Review on Inateck PCI-E To USB 3.1 PCI Express Card Including Type A And Type C Ports USB 3.1 Gen 2 SuperSpeed 10Gbps With 15-Pin SATA Power Connector And Asmedia Chip For Windows 7/8/8.1/10/Linux Kernel by Ron Josey

Reviewed: USB 3.1 Gen 2 adapter.The actual hardware seems all right, although installing this on an older (Core i7 gen 2) system appeared to cause boot failures every other boot; the system would power on, then almost immediately back off. I think I've got this solved; I spent a while playing with various VRM and CPU voltage regulation options. (It's a "gaming" board.) The card's not powering anything--it's connected to a self-powered HDD dock and nothing else--but I suspect it was drawing a tad too much current very early in boot, and I think the "optimized" setting that the CPU voltage regulation defaults to is finicky. Or just plain bad.Other than that, I didn't have any problems until I contacted Inateck for post-sales support. First, they didn't have a product page for the USB 3.1. They also didn't have a support page--they do now--so I went to. let's call them "fourth-party sources" to get a recent driver for the ASMedia ASM1242 controller. I was able to find a slightly more recent firmware image for the card, too; nothing appears to have changed after applying it.The driver itself (hub: asmthub3.sys; controller: asmtxhci.sys) appears to be a tweaked / updated release of the driver I'd already been using for the ASM1042 USB 3.0 controllers shipped with the motherboard, so I updated all the ASMedia controllers in the system, and everything's running fine. (Win7SP1 x64 + rollups.)When I contacted Inateck's support to ask what driver I *should* be using, whomever I spoke to was very confused about what I wanted. After a couple of false starts, I convinced him that not having the manual or driver (or firmware) for the card on their site was a problem that should be fixed. Initially, he didn't actually read my email, and assumed I was reporting a problem with the card.When Inateck tossed a PDF of the manual and a copy of the driver on the site, the support rep asked if there was anything else I needed, I asked if they could possibly label the driver; the link was labeled "Drive" (not DRIVER) and went to a Zip archive entitled "Drive.zip". And, no, they didn't include documentation with the driver, such as a changelog, that gave away what driver revision it was.After a couple of exchanges back and forth in email, I finally got the support rep to understand that I was asking whether they had updated firmware. I failed to get him to understand that I was asking for an explanation of why the card had back-rev firmware and why they didn't provide an updated image. He also didn't understand my increasingly blunt attempts to explain that DRIVER and DRIVE are two different words, and which should be used. Last I looked, the driver version still isn't listed on the site, in the driver download's file name, or inside the driver archive. Maybe they'll fix it. Or not.Since I still don't have any form of vendor support for the card, I'm debating whether to return it. On the one hand, first impressions are important, and the card's worked fine for a week--two cards, in fact; in two systems. I'm hesitant to send back hardware that doesn't seem obviously defective. That's not something I can say about USB 3.0 cards I've had before now.On the other hand, I'll have to continue to rely on someone besides the blasted vendor to provide drivers and firmware for the card, if I keep it.I do wish ASMedia would start selling these adapters directly, so I don't have to deal with Inateck or another one of these fly-by-nite companies selling through Revain who probably employ at most one product engineer. who you'll never get to speak to.