Green House delivers USB 3.0-friendly PCI Express interface card
By Darren Murph 
posted February 9th 2010 10:45AM
posted February 9th 2010 10:45AM
Like it or not (and honestly, why would you not?), USB 3.0 is upon us, and we're guessing it's just a matter of time before every single USB peripheral in the entire world is equipped with SuperSpeed support. Exaggerations aside, there's still a good chance that you'll snap up an item or two over the course of your life that could benefit from hastier transfer rates, and that's where Green House comes in. The Japanese-based outfit has just revealed a USB 3.0-compatible PCI Express interface card, enabling mildly ancient desktops to gain USB 3.0 support by simply slapping a card into a free PCIe slot. The company claims that you'll see maximum data transfer rates of 5Gbps, but you'll have to wait a few more months to snag it for ¥3,780 ($42).
quite amazing!
@dedparrot I'm still waiting for my USB 3.0 desktop rocket launcher & mug warmer...
yak yak yak pretty soon this will be in every netbook and flashdrive.
Everybody was like ooh I have to get one of these controller cards when USB came out, then again with USB2.
I'm just going to wait until I don't have to go out of my way to get a motherboard with it built in. By then a few reasonably priced accessories might actually be taking advantage of the accessories.
by USB 3.0 Friendly does that mean that it runs at 3.0 speeds, or does it just accept 3.0 accessories?
@Mentat
I don't really know the true (hypothetical) speeds of 3.0.
@Mentat It's fully USB 3.0 compatible, meaning it runs at USB 3.0 speeds.
It states it have maximum transfer rates of 5Gbps so yeah that would definitely support USB 3.0
What's with the power connector? PCI-e x1 cards have a startup max of 10W and once running can consume up to 25W. Two ports of USB 3.0 would max out at 9W (2 ports x 5V x 900mA each) and there's no way that the card itself draws 16W...
@Jason Litka IIRC they've increased the amount of power devices can draw from USB in the USB 3.0 spec, so additional power might be needed for things like harddrives and optical drives. So hopefully we won't need either extrernal powwer supplies or two plug cables as frequently as we have with USB 2.0...
@OddManOut
Yeah, USB 2.0 was max 500mA. USB 3.0 is 900mA. That still means that there is a max of 1.8A @ 5V unless they've decided to violate the spec and allow devices to draw more than they should.
@Jason Litka
Maybe the controller draws too much power? (he says while talking out of his ass)
@Jason Litka
beat me to it, but still nobody has touched the obvious bandwith issues that pcie-1x has.
@vlad the inhaler
500MB/s should cut it.
there are already usb3 pci-e cards out, the Asus U3S6 is already out and also has 2 Sata 6gbps ports on it: http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/4296521/art/asus/usb-3-0-sata-pci-express.html?srcid=867
The asus U3S6 is £24+
@hajj3
Yeah, seriously. And I believe it supports SATA 6Gb also and costs $29.99 on that eggy site.
The Asus U3S6 is PCI-E 4x btw.
The U3S6 has limited mobo compatibility, no? I looked into it for my P6T SE and seemed to find that it would not work.
USB 3.0 is backward compatible all USB ports accept 3.0 but will run at the slower data rate. This card supports true USB 3.0 data rates over the PCI express system bus.
What I would need is a compatible hub for this. The back of my computer is not the most accessible place. So if I could run the wires to the top of my desk I would be golden.
@cbstryker I'm not aware of any USB 3.0 hubs yet. You could of course just get a USB extender cable and something like the Oxo Good Grips Cord Catch to keep the female end on your desk... It does look like once 3.0 hubs are available, you should be able to mix and match USB 2.0 and 3.0 devices without worry, since they're supposed to have dual hubs inside so they should operate at USB 3.0 speeds regardless. Seems like there could be some "head of line blocking" going on when USB 2.0 devices are actually communicating over that cable though...
That would be great to upgrade my aging PC
I may not understand this correctly, but I think that many people will find that they're limited to 2.5Gbps using this card, depending on what PCI-e slot they install it in. And the 5.0Gbps or 2.5Gbps will be the maximum for both devices at any given time.
Well that's an easy purchase
I didn't have to wait. I got one on eBay, the package was all Kanji, so no Enlish instructions. Now I just need to get a USB 3.0 drive to try it out.
Now if only Intel would stop cock-blocking progress, we could have it in all new machines.
You really need ASUS's PCIe x4 to get the 5Gbps out of both ports simultaneously. And as a bonus, the ASUS card costs less.
The problem is that you need a x4-capable slot to use it. Some boards don't have one other than the slot used by the video card.
And that also explains why the cards only have two ports. A 4-port card would need to be x16, and most mobo's only have one slot, which is usually already in use by video. Most dual or triple x16 boards are bought by people who are filling those slots by 2 or 3 video cards, so still no available slots.
Maybe USB3 will prod mobo manufacturers to add an extra slot or two. Or maybe for Intel to add more I/O interfaces to their chips/chipsets. Or hopefully both. A high-end box could use three x16s for video, an x16 for SATA 6g and another x16 for 4-ports of USB3. The infrastructure doesn't support 5 x16 slots.
I have a WD My Book 3.0 (USB 3.0 external hard drive) and it comes with an USB 3.0 PCIe card to connect your hard to it.
When copying a 13GB file from my SSD Corsair X-128 to the USB 3.0 hard drive, transfer speed is at 130 MB/sec under Win7 64bit.
When plugged to an USB 2.0 port, transfer speed is at 25 MB/sec.
So USB 3.0 is around 5 times faster for me.
Already out in a number of outlets.... here in the US, Fry's has a similar card for US$39 + tax and no waiting from Japan!
Yea I can't wait!
I have had this card for few weeks now:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.32407
Check out these cards on here.
Anyways these guys are constantly adding usb3.0 products to there list.
http://www.cut-rate-gizmos.com/14-usb-3