Gigabyte "Heavy Duty" USB 3.0 PCIe Card Finally Available

Sporting the popular NEC USB 3.0 chip, the Gigabyte Ultra Durable USB 3.0 PCI Express Card is here to juice up your Hi-Speed USB and SuperSpeed USB gadgets. This half sized card fits in those tiny, almost completely useless, mini x1 PCIe ports included on most motherboards. The era of add-on cards died out with the 56k modem, but most motherboards still include some card slots even though we only ever see them when we upgrade our video cards. The only card really worth getting is one of those high fidelity SoundBlaster audio cards as everything else is pretty much built into the motherboard these days.

The Gigabyte USB 3.0 card is built around an extra tough 2 oz. copper circuit board for long life. And like what it did to their new motherboards, it has also opted to up the power to the USB ports so that both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices have plenty of power for any number of high drain devices. They triple the USB 2.0 minimum of 500mA as well as the USB 3.0 minimum of 900mA to each port, bringing the current level to 1500mA and 2700mA respectively. The extra juice is pulled from a pair of motherboard molex connectors that are joined to the card. Price is set at $53 at least on Brando, but you will likely find it on a few other online e-tailors as well.

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