USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

[jasonvp]

Thanks Jason, this is how the Uspeed USB 3 hub here shows up for me in sys info.

That definitely doesn't seem right. It appears as though the one you have may have slipped through their QA. I'm reading some of the comments on AMZN about it and a few others have had your same problem.

Do you happen to have a recent MacBook Pro handy, that you could connect it to? Or a Windows box with USB 3 ports already in it?

jas

 

[Smacsh]

Can I use hdd bay power for usb 3.0 card power?

I'm using Mac pro 5,1 mid 2010.

I'm going to buy one of these cards.

ORICO PRU3-4P 4 Port USB 3.0 PCI - Express Card

Fresco Logic FL1009-200

Actually, what I want to buy is Orico 2P which doesn't need extra power but I can get it in us.

I added ssd in optical bay but I have empty 2 more hdd bay.

Even though I read whole this thread, I'm still wondering whether I can use the sata power of Hdd bay.

If I want to use hdd bay sata for usb3.0 card power supply what else I should buy?

 

[Fangio]

I'm using Mac pro 5,1 mid 2010.

I'm going to buy one of these cards.

ORICO PRU3-4P 4 Port USB 3.0 PCI - Express Card

Wouldn't do that, this one uses an NEC chipset which isn't natively supported in Mountain Lion. The Orico cards are easily confused – an R in the model name indicates NEC, while F as in ORICO PFU3-4P 4 Ports USB 3.0 Express Card indicates a Fresco chipset that is supported by ML. Check the reviews.

 

[ActionableMango]

Even though I read whole this thread, I'm still wondering whether I can use the sata power of Hdd bay.

If I want to use hdd bay sata for usb3.0 card power supply what else I should buy?

Yes, you can. The instructions are here.

 

[tinycg]

I haven't had a chance to test the usb 3 hub, but I do have a windows box with stock usb 3.0 on the asus motherboard that I'll hopefully have a chance at trying tomorrow.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

State of usb3 on mp !!!! Hahahaha doesn't exist -!!!!!!

Nonsense!

 

[nigelbb]

I have the Molex extender cable for my ORICO card but I had to go away before I got a chance to fit it. Good news that it works with a USB3 hub I am really hoping that it doesn't interfere with my Magic Mouse like the Sonnet Allegro USB3 card does.

I have now fitted the power cable to the ORICO card & it now works. The good news is that the Magic Mouse seems to be behaving OK now. The bad news is that the USB 3 hub that I plugged in is only seen as a USB 2 device & nothing plugged into the hub is seen at all.

I shall have to try & buy the 4-port ORICO card with the Fresco chip but the only one that I can see on eBay ships from Canada & in any case appears to be a low profile card only whereas the 2-port card that I have installed came with the plates for regular PCIe & low profile PCIe.

 

[Tibbar]

bootable?

Interesting thread. For the people who purchased a card with a Fresco chip working natively in OS X 10.8.x, are you able to boot from the card? In other words, if you install Mountain Lion on a USB 3.0 external drive, plug it into a Fresco port, and hold down the Option key before booting, is it EFI-recognized and can launch OS X from the external drive?

 

[texem]

Hi,

the USB 3.0 ports are unavailable during boot because lack of EFI support for that chipset on any Mac Pro. That's why we are not able to boot from but that's the only disadvantage.

The port is initialized by the IOUSBfamily.kext bundle during boot of OS X

 

[Tibbar]

I see, thanks.

 

[nigelbb]

This morning my Magic Mouse is once again playing up being very laggy & unresponsive. I had hoped that using the ORICO card with native drivers had fixed the problem. It's difficult to know if it is the USB3 card as the problem is intermittent. It was definitely the Sonnet Allegro USB3 card as if I switched off all USB3 devices then the problem went away. The other thing that nearly fixed it was using a Microsoft Touch mouse in parallel with the Magic Mouse when the USB dongle is plugged in to the Apple wired keyboard the MM works almost perfectly. From some Googling it seems that there is a long standing problem with Bluetooth on the Mac Pro which is perhaps being exacerbated by the incompatibility with the USB3 card.

 

[ActionableMango]

This morning my Magic Mouse is once again playing up being very laggy & unresponsive.

1) A lot of people have success with changing the antenna connections.

2) Also people have reported that using an external BT dongle helps reception immensely. However, their bluetooth devices connected via dongle cannot wake the MP from sleep.

3) You could get OWC's Mac Mini bluetooth/usb3.0 shield and apply it to the MP bluetooth card instead. I don't think anyone has tried that yet.

 

[caymandrew]

I didn't think I needed to power the 2-port version either, but I had to. The MP recognized the card upon bootup, but disabled the card with a message about how a USB device was using too much power so it shut the card down.

I too have all bays full, both HDD and optical. Nevertheless, I used a y-cable in the optical bay to get power. You can indeed run power there through the tightly integrated case. See this post. I can provide pictures if it helps.

This is the particular card I used.

Everything is powered now and works perfectly with native drivers, which was the whole point. I didn't really want to hook up extra power, but now that I have, I can confidently use a bus-powered device if need be.

Here are the cables I used:
1) This one splits the SATA combo plug into separate data and power. It sits in the optical bay.
2) This one is the Y-cable for power. It sits in the optical bay.
3) The SATA-to-Molex adapter comes with the card and sits in the optical bay.
4) Finally, this cable runs from inside the optical bay to the card.

You have to temporarily remove one Molex connector from that last cable to thread it into the optical bay. I used the same route as the default SATA cabling.

In retrospect now that I've run power, I might as well have gotten the 4-port. The price difference is miniscule.



I don't mind forwarding one. PM me if you like.

THANK YOU. Followed this step by step with the ORICO PFU3-4P and it works great.

 

[ActionableMango]

THANK YOU. Followed this step by step with the ORICO PFU3-4P and it works great.

You are welcome! And thanks for verifying that the 4-port card works with native drivers too.

I need to get around to updating the instructions with this and other information.

 

[tinycg]

I also wanted to report back that I sent back the Uspeed USB 3.0 hub as it was only reporting USB 2 on both the mac and a PC. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good USB 3 hub?

 

[caymandrew]

What program do you guys recommend to test hdd and usb transfer speeds? Thanks.

 

[tinycg]

People have had good luck with the Black Magic Speed test app from the App Store. It doesnt let me switch drives for some reason, so I found the Aja speed test, works pretty well.

 

[jasonvp]

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good USB 3 hub?

Did you try one of the SYBA hubs I linked to in my previous post? NewEgg has them in stock and they're reasonably cheap.

The only USB 3 devices I have at this point are a card reader and a couple of thumb drives. Neither will be able to deliver true 5G/s USB3 speeds, so I'm still not sure whether the hub is good or not. But if you have a USB 3 disk drive, that should be a quick and easy test.

jas

 

[tinycg]

Jason, thanks I hadn't actually because the two times I checked before they were still out of stock, I'll give it a shot and tell you how it goes, thanks.

 

[Erlang]

Now I have managed to source the right splitter cable, thanks to a kind soul in this thread I have dumped my external Molex supply, and run power from the optical bay. Took the opportunity to fit a 2 port lead to the onboard 20 pin and that seems to work fine as expected, I have also experimented with shielding my Bluetooth module, in a similar fashion as the OWC fix for Mac Minis.

I'll report back on how successful the BT fix is.

So my ORICO PFU3-2O2I has 4 working external ports now, but I have given a PCI backplate up for the 2 extra ports, I tempted to fit them elsewhere in the rear chassis to get the PCI slot back, but I'll muse on that before taking a dremel or similar to the case.

 

[ActionableMango]

So my ORICO PFU3-2O2I has 4 working external ports now, but I have given a PCI backplate up for the 2 extra ports, I tempted to fit them elsewhere in the rear chassis to get the PCI slot back, but I'll muse on that before taking a dremel or similar to the case.

It would be really slick to replace the two front ports with USB 3.0. However, looking at those ports on the inside of the case, I don't think it would be easy or even possible at all.

 

[stevedusa]

So I got the CalDigit card, running on 10.8.2 and everything is great.

EXCEPT... a USB 3.0 hub. Plugged it in and the system freezes, then shuts itself down.

Turn it back on with the hub unplugged, it says the system was shut down to protect itself.

Any insights? Or anybody who is using a USB 3.0 hub on a CalDigit card?

 

[ScratchyMoose]

Cables in the UK

Here are the cables I used:
1) This one splits the SATA combo plug into separate data and power. It sits in the optical bay.
2) This one is the Y-cable for power. It sits in the optical bay.
3) The SATA-to-Molex adapter comes with the card and sits in the optical bay.
4) Finally, this cable runs from inside the optical bay to the card.

Being in the UK it was hard to find all of the above cables, but i got these ones instead from Amazon UK, i've just fitted them, and the card is working fine:
Lindy
Molex etension though instead of this big molex - big molex cable, you could use an alternative cable that would clip onto the smaller power plug on the lindy cable, which would then mean you wouldn't have to take apart the big molex plug to route it out of the optical bay.

Just a note on the card - i thought that all 2 plug orico cards didn't need powering, but the PFU3-202I does need power, hence the cables above (it's the PFU3-2P which doesn't need power).

As to speeds: on a standard 7200 HDD i'm getting around 60 Mbs in / out while a similar disc inside one of the regular drive bays in the MP is giving me around 90 in / out. By comparison, the same disc and docking station on USB2 is returning around 34 in / out

Hope this helps someone

 

[pprior]

FYI, I've now got USB3 running on my 3.1 mac pro. bought the CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 and installed no problems, also giving me a couple eSATA 6g external ports as well.

 

[Erlang]

As to speeds: on a standard 7200 HDD i'm getting around 60 Mbs in / out while a similar disc inside one of the regular drive bays in the MP is giving me around 90 in / out. By comparison, the same disc and docking station on USB2 is returning around 34 in / out

Hope this helps someone

I don't think many USB3 enclosures are able maximise throughput between SATA III drives and USB3, yet. I might be wrong, but if there wasn't a limitation in the enclosure interface, then the performance should match the internal SATA II bays on the MP.

P.S. Ref: solving USB3 interference to Bluetooth, my shielding didn't make much improvement to trackpad or Magic Mouse jitters, and an external BT dongle gave too many sleep re-pairing issues, so I'll replace BT antenna with an external one.