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Yemen, SanaΓ‘
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Review on πŸš€ RocketU 1144E - High Point's Versatile USB 3.0 HB Controller for Reliable 5Gb/s Connectivity by Steven Doty

Revainrating 5 out of 5

A simple upgrade for an older MacPro Tower. Watch out for Bluetooth interference if you're also using a hub.

This was a simple install and update for my old MacPro tower. I received the card and installed it in about 1 hour including 50 minutes to thoroughly vacuum the dust balls out of my MacPro. The machine booted and recognized the card in OS X/Yosemite using the Apple-supplied driver. I'll update this review after upgrading to El Capitan, but I chose this card based on the fact that OS X 10.11.x isn't an issue. I bought a card with this hub: Anker USB 3.0 7-Port Portable Aluminum. Hub with 5V 4A power adapter and 3.3ft USB 3.0 cable [VIA VL812 chipset] so I don't have to spend a lot of time on my hands and knees connecting USB 3.0 devices. Little did I know when I did this that the USB 3.0 signal interfered with Bluetooth. More on that later. *Performance* I tested the card through a hub by connecting a hard drive and running the Black Magic Speed test on two drives. The first test used a Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 drive with a "rotating grate". The drive was about 3.3 times faster in USB 3.0 than in USB 2.0. However, the speed was not impressive. It ran at write speeds: 51MB/s, reads: 60MB/s. For reference, a Seagate Native 7200 RPM Spinning Rust Drive runs about twice as hard as it does in this MacPro. Then I plugged in a SanDisk USB 3.0 flash drive. Write speed was about the same - 51MB/s. Read speed more than doubled to 132MB/s.* Issues *After running tests, my Magic Mouse was very erratic. My Magic Trackpad was better, but a bit choppy. I've read that USB 3.0 interferes with Bluetooth, this card was considered free of this issue. My first experience is that the card is glitch free, but you may have problems with your hub. I unplugged my hub and removed the power supply and that cleared both the mouse and trackpad. I will do some more testing and then change this rating.

Pros
  • Quality construction
Cons
  • Something's wrong