What do these little doo-dads do?

[Curious Pineapple]

I've been looking for a USB3 card for my workstation as it's a bit old and found a bunch of these rather odd looking fellows. Do they just carry the PCI-e lanes out through the USB cable, or does the PCI-e standard have USB3 on the connector? Either way I'm tempted to get a couple along with the other end for testing hardware before reselling it on.

[Dredgy]

Is basically just a USB port you can use internally. Same basic thing as a USB card except the port is on the inside.

Some bay devices (card readers or USB hubs usually) require an internal USB port. Less common now that multiple internal USB3 headers are standard on most motherboards.

[FloRolf]

These are basically for mining. They take pcie 1x bandwidth into usb3 to a video card.

 

Probably no good for gaming setups or literally anything else. 

 

 

Full set looks like that:

[Curious Pineapple]

Just now, VegetableStu said:

that's not it. don't worry too much and look elsewhere

(if you must know, it's just part of a riser that sends PCIe signals over a physical USB3 A-to-A cable.)

That's what I thought, I'll still get a couple for testing PCI-e cards externally.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, Dredgy said:

Is basically just a USB port you can use internally. Same basic thing as a USB card except the port is on the inside.

Some bay devices (card readers or USB hubs usually) require an internal USB port. Less common now that multiple internal USB3 headers are standard on most motherboards.

Nope. Won't work for USB devices. It just uses the physical USB connector for transferring a PCIe signal.
At the other end will be another board with a full length x16 size slot for a graphics card.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119901&Description=USB PCIe riser cable&cm_re=USB_PCIe_riser_cable-_-12-119-901-_-Product

 

Just now, FloRolf said:

These are basically for mining. They take pcie 1x bandwidth into usb3 to a video card.

 

Probably no good for gaming setups or literally anything else. 

This ^
Very popular for mining when people wanted to have a dozen GPUs running off a single motherboard. They're used in motherboards like these...

[NineEyeRon]

My MoBo has a spare USB header, I have a thing that turns it into a USB port internally. I plug a wireless adapter into it that I don’t often disconnect. Saves a case USB for something else.