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The PCIUSB3S4 4-Port PCI to USB 3.2 Gen 1 Card enables legacy PCI slots to support the SuperSpeed USB 3.2 Gen 1 standard, which is capable of data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps. Using USB 3.2 Gen 1 devices with this card will increase data transfer rates with up to 1.3 Gbps of available bandwidth (PCI bus limit) - more than doubling performance compared to a USB 2.0 connection. Note: Some newer PCs may use a PCIe to PCI bridge which can cause unexpected compatibility issues with this product. This versatile USB 3.2 Gen 1 adapter includes an optional SATA power connector which allows each USB port to deliver up to 900mA of power to connected USB 3.2 Gen 1 devices - suitable for even the most power hungry devices. A perfect solution for older PCI-based systems or computers with only PCI expansion slots remaining, the card allows those systems to stay relevant and up-to-date with the latest USB technology. The card is also backward compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.x devices, so it will not only work with any future USB 3.2 Gen 1 devices, but will also support older devices. The PCIUSB3S4 4-Port PCI USB 3.2 Gen 1 Card is backed by StarTech.com lifetime warranty and free lifetime technical support.
Set Contains:
USB 3.0 card
Ben
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2022
I bought to add USB 3.0 to my old Gateway LX6810-01 which I bought new in 2009 and still use as a primary machine. It is stock except for an upgraded Corsair 750W power supply and Sandisk 1 TB SSD. That leaves it with an available PCI slot, which this card fit. However, the case interfered ever so slightly with the USB ports (because they're vertical not horizontal as in the 2-port version of this card) but with some persistence, I was able to plug a USB cable into each port. Also, I received Error Code 31 in Device Manager which meant the drivers were loaded but due to the enabled Windows 10 Fast Startup, it took me some time and internet searching to find out I just needed to perform a restart to make it work. That did the trick. It otherwise works beautifully and I was able to take full advantage of the new 802.11ax standard with a just-released USB Wi-Fi 6 adapter and my ISP's Wi-Fi 6 gateway.
Theodore C.
Reviewed in Germany on June 24, 2022
Excellent product a little bit expensive for an old pc but it worths it, and it offers a lifetime warranty!
Ernest N. Wilcox Jr.
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2020
Installation is straight forward. All you need is an available PCI slot on your mainboard, and optionally an available SATA cable (and port) to connect to the adapter for more power if you find that you need it. I have an available SATA port, but I tested the card without the SATA connection, and all is working well for me so I did not bother connecting it. I have an external USB3 SSD drive, and now I can access it about as fast as I can my internal SSD drive. I am also using a USB3 WiFi adapter that supports 802.11ac, and now downloads get up to about 250 Mbps on my ATT Fiber 300 service. I could not be happier! I would recommend this adapter to anyone who does not have but wants USB3 support on their computer. The connection speed of USB3 over USB2 is an order of magnitude faster!
Guglielmo B.
Reviewed in Italy on January 4, 2020
Costa molto ma serve a rivitalizzare macchine che non hanno usb3 quindi un pò datate e per tale motivo dotate di solo connettore pci1. Ha una alimentazione supplementare sata per pilotare dischi esterni che assorbono molta corrente . Ha solo 2 uscite ma con un duplicatore di porte usb3 si rimedia facilmente al problema . Montato su workstation hpz600 non ha avuto nessun problema di driver con win10
ALex Soloviev
Reviewed in Canada on March 8, 2018
Great product. I bit too expensive though
linuxuser
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2017
I only give it one star because it didn't work with Linux. It seems like a nice card considering it's for the obsolete PCI bus, which is the reason I bought it. A PCI slot was the only slot I had available. I tried it on two Linux machines, one failed to recognize the card at all. The other box detected the card, but any USB device plugged in throws errors and disconnects to read-only. Thinking the card was bad I tried it in Windows. Windows 7 Ultimate did not work even after trying every driver/firmware I could find. The one bright spot was it seemed to work flawlessly with Windows 10. The copy operation was only 3/4 the speed of the native motherboard USB 3.0, when copying a large file from a thumb drive. Given that it's PCI and not a PCI-e, that seems pretty good.
Will
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2015
Have been looking for something like this for a long time, and StarTech.com came through like a champ! You are not going to see the same USB 3.0 speeds as a native board, or a PCIe version of the card, but I still transfer large files 2-3x faster than USB 2.0. I've been upgrading a slightly older Core2 Acer system, but I was limited on graphics cards, because the computer only had one PCIe slot, which was directly below the graphics PCIe16 slot. The only graphics cards I could buy if I wanted USB 3.0 had to be single slot cards, which are now hard to find in anything with real power. Then I found this card. Now I have comparable USB 3.0, and a high end graphics card running. The only thing that could make this better, is if there were an option for 2 rear ports, and an internal 19-pin hookup, for front ports. Nice job StarTech! Great card, and a great option for limited systems.
Miranda L.
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2015
I had a vintage 2005 desktop with legacy equipment, that had trouble supporting USB 2, and is off the network. Every day, syncing 2 GB of data to a USB stick took 15 minutes at the end of the working day. Now, with this card, I can use my USB 3 drive instead of the stick, and it only takes 50 seconds! The card has paid for itself in two days!!! Also, I love the extra power connection to a SATA power cable. My desktop has only 1 hard drive, but there are two hard drive bays and two SATA connections. Using one of them for the USB card really helps - my external drive exceeds power limits on a lot of computers (it came with a Y-cable, but it often has trouble with power even from two USB ports) - and with this extra power boost it works off of 1 USB without any problems!!! Another unexpected bonus: good power circuit protection. The first USB cable I tried on this card had a power short (what are the chances of that!?) - and I got a lot of system warnings "USB accessory is exceeding power limits. Please reset", constantly… I thought I had a bad driver, but then there was smoke coming out of the other end of the USB cable. The card survived that ordeal without any damage, it seems. Great, awesome product!!! Works perfectly with my Windows XP SP3 legacy computer from 2005.
Ali
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2015
I needed USB 3.0 functionality in my Dell Optiplex 780 SFF system and the only PCIe slot was occupied by the video card, so this one did the trick. Installed the included low profile bracket then installed the card in the system and ran the executable to install the USB 3.0 drivers under Windows 7 64 and I was up and running in less than 5 minutes. To test the card I attached an external USB 3.0 drive and copied about 500GB worth of files ranging from 10MB to 3GB without any issues. This card is easily 3 times as fast as the onboard USB 2.0 connection, at times peaking at 80MB/second transfer rates.A few things to remember, though: The PCI bus is limited to 133MB/second data transfer rate, which means that you will not get the maximum 5gbps (640MB/ps) of USB 3.0 speed. This is the reason almost all USB 3.0 add on cards use the PCIe interface. That being said, this should still provide a substantiation improvement over USB 2.0 if your system doesn't have any open PCIe slots.Overall good product that does the job, but the price seems a bit too high considering most PCIe USB 3.0 cards cost less than half.
plume
Reviewed in France on May 29, 2014
La carte n'est pas reconnue sur un des slots de mon Dell Optiplex 740.Après un "tchat" avec le support technique (très aimable et efficace), nous avons trouvé que le problème ne venait pas de cette carte, mais de l'ordinateur lui même. La carte fonctionne parfaitement sur un des slots PCI mais pas sur l'autre. Alors que d'autres cartes PCI fonctionnent sur le slot en cause.
Charlie-CJ
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2013
My Windows 7 64-bit gaming desktop PC has an external eSATA out socket, so I use that with an external Western Digital 3Tb Green drive and it read/writes files at the same speed as my internal SATA hard drives, i.e. very fast using the 3GB/s (SATA 3) interface. In comparison my 2Tb WD USB2 external hard drive operates up to 35 times slower when writing files, although read times from the USB2 drive are 'only' 5 times slower.As my PC only has USB2 ports and the single eSATA out is already in use, I decided to fit one of these StarTech USB3 PCI cards to use with my new external hard drive. I couldn't use the faster PCIe (PCI Express) card as my graphics card blocked the motherboard's only free PCIe slot. So I got this PCI card, which will fit any old style PCI slot (not the newer PCIe slots though). Typically the PCI slot runs at 133MB/s which is only twice the speed of USB2's 60 MB/s (480Mbits/s) - some variants of PCI (PCI-X) run faster but these PCI slots are few and far between. In comparison a PCI express (PCIe) x1 slot runs at 500MB/s (rev2.0), so a PCIe USB3 card like the is far preferable to this Startech PCI card if you have a free PCIe slot.In the box with the Startech PCI card is an alternative half height adapter, printed installation guide, and the driver CD. The PCI card requires additional power from a SATA power plug for beefing up the USB3 power feed, so a is worth buying. I attached the SATA power connector and fitted the card into the PCs spare PCI slot. Once the card was fitted and driver installed from the CD, the PC was rebooted, and my new 3Tb USB3 external Seagate drive was recognised straight away via the new USB3 port.In use, I have to say I was quite happy that the new USB3 interface was exactly 2.3x faster than USB2 for both reading and writing files onto the external drive. This is nothing like the theoretical 10x speed of USB3 over USB2, but given the limitations of the PCI slot I couldn't expect better. In fact when using our faster Belkin PCIe 1x slot USB3 cards on other PCs, the gain over USB2 is little different at only 2-3x for file writing (file reads are faster via PCIe though). Other than the card is a bit pricey, the only other minor disappointment is the PCI card only has two USB3 sockets rather than four (as I have many external hard drives) - but in fact doubling the USB3 ports from 2 to 4 on the card would simply drop the bandwidth per port by half, so I wouldn't gain anything. Adding this Startech twin USB3 port PCI card appears to present no problems with my Windows 7 PC, and overall this cards was a success as I got real speed gains with my external USB3 Seagate hard drive, so 5*.
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