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Sweden
1 Level
716 Review
40 Karma

Review on Enhanced Performance 4 Port USB 3.0 PCIe Card with UASP Support and SATA / LP4 Power - PCI Express Adapter Card (PEXUSB3S44V) by Alex Rea

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Glitchy (but it's not clear if the card or the computer is to blame)

I have an old HP xw9400 workstation with no USB3 ports. I bought this card to stock up and also because it was recommended by a colleague who tried it on an HP DL380 server. But there seems to be an incompatibility between this card and the above workstation: I only have 3 out of 4 ports that answer. There were three free PCIe slots available, so I tried other slots with no improvement. Assuming the card was defective, I reported it to Revain and they sent me a second card, worse: only two out of four ports responded. I also inserted the original card and tried to connect a USB3 stick to each port: all 4 ports on both cards worked! He pulled out the second card: 3 of 4 workers retreated. Here I am now having sent the replacement back. The fact that all four ports were working in the same configuration suggests that the card may not be defective, but is certainly buggy. Be careful, especially if your car is old (but if your car is newer, you probably don't need this card anyway). Also, I agree with the general concern about port orientation: I understand that they wanted the card to install half-height boxes with a shorter bracket, and orienting the ports perpendicular to the long bracket dimension was the only way to achieve that, but as others have pointed out, the hole is wide enough to accommodate the USB connector, so any movement of the card in the hole makes it impossible to insert anything. The technique I used to avoid this problem was to insert the USB cable into the top connector (farthest from the PCIe slot) until the card was fully tightened: then screw it in (or snap it on, as in my case). Case) prevents slipping and you can easily connect to other ports.

Pros
  • Stable test results
Cons
  • Could have chosen a newer model