Asus' Awesome USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbps Card Now Shipping

Months of waiting paid off for USB 3.0 early adopters. Asus has made the announcement that mass production for its USB 3.0 & 6Gbps SATA PCI Express card has begun, and we should get it as soon as next week. The U3S6 combo card here relies on PCI Express 2.0 x4 to carry traffic for the on-board NEC D720200F1 USB 3.0 host and Marvell 88SE9123 SATA 6.0 chipset, both of which can easily saturate a x1 lane. Therefore, Asus has to design the card to work in a PCIe x4 slot at minimum. This mode will give the card some 4* 500MB/s bandwidth so there should be plenty of room for even the fastest USB 3.0 SSDs.

The U3S6 add-on will sport dual SATA 6Gbps pins and two USB 3.0 ports, each of which will supply a max. current of 900mA. Asus claims this card will also work on other motherboards as well since U3S6 is compliant with the PCIe specs. Best of all is perhaps the pricing; at $30 MSRP, Asus is almost like giving out the cards for free when retailers start cutting price in a few months. Interestingly, Brando has been selling the card for at least two weeks now, but it wants $66 for it.