ASUS U3S6 USB3.0 SATA 6.0Gb/s PCIe 4x Expansion Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
852 words · ~4 min read
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so today I'll be having a quick look at a product from ASUS this is the u3 S6
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and u3 S6 stands for none other than
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usb3 SATA 6 so this is a PCI Express 4X
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with bridge card and basically they're saying it is the only right choice now
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ASUS has talked quite a bit about how their implementation of usb3.0 and SATA
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6 gbit pers second is better than what anyone else on the market has so they've
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worked the same technology into their
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addin card as they have into their motherboards that feature those Fe well
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feature have those features by default
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so first thing reason number one only with the plx bridge can they get full
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speed yeah for your your USB at 3.0 and
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SATA 6 so you fully unleash the True Performance okay and reason number two
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is only with PCI e4x will you have enough bandwidth okay so what they're
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saying is that they're using a plx chip and and they're also using a PCIe forx
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interface which is what they're saying no one else on the market is doing so
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here on the back they've got some graphs that have little Starbursts about
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exclaiming stuff so USB 3.0 performance test they're saying it's 34% better than
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a card using a 1x PCI Express slot and
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then over here they're saying that for SATA 6 gbit per second it's actually 50%
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faster than a card that uses a 1x slot
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now over here we've got the general specs and so it's got okay you've got
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two internal connectors and those are the SATA 6 gbit pers second ports then
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you have two external connectors those are the usb3 ports now you should note
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that both of these are backwards compatible with SATA 2 and SATA 1 and
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with USB 2 and USB 1 respectively very
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cool the interfac is PCI E4 as they've talked about quite a bit on the
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packaging the configuration supported is ahci mode all right and then for
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compatible models you've got a list here of compatible ASUS motherboard models so
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you might want to check that out before you go and buy one of these and other
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than that I guess there's not really too much to show on the box so why don't we
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have a look at the card
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itself okay there's not a whole lot includ oh okay there's more included
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than I thought so the first thing we find is a couple of right angle SATA
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connector or SATA cables so I'm going to go ahead and assume that those are SATA
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6 gabit per second ready mind you there's no actual difference as far as I
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know you'd have to have a pretty shoddy SATA cable for it to not work with the
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new standard uh next inside we find the
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users's guide show that to the camera okay and also included inside you have a
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driver CD so don't use that download the latest drivers off the ASUS website and
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in here there's a couple couple different things they've got the same
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summary that they had on the back of the box and thank you for buying and that's
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pretty much it I mean I guess there's not a whole lot to it you install the
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card you install the driver and then you plug stuff into it seems straightforward
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enough well why don't we have a look at the card itself uses a black PCB which I always
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like to see I mean the last thing you want to have is like a high performance
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schmexy looking motherboard and then you have to throw like some ancient forest
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green uh PCI card in it okay let me just make sure that my zoom is actually
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working there okay so it's a pretty busy looking piece CB they've actually got a
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lot of capacitors they've got their plx chip right here in the middle of it
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that's probably a lot of the cost of this particular unit and as well as all
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of the components that they're building on you know I can't actually figure out
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why this is such a busy PCB you can see they're using the same NEC USB 3.0
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chipset that almost everyone out there is using right now and then for the SATA
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6 chipset they're using a Marvel chipset so here are your SATA 6 GB per second
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connectors okay so one at the back one on the top and then on the back of the
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card you've got your two USB 3.0 connectors and at the bottom you've got
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the PCI Express 4X connection I guess there's not really much more to say
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about it than that so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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US u3 S6