| SilverStone SST-EC03 USB 3.0 PCI-E Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Accessories | |
| Written by Marc Fructman | |
| Sunday, 27 November 2011 | |
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Closer Look: EC03 ExteriorThe EC03 arrived well protected and unharmed. The packaging itself is quite nice with full color on all sides.
You will also notice clearly the advertised 5Gbit/s USB 3.0 Super Speed transfer rate right on the box.
The mini CD includes a multi-language product manual. The manual is overly simple and could benefit from real pictures instead of simplified schematics. However, most people won't have any trouble with the installation. The mini-CD also includes a set of drivers. Newer drivers are already available and they can be downloaded from SilverStone. A 24” (609.6mm) internal connector cable with dual USB 3.0 ports is included in the packaging. The EC03 features an anodized black aluminum exterior. The surface is slightly resistant to the typical fingerprint. The aluminum is a bit thin and could bend very easily if mishandled.
The I/O bay has an additional 2 ports should you ever locate another EC03.
The EC03 ports are mounted in the bay with 1 screw and a single plastic pin. This gives the ports a little too much wiggle room.
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Comments
I may pick up the Silverstone 3.0 for my wife's computer for the price...or wait :)
"The EC03 card from SilverStone installs into a single lane PCI-E gen 2.0 slot..."
How many motherboards built before 2010 even have a "Gen2, 5.0Gbps" x1 PCIe slot? All (or nearly all) only have a Gen1 (2.5Gbps) x1 PCIe slot. Yes, the graphics x16 slot is Gen2 on a vast majority of motherboards, but not the x1 slots.
This also raises serious questions about an inability to use "hubs", "daisy-chaining" or other ways of expanding the number of ports when you run out.
Or... to paraphrase what Bill Gates once said about the PC: "640K should be enough for anybody"... or in this case, "two usb 3.0 ports should be enough for anybody"?
That seems to be a lot of the reason why these boards seem to only carry 2 onboard USB ports, as they are 3rd party solutions.
Intel's new 7X series chipsets do support USB 3.0.
A single PCI Express 2.0 ?lane? can provide 500MB/s in one direction (1000MB/s in both directions).
So, having a 4 port USB 3.0 solution that is plugged in to a single PCI-E slot, is not going to give you full bandwidth for each port. There's just not enough available bandwidth. That is why it might be better for engineers to spec a x4 PCI slot for 4 port USB 3.0
Dunno what AMD's excuse is. Intel said Light Peak, aka Thunderbolt, would obviate the need for it, but their latest X79 chipset doesn't have that, either.