Review on 💻 StarTech.com 2-Port USB 3.1 Gen 1 and eSATA PCIe Card - High-Speed PCI Express Controller Card - 1x USB-A and 1x eSATA (PEXUSB311A1E) by Matt Pavelko

I installed it on a Dell Optiplex 990 with Win7 32-bit. Dell had an empty PCI-e 4x slot required for this peripheral. This Optiplex model features PCI-e V2.0 on the motherboard that can deliver 5GB of power per port. Lupe, confirmed this and so easily downloaded the Win7 installation package offered on the StarTech website. The CD has not been used at all. Note that the ASMEDIA driver downloaded from the StarTech website will not start SETUP without detecting hardware. You may be used to installing software drivers before installing the associated hardware, but that's not the case here. My model: PEXUSB312A2 So far so good, but today is my first day with it. This seems to have solved the problem I specifically bought it for: a sluggish USB 2.0 was a bottleneck on my Samsung FIT 128GB USB 3.1 device that I wanted to use as a disk cache location for my web browser. I now get excellent reading speed. Doesn't write that much, but apparently this is a Samsung issue. I can always upgrade to a faster all-in-one to get the most of my $35 card investment. I just went ahead and attached (additional) SATA power to the front because if it turned out to be necessary it would be too difficult to get under the table and do all of this. Beware of "bulky" USB devices that are physically scattered. . While the distance between the two ports looks pretty reasonable on this StarTech card, I couldn't install a Samsung FIT and a Corsair Voyager GTX (256GB) at the same time (Voyager is a small, fat device).