If you’re still running an age-old dinosaur system like me (well, make that around six years old), then you’re probably feeling the pinch from not having quite enough USB 3.0 ports. Maybe you have none at all. I’m lucky that the motherboard I have has two first-generation NEC chipset based ports, but that’s slowly becoming a bottleneck now that I have more USB 3.0 devices than USB 2.0, and when I’m trying to make the most of USB 3.0 SSDs. As a result, installing a second USB 3.0 host controller where the bandwidth is not shared between controllers will make life a lot more bearable.
Such add-in boards are normally quite simple products, and can be had quite cheaply from eBay. They’re hardly sophisticated when practically all of them are based around one-chip style solutions, often with manufacturers providing reference designs which can be copied to bring a product to the market quite rapidly.
A quick peruse on eBay shows a multitude of boards available – two ports, four ports, five ports, from a variety of chipsets, such as VLI, Asmedia, Renesas/NEC, (or less common Etron Technology and Fresco Logic). None of the boards so much as bother with a brand name or any packaging, but that shouldn’t really matter.
Ultimately, I decided to opt for a Renesas/NEC based four-port controller, as I have known it for having some of the best compatibility when it comes to peripherals from the USB 2.0 days and it seems that this trait has definitely carried over to USB 3.0 as well. Having more ports makes much better use of the I/O slot itself and reduces the chance I would need a hub in the future. I was quite happy that the whole thing cost me just AU$10.35 shipped.
The Product
As expected, the product does not have any real branding or retail packaging to speak of. It came wrapped in an anti-static bag, as a full-profile card (as expected from 4-port cards) with the driver CD wrapped in with the card (which seems quite wrong as the cellophane the CD is wrapped in might generate static). The external writing and label suggest this product has a code of TB01200. A search for that seems to show Shenzhen YK-S Technology‘s store has this product, also sold via Newegg.
The card itself is branded STAR-UPCIE201-V1.0, but has nothing to do with Startech as far as I can tell. The board seems to have nice solid capacitors for each of the ports, and also has the specified Renesas uPD720201 chipset. It seems to have two switching converters on the board, likely one to provide the 5v necessary for the ports and another to provide a lower voltage possibly for the ICs.
Rather concerningly, many of the footprints are left unoccupied and others almost deliberately mis-populated. For one, F1 through F5 appear to be positions for polyfuse protection to protect against USB port overcurrent events by essentially acting as a self-resetting fuse. Instead of populating polyfuses, they “shorted” it over using 0 ohm resistors. Another line of defense, this time against EMI noise, is the ferrite beads which should be mounted on the power lines near the ports – FB12 through FB15 which appear to be substituted for just regular o ohm resistors again. Contrast with FB11 where a real ferrite bead was installed, possibly because it was necessary.
U3 through U6 DIP packages may have been current sense amplifiers for each of the ports, all of which are unoccupied. Without overcurrent protection or current sensing, it seems each of the current sensing lines may be fed dummy signals from a voltage divider arrangement possibly (e.g. R14, R18).
Another interesting change is that D7 and D12 near the switching converters which appear to be reverse polarity protection diodes have also been swapped out with 0 ohm resistors.
I couldn’t find any information about the IC labelled U14 – AAW3ZC. I presumed it was a switching converter, but the inductor looks too small to work with the expected 4 ports x 0.9A = 3.6A current. D5 and D6 are too far away and too small for that current (SS14 are rated at 1A), and it seems D5 is dedicated to the bottom switching converter. How would such a converter work without a freewheeling diode? I hence suspect that this is not a switching converter but merely some inductor filtering of the incoming power supply 5V power from the molex to be supplied directly to the ports.
More skimping can be seen near the PCI-E port where L1, L2, L4 are not populated and are shorted through on the PCB itself. These appear to be places for interference suppressing inductors for the PCI-E differential pairs, but they were never fitted.
The rear of the card has no components at all, just a generic QC Passed label.
You get a full height backplate, and nicely cut-out holes for the four connectors you were promised.
The card accepts a molex plug for power, with the bevelled edges facing the board.
It also comes with a generic driver CD wrapped in cellophane. The CD has the recordable logo on the top, but is a pressed disc. How absurd.
Installing the Unit
Despite the fact the components installed seem to suggest this card is a bit of a skimpy nightmare, provided no faulty USB devices are plugged in, it should still work. As a result, I decided to go ahead and install it and try it out.
The first problem was the wretched CD, which was so poorly pressed that the installer could not be read by two different drives. The CD also contained drivers for other USB 3.0 based products.
As a result, I resorted to the norm of downloading Renesas drivers from station-drivers. Specifically, I installed Version 3.0.23.0 driver first to gain access to the card, and then upgraded the firmware to Version 2.0.2.6.
Originally, the card had firmware version 2.0.2.0 installed. Upgrading was successful.
It was also determined that the card’s coexistence with an older NEC uPD720200 was not a problem, which was good.
NEC uPD720200
NEC uPD720201
The performance of the newer chipset was slightly better than the older one under Windows 7 with the Seatay external enclosure and a “dirtied” SSD.
Conclusion
While peripheral add-on boards are generally very simple devices and low cost is quite normal, it seems that this low cost board cuts corners by using component substitution methods to eliminate what they deem non-essential functionality to reduce costs.
As a result, it seems that proper individual port overcurrent protection does not exist on this card – in the best scenario, the 5v is provided by a switching converter and overloading one port causes the converter to shut down due to overcurrent resulting in 4x more current to flow and all ports to lose power.
In the worst case, it could just be connected through to the 5V molex connection, meaning a possible transient 48A of current flow (provided the power supply can supply it, and provided the supply is ATX compliant with 240W short circuit power delivery). I really don’t want to find out – it could even get dangerous.
The loss of the ferrite beads on the port power filtering is probably also not optimal for RF suppression reasons, as now USB cables can radiate digital hash noise from the power rails inside the case. The loss of reverse polarity diodes won’t normally cause any issues, except for when someone forcibly plugs in the molex connector backwards and possibly fries all their connected USB devices and or motherboard.
Of course, most users will just plug it in, find it works properly with proper peripherals and claim the card is just fine. Which it is. Until something goes wrong, and causes damage which it otherwise shouldn’t. Just another case of being dangerously cheap.
I have seen cheated fuses a number of times, but I do not recall seeing cheated diodes before. Little resistors and diodes both are often black, so easy to miss. Thank you for pointing that out. I wonder if it would have been cheaper and easier for the producer to eliminate parts, just connect the traces, than to use resistors of zero resistance.
Example USB add-in controller card with per-port current limiters are SGI card 9210286 and IOGear GIC250U.
Wouldn’t the fuses (F1-F5) help in case of a short circuit?
They would if they *were* fuses. They were substituted with zero-ohm resistors. Fuses (polyfuses normally) would have different markings indicating manufacturer/current level and are often greenish or yellow through-hole discs. That being said, an intense overcurrent could still potentially burn zero-ohm resistors, but then they would fail permanently and not consistently.
– Gough
The type of polyfuse this PCB was meant for is the same used on most PC grade components that have them, surface mount:
http://www.mouser.com/new/littelfuse/littelfuselorho/
Only here because I was looking up this card for some details..
A very, very little searching identified U14: An SY8133 synchronous (this is important) buck regulator. Being synchronous, it does not need a diode – it has an internal MOSFET on the low side.
Oh, and U3-6? They’re not DIP. Note the lack of holes..
Old dillema: expensive products, done properly, that last 30 years, in working order, but get technically outdated (beautiful SGIs, SUNs, Acorns, DNA samplers, MRI machines, etc) or dumbed down, cheapo, unrepairable crap, but replaceable and affordable ?
I think this is valid for any tech breakthrough that slowly creeps towards mass production and mass adoption. I already saw Flir cameras for 500 bucks ( 96 x 64 pixels, but still.. OMG, Flir ! ), fast 120 or 240 fps cameras, hobby Geiger counters, EPROM programmers, and so on..
Could you give some tips on a cheap, but safe USB 3.0 PCIE?
Sergio, the author of this article uses the term “dangerous” very loosely. It is safe enough for what it is, with the exception that if it failed while you were copying important documents to a singular USB backup device, it could become corrupted. In other words don’t rely on a single USB backup device for important documents.
As for the omission of fuses, it would be better to have them but 0 ohm surface mount fuses are sometimes considered a viable cheap substitute because they are known to fail at a certain current which can be qualified through testing, though they blow a lot slower. The real question to me is how often do you have your USB devices shorting out so this would be an issue? If anything I’m finding more and more USB3 devices that want to draw as much current as they can get.
However a manufacturer can skimp too much on components or quality control and you end up with a card that’s unstable, will appear and disappear from the OS which can be a real PITA. I had that happen with a similarly cheap generic $10 card and finally gave up on it and bought a Vantec UGT-PC345 instead.
The UGT-PC345 is not great either, lacks the solid capacitors and the filter inductors, does not have current sensing either, nor most of the protection diodes, but it does have per-port polyfuses and more important to me, it has worked fine for the last couple years that I’ve heavily used it, including that it has an internal pin header for 2 USB3 ports which allowed me to buy a bay adapter for case front USB3 ports instead of having to buy a new computer case.
The cost for that model new is now approx $25 on eBay and elsewhere, though I picked up mine lightly used along with a 2 port front bay adapter for $13 delivered. Just keep an eye on eBay deals as there are better cards out there, IIRC both Asus and Gigabyte make some that have a higher component count, but of course at an even higher price.
I see a lot of concern over how much power USB devices are needing in lot of the comments. I have Pent 4, Win7pro, 500gb hd, 4gb Ram, 3.5 mhz Intel processor. It has been running great with no problems but I bought the same exact model PCI card (Generic 4-port USB 3.0 to PCI-E Adapter (STAR-UPCIE201-V1.0, TB01200) as reviewed in this article. When I powered “ON” my PC it made a very slight sound like a speaker popping with static, and the system Power Supply was burned out. I figured it was due to my Power Supply being old. I happened to have an exact duplicate Power Supply in storage so I installed it. Booted up “without the PCI card”. Everything OK. Powered off and installed the PCI express card once again. Powered on and it ran for maybe 10 minutes and suddenly a POP and smell of electrical wiring short, and once again Power Supply was burned out. I have been waiting now on a new power supply to come. In mean time I thought since the PCI express card had “STAR” as part of the name that it might be a STAR TECH brand device as they sell some very similar to that unit appearance. I contacted their support department and they wrote back that they indeed have had issues with their PCI express card (similar to the one in this article but not exact model number) causing Power Supply burn outs. So I guess I will be looking for an alternative way of adding USB 3.0 ports to my machine. Not gong to try any PCI express slots anymore. On my new power supply I am upgrading from 450 watts to 750 watts as perhaps my system needs more. No gaming or BitCoin mining — just internet use, emails, photos etc. Hope this might help some other make a decision on what they try.
You merely received a bad card. It is not a reason to avoid all PCIe USB3 cards, but I would be leery of that brand. You do not need more than a quality (major brand) 450W PSU, but if you want to go overkill then at least do it with a major brand.
A decent PSU, if shorted out by a card, should have just shut off and needed unplugged from AC (or the switch on the back toggled off) for a moment to reset itself.