Strange speed behavior on USB card reader / add in card

19_blackie_73 · August 21, 2023

Hi everyone,

I'm a bit at a loss right now with my new setup for ingesting phots and videos:

Quick backstory: I made the switch from XQD cards to CF Express Typ B, therefore I needed a new card reader. I got the SanDisk Extreme Pro Card Reader with a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection (https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/sandisk/product/memory-card-readers/extreme-pro-cfexpress-card-reader/data-sheet-extreme-pro-cfexpress-card-reader.pdf). To get as much out of it as I can for reasonable money and as my PC does not have a USB C Port (even though the cable is interchangeable), I ordered also a USB add in card with USB 3.2 Gen 2 (aka 10GBit/s; https://www.delock.de/produkt/89001/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en).

The problem:

with the delivered cable, I get roughly the 10GBit/s connection, both on my laptop thunderbolt port and the add in card in my desktop
with a new Silverstone 10GBit/s rated USB C cable, I get the 10 Gbit/s on my laptop, but only around 400 MBit/s or 50MB/s transfer speed on the add in card in my desktop (same port)
with a Anker 1.5 m USB C to A, unrated cable, I get 5GBit/s on my laptop which has only 5Gbit Type A ports, on my desktop on some ports I get the 5 GBit/s (e.g. the front USB ports), but on many others on the back including the new add in card (most of the time) only the ~400 MBit/s connection.

I'm running Win10 rn, latest updates, installed the driver for the card as well.

So as far as I'm concerned, the issue isn't in the cables but cable related depending on the ports, but I'm at a bit of a loss right now what to do. The card is clearly capable of delivering the 10GBit/s. Anyone had such an issue before and / or has a solution for this mess?

Thanks in advance!

kokosnh · August 21, 2023

Had something like this with USB C 20Gbps PCIe add in card, 2m USC C-C 20Gbps cable, and 20Gbps NVMe enclosure.

had to buy a USB 4 40GBps 2M cable for it to work properly with 20Gbps speeds.

so the thing is, to be safe buy one speed higher for logger cables.

and I also had something similar with 10Gbps 2m cable, and 10Gbps USB HUB. it worked full speed reliable, only in 1 of 4 possible ways ( as in inserting USB C, you can insert each end it in 2 ways )