1 port at max drive speed (around 120MB/s), but when a 2nd drive was added, the combined speed was only 160MB/s instead of 240MB/s. The cheap USB3 cards are actually 1 USB controller and 4-port HUB, so 1 controller has to do all the work. This test shows that the 1 USB controller is not up to the task of handling 2 devices at these speeds.

In contrast, this card is an x4 card, meaning it can use 4 lanes of PCI bandwidth. It's better than the cheap USB card, but still cannot handle 4 drives at full speed in my testing.

Here are my drives' max speeds:
124 MB/s
120 MB/s
80 MB/s
30 MB/s (this is a USB2 drive)

Here is the speed I expected with 1-4 drives running:
124 MB/s
244 MB/s
325 MB/s
355 MB/s

Here is the actual speed I saw with this card:
124 MB/s
235 MB/s (+ 111 MB/s)
276 MB/s (+ 41 MB/s)
283 MB/s (+ 7 MB/s)

At $29, this card fills a niche between cheap $10 USB3 4-port cards and the much more expensive HighPoint RocketU cards, which have 4 separate USB controllers but also cost $109. For my purpose, I need all the ports to run at full speed, so am going to gulp real hard and try the HighPoint 1144C.

One advantage this card may have over the HighPoint is that it has a power connection, which might be useful for high-current USB devices. Maybe that is not an issue with the HighPoint since it has 4 separate USB controllers.

HEADS UP: this card did not work at all in my setup until I connected the power connection.

Update 1: I had the chance to try this card with some different drives, all USB3 and higher capacity, and saw a little better performance. With 4 drives writing zeroes I got 315MB/s total throughput. The drives' max write speeds were 114 + 114 + 120 + 125, so 473MB/s if the card could handle it all at once. It will drive each disk at its max speed individually, just not 4 of them together. I don't have an SSD to test single-port max throughput.

Update 2: I ran another test, zeroing 2 USB3 drives and 2 USB2 drives. So writing 4 drives at once. Throughput was decent, as I indicated above, but not as fast as it could have been. The drives were 2TB, 1TB, 160GB, 160GB. The smaller drives finished but the 2TB drive was still writing zeroes (of course). So I tried to read the two 160GB drives (while the 2TB was still writing). Hmm... something not quite right. I barely saw any reads happening. I suspended the 2TB write and tried each 160GB driving alone. Each drive can read 29MB/s (they are USB2). But when I tried reading from both drives at once, instead of seeing 58MB/s, which I know this card is easily capable of, I only saw 46MB/s. So that's a problem. And if one port is writing, the read throughput on the other 2 drives goes down to something like 1MB/s. There is a burst of read activity every 40 seconds or so, instead of a continuous stream of 30MB/s from each drive. I'm using Linux (Debian Wheezy) for this test. I guess it could be a Linux problem, but Linux is usually very good about handling resources fairly. Since I did not see this behavior with USB3 drives, I'm guessing this card doesn't handle USB2 devices very well for some reason.
Click to expand...
 
This is mildly OT but I'm looking to put an NEC chipset driven express card in my 17" dinosaur anyone have any long term issues?
 
^^^^The Suggested Retail price for that card is $99.95. They also have a combo Firewire 400/ USB2 card that has a MSRP of $89.95. I know of know one one who uses it.

Lou
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back