Review on 🔌 Syba 4-Port USB 3.0 & 2-Port SATA III PCIe 2.0 x1 Card with VLI/ASMedia Chipset - SD-PEX50064 by Branden Type

This review is for 2-port SATA (internal) and 2-port USB 3.0 (external) card. Good map but with a few caveats. First, it's a PCI-E 3.0 x4-sized card, so you need a x4-sized slot. The box says it's just x2 - we'll delve into the discrepancy a bit. The SATA controller uses only one lane (x1) even though the card size is x4. I'm assuming the USB controller (eTron) uses only one lane as well. That's why it says x2 on the packaging. It works in a PCI-E 2.0 (or lower) slot, but the speed will be reduced. When tested in a PCI-E 2.0 slot on a Dell T5500 with a Samsung 850 Pro SSD, read/write speeds were only around 400MB/s. This is because the SATA controller uses only one PCI-E (x1) lane. A PCI-E lane can run at around 500 MB/s with the PCI-E 2.0 version. If you use this for normal HDD it's ok, no HDD exceed 200MB/s except some new HGST 8TB/10TB. However. Now you can use this on an older system to get SATA 6Gb/s since your existing motherboard only has SATA 3Gb/s. But an older motherboard with a SATA 3Gb/s interface is probably only PCI-E 2.0 anyway, so this controller is NOT going to do you much good. It gets another 100MB/s from the SSD, but not its full potential. If you are using this card for expansion on a newer PCI-E 3.0 motherboard, it should run at top speeds. I haven't had a chance to test the USB port, but the eTron controllers I've used have been stable and fast. Good things: they support booting and it's an AHCI controller. Bad things: The idea of a SATA 6.0Gb/s controller only hitting top speeds on newer motherboards limits its usefulness for those looking to increase the number of their SATA connections, not for performance gains on older computers.