Review on IO Crest Controller Non Raid SI PEX40064 by Bill Roberts

After reading this card's specs and speaking to SYBA Tech Support, here's what I understand.1. Although the SATA ports on the card support SATA III (6 Gb/s or 750 MB/s, where Gb = gigabit and MB = megabyte and 1 Gb = 125 MB), the maximum speed of this card is limited to 1 PCIe slot Lane limited, it depends on the PCI Express version on your motherboard.2. PCI Express 2.0 supports a maximum speed of 4 Gb/s (=500 MB/s) per lane. Thus, the maximum speed of this card is 500 MB/s. It is faster than SATA II (375MB/s) but slower than SATA III (750MB/s).3. PCI Express 1.1 supports a maximum speed of 2 Gb/s (=250 MB/s) per lane. Thus, the maximum speed of this card is 250 MB/s. This is slower than SATA II.4. 4 ports on this board share the same PCIe x1 lane. So if all 4 ports are used, the maximum speed for each port is 1/4 of the maximum speed specified in (2) or (3). I was able to confirm this conclusion by performing the following experiment. I'm using a 512GB Transcend SSD370 with a quoted max read/write speed of 560/460MB/s. To test the speed of this SSD I connect the SSD to an ASUS P8Z77V-LX motherboard which is II and SATA III. SATA III ports have a maximum read/write speed of 504/457 MB/s measured with CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1. SATA-II ports have a maximum read/write speed of 275/262 MB/ss I have now connected the SSD to the PEX-40064 and inserted it into a PCIe x1 slot, which is PCI Express 2.0 compliant. The maximum read/write speed is 385/286 MB/s. So the PEX-40064 is capable of speeds faster than SATA II, but a far cry from SATA III (read on if you have PCI Express 1.1). I ran the same tests. The older motherboard is the Gigabyte P35-DS4, which only has SATA II ports and supports PCIe Express 1.1. The maximum read/write speed for SATA II ports is 260/254MB/s, the same as SATA II ports. new ASUS board. I then connected the SSD to the PEX-40064 and plugged it into the PCIe x1 slot of the older P35-DS4 board: The maximum read/write speed is 202/168 MB/s. In fact, PCI Express 1.1 is slower than PCI Express 2.0 slots and SATA II ports. Conclusion: What are we leaving? - If you have motherboard with SATA II connectors (but no SATA III connectors) and PCI Express 2.0 slots, you can use PEX-40064 card to get higher speed (if your SSD can reach it) , but you won't be able to match SATA III speeds (even if an SSD can match them). - If you have motherboard with SATA-II connectors but no SATA-III connectors and PCI Express 1.1 slots, then you'd better use SATA-II connectors than PEX-40064 card. - If you are using old magnetic spinning hard disk drives (HDDs), this discussion is not relevant. Most of my hard drives rarely achieve sustained read/write speeds over 100MB/s. In my experience, the PEX-40064 card tends to freeze in the PCIe 1x slot when transferring large amounts of data (more than 10GB). But when I insert a PEX-40064 card into a PCEe x16 slot, I rarely experience a freeze. I don't know how to explain this as the card only uses 1 data line no matter how many data lines are available in the PCIe slot. I asked tech support about it but got no explanation. I hope all of this is helpful. FOLLOW-UP THOUGHTS: To get faster speeds than SATA II for motherboards with PCI Express 1.1 slots, I would do the following. Switch from the PEX-40064 card (which uses 1 PCIe lane) to the PEX-40054 card (which uses 2 PCIe lanes). It turns out it works! The Transcend SSD370 connected to the PEX-40054 motherboard and supporting PCI Express 1.1 has the following maximum read/write speeds: 373/285 MB/s. This is almost the same as the PEX-40064 card with PCI Express 2.0. The only downside is that the PEX-40054 works in a PCIe x4, x8, or x16 slot, but not in a PCIe x1 slot. SECOND NOTE: On a PCI Express 2.0 motherboard, you can achieve speeds close to SATA III. Slots with more than two data lanes (e.g. x4, x8 or x16) with a PEX-40054 card instead of a PEX-40064 card. For Transcend SSD370, the maximum read/write speed is 479/458 MB/s, which is very close to the speed of the SATA III port on the new ASUS board.