Has anyone purchased a PCIe USB expansion card?

[dizmo]

I'm looking to buy one of these, and I was wondering if anyone has purchased one and has good things to say?
Or bad.

There's a lot of 'no name' ones out there.

[CommanderAlex]

Second this as I've always wondered about this, considering I might look into one going into the future. 

[Vishera]

For mining they are fine,but for gaming it will bottleneck you.

There is high demand for them from miners.

 

Oh well,I got confused.

[TheSLSAMG]

I have one of these and I have no complaints. I don't use it a ton but when I need it, it works great. I've used it for my Oculus Rift and sensors as well as for USB 3.0 external drive file transfers on my old X58 system and my AMD A78 system. They also make a version with an internal USB header instead of the extra 2 USB ports. The only thing I'm not in love with is it using SATA for power, but it works fine.

 

EDIT: Not sure if this is what you meant. If you don't mean this, disregard.

[Mr.Meerkat]

If it's like "no name" PCI/PCIe Wifi cards then something like 80% of them just uses a branded mini PCIe/M.2 card but slaps a generic adapter+cover and calls it day. Of course, this may not be the case for USB. 

[wONKEyeYEs]

10 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I'm looking to buy one of these, and I was wondering if anyone has purchased one and has good things to say?
Or bad.

There's a lot of 'no name' ones out there.

I have a gigabyte board with bad usb so I got one of these.

Picked it because it has an internal usb port for the front i/o.

 

SupaHub PCI-E to USB 3.0 5-Port PCI Express Expansion Card

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07Q1HXN42/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Vishera]

Now i realized...Are you talking about a card with lots of USB slots connected to the PC with PCI-E?,or are you talking about a USB to PCI-E adapter?

[YoungBlade]

I've been using this one for three months now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z34BJYH

 

It works great for everything from USB mics to webcams to drives to phone charging - I notice no difference compared to the on-board USB 3.0 ports. It was basically plug-and-play for Windows 10. The black PCB matches my motherboard. Overall, I've been very happy with it.

[BondiBlue]

It's no longer available to purchase, but I have one of these cheap cards. I've had it for several years now, and it works perfectly fine despite the cheapness.

[LogicalDrm]

If you mean addon cards for getting more USB ports, USB-C or such, I would say they are all same. These are not things where competition would make some difference in quality or features. If you can find one made/marketed by known brand, good. But most likely you are picking by features vs price.

 

I have Firewire addon card. It had some driver issues while on Win7, but that was also because it wasn't installed all the time.

[dizmo]

16 hours ago, TheSLSAMG said:

I have one of these and I have no complaints. I don't use it a ton but when I need it, it works great. I've used it for my Oculus Rift and sensors as well as for USB 3.0 external drive file transfers on my old X58 system and my AMD A78 system. They also make a version with an internal USB header instead of the extra 2 USB ports. The only thing I'm not in love with is it using SATA for power, but it works fine.

 

EDIT: Not sure if this is what you meant. If you don't mean this, disregard.

Yup that's what I meant. What are the internal USB ports for? I've always wondered.

Yeah, they all seem to have that. Some even have SATA for data...which I found odd. It just uses the PCI slot as a holding point.

16 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

If it's like "no name" PCI/PCIe Wifi cards then something like 80% of them just uses a branded mini PCIe/M.2 card but slaps a generic adapter+cover and calls it day. Of course, this may not be the case for USB. 

You know, I was thinking the same thing until I saw some that didn't even use PCIe (despite being labelled as such) and actually use SATA for data transfer. Not that it'd likely matter for what I'm plugging into it, but still. Some also don't have power needed, which I found odd. You're right about the WiFi though, there's loads of Chinese companies putting out adapters almost identical to those from the major brands and it's just Intel's chip on a PCB under a heat shield. I'd love to see a shootout between them.

16 hours ago, Vishera said:

Now i realized...Are you talking about a card with lots of USB slots connected to the PC with PCI-E?,or are you talking about a USB to PCI-E adapter?

A card that adds USB ports to the PC, preferably PCIe based not a hub. The motherboard only has 4 and it's not nearly enough.

16 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

I've been using this one for three months now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z34BJYH

 

It works great for everything from USB mics to webcams to drives to phone charging - I notice no difference compared to the on-board USB 3.0 ports. It was basically plug-and-play for Windows 10. The black PCB matches my motherboard. Overall, I've been very happy with it.

That was actually one I was looking at, being in Canada there aren't too many (decent) options. Currently ordering a load of stuff from eBay through the US, and managed to snag one of these for $10. Good to know, thanks!

15 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

It's no longer available to purchase, but I have one of these cheap cards. I've had it for several years now, and it works perfectly fine despite the cheapness.

Good to know! Looks like it might be one of those "they'll all basically work" scenarios.

19 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

If you mean addon cards for getting more USB ports, USB-C or such, I would say they are all same. These are not things where competition would make some difference in quality or features. If you can find one made/marketed by known brand, good. But most likely you are picking by features vs price.

 

I have Firewire addon card. It had some driver issues while on Win7, but that was also because it wasn't installed all the time.

Yeah, drivers are something that I'd been worried about. I've seen reviews on some saying they have very poor support and as a result, the transfer rates are abysmal. Not that it would reeeeally matter, as it'd be printers and mice likely plugged into it, but still. I'm surprised Asus and similar companies haven't even bothered putting something like this out, aside from a couple of cards that only have 2 ports.

[da na]

Ive been using this one for around 2 years and it's great

https://www.amazon.com/FebSmart-Self-Powered-Technology-No-Additional-FS-U4-Pro/dp/B072LS4JH7/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=febsmart+usb&qid=1623522186&sr=8-3

The drivers provided are good, just make sure your drive can read mini CDs

[dizmo]

7 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Ive been using this one for around 2 years and it's great

https://www.amazon.com/FebSmart-Self-Powered-Technology-No-Additional-FS-U4-Pro/dp/B072LS4JH7/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=febsmart+usb&qid=1623522186&sr=8-3

The drivers provided are good, just make sure your drive can read mini CDs

How were the speeds? That was one of the ones that had the complaints about it.

[BondiBlue]

24 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Good to know! Looks like it might be one of those "they'll all basically work" scenarios.

So far that's definitely been my experience. The card I bought was pretty much the cheapest one that offered 5 ports at the time I purchased it, and I've used it a lot. A couple years ago it handled connecting several different USB 3 hard drives for my file server, and it didn't have any issues. 

[da na]

20 minutes ago, dizmo said:

How were the speeds? That was one of the ones that had the complaints about it.

It is fine, it's faster than the 3.0 ports on my workstation's MOBO, can't really speak for the speeds since I use it for an external HDD but I get around 145mb/sec with it and around 120mb/sec with the built in.

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 hours ago, dizmo said:

You know, I was thinking the same thing until I saw some that didn't even use PCIe (despite being labelled as such) and actually use SATA for data transfer. Not that it'd likely matter for what I'm plugging into it, but still. Some also don't have power needed, which I found odd. You're right about the WiFi though, there's loads of Chinese companies putting out adapters almost identical to those from the major brands and it's just Intel's chip on a PCB under a heat shield. I'd love to see a shootout between them.

Now that's quite funky....SATA USB add on cards...

 

As for generic chinesum versus major brands, at least compared to integrated solutions on mITX mobos (one MSI, one Gigabyte), if saturating a 110/10Mbps connection, they can all do it as long as you're using some non-shitty antennas. However, the card in the Gigabyte mobo (not sure what it is exactly) is the only one that can get 110/10 with shitty antennas (i.e. antennas provided with generic card+MSI mobo) whilst the other two struggles to even get 30/10Mbps on Wifi. Mind you, there is a solid 10m horizontal distance, 4 walls and a floor between the computers and router. 

[rockyroller]

I bought one of these Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card - Interface USB 3.0 4-Port Express Card Desktop with 15 pin SATA Power Connector, [ Include with A 4pin to 2x15pin Cable + A 15pin to 2x 15pin SATA Y-Cable ]: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories in 2018.

 

No complaints.

 

and going back even further I bought a USB card for an PC that predated USB, but I'm not about to dig the PC out of storage to tell you what it was

[whm1974]

13 hours ago, rockyroller said:

and going back even further I bought a USB card for an PC that predated USB, but I'm not about to dig the PC out of storage to tell you what it was

That is what, 1997 at the latest? When did you quite using it?