ASUS USB 3.1 Performance Review

Introduction and Test Setup

| Source: ASUS Price: Author: Tom Logan

Introduction

We recently noticed the introduction of USB 3.1 on the ASUS X99 Sabertooth and with its promise of 10Gb/s speeds it was something that definitely piqued our interest. We were too impatient to wait around on storage manufacturers to come up with a USB 3.1 device, but luckily for us the bods at ASUS have just the ticket. A USB 3.1 enclosure that supports a couple of mSATA drives. Even though the enclosure itself isn't going to be available to the public, we had to get a taste of what the future had in store.

With an upgrade of their Z97-A motherboard also on the market it seemed like the perfect opportunity to discover what benefits USB 3.1 will have to those of us who rely upon removable storage. So although we're not strictly reviewing anything other than the technology, if we're interested we know you will be. Asus have stuck with the USB type A slot due to it being backward compatible and most importantly stackable so it doesn't create a dead zone on the I/O of the motherboard.

Test Setup

Because this technology is in its infancy there isn't anything we have to hand that we can test it with. For the purpose of demonstration though ASUS have had their R&D Department knock up a USB 3.1 enclosure that has two mSATA drives in RAID. So we need to make it clear that this isn't something you can buy - you can buy the motherboards, just not the drive - but it's a perfect proof of concept and will help saturate the USB 3.1 bandwidth enough to see if there are any benefits to this technology. And, perhaps more importantly, if hitherto unreleased hardware will be worth waiting for.

ASUS Z97-A USB 3.1

ASUS USB 3.1 Enclosure

Intel Core i7-4790K

nVidia GTX780Ti

Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400

Corsair AX760i

Corsair Neutron GTX

Corsair H105

Custom Corsair 540 Air

Windows 7 x64

1 - Introduction and Test Setup 2 - Up Close 3 - Anvil MB/s 4 - Anvil IOPS 5 - Anvil Sequential 6 - ATTO 7 - Crystal Disk Mark 8 - AIDA64 and PC Mark 8 9 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next»

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