Asus USB 3.1 Preview

Introduction

Asus USB 3.1 Solutions

The Asus USB 3.1 Enclosure

Based on the ASMedia ASM1352R USB 3.1 to dual SATA bridge, linked here

Asmedia

Done in black brushed full aluminium enclosure in partnership with Lian Li. Bundled with a USB 3.1 Type-C (yay finally, reversibly fitting plug) data cable and a micro-USB cable for the 2A Chicony OEM power adapter.

Installed inside are 2 x 250GB Samsung 840 Evo SSDs in RAID0 config

Handsome fella, isn't it? :)

Asus USB 3.1 Type-A Card

Sports 2 x teal coloured USB 3.1 Type A ports, needs a PCI-e x4 slot on a compatible mobo

Specs

Mobo Compatibility List

"The USB 3.1 add-on card is only compatible with selected ASUS motherboards"

Read more here...

Sample Card

Came as a loose add on component option for bundling with mobos, not a retail boxed set. No need to despair if you had bought the earlier rounds of Z97 or X99 mobos from Asus, just drop this into your present rig.

Asmedia ASM1142 based
More info here

"... ASMedia first Universal Serial Bus 3.1 host controller"

PnP And Drivers

Surprisingly, the test rig Win 7 x64 installation detected the USB 3.1 card rightaway and auto-installed Asmedia XHCI 1.1 controller drivers without any fuss.

XHCI 1.1 aka USB 3.1 info

Next, the drivers were then manually updated to the latest from Asus Support website.

On attaching the USB 3.1 enclosure, again Windows PnP simply does the rest

hwinfo64 even supports the enclosure sensors as can be seen here

And this is what the Device Manager looks like upon installation of USB 3.1 card, enclosure and latest officially supported mobo BIOS.

Overall, both hardware and software installations were truly a breeze. Just remember to update the mobo BIOS for proper official support too.

Asus USB 3.1 Boost

Part of Asus AI Suite III, does some UASP magic to improve transfer speeds upon clicking the Turbo button

 Simple Benching

Results are shown in this respective order of

• Stock USB 3.0 
• Stock USB 3.1 
• USB 3.1 with Boost Turbo activated

Also threw in a few token simple charts to quickly demonstrate graphically the trend of performance improvements over the latest USB standards.


* Note - these benches were run with EIST enabled as for routine 24/7 operations (see again this website's name viz. 24/7 real world overclocking... heheh) and not disabled as per advised benching config.

CrystalDiskInfo

Reads as Samsung 840 Evo but the device plainly disappears from CDI view once Boost Turbo is activated (and the Asus USAP driver kicks in)

Anvil SSD Benchmark

Overall Anvil SSD Benchmark Scores at a glance

AS SSD Benchmark

 Note the changeover to the Asusstpt driver (& SCSI protocols) as reported in the Boost Turbo screenshot.

More importantly, note also the Asus 3.1 Boost Turbo bench shows both R and W figures which already go beyond the theoretical limit of SATA3 (600 MB/s), wow!

Overall AS SSD Benchmark scores at a glance

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Note the Asus 3.1 Boost Turbo bench shows R and W of 800+ MB/s figures which go way beyond the theoretical limit of SATA3 (600 MB/s), wow again!

ATTO Disk Benchmark max. numbers at a glance

CrystalDiskMark

SATA3 busting Boost Turbo figures yet again!

Proceed below for even more Asus USB 3.1 preview benchmarks... enjoy :)

Asus USB 3.1 Preview Results Round-up

PC Perspective
Hardwareluxx
Bit-tech
Guru3d
Legit Reviews
The Tech Report
KitGuru

USB 3.1 Paraphernalia Listing

DealExtreme
Amazon
Newegg

Initial Impressions

Achieving actual benchable USB 3.1 transfer rates of over 800 MB/s is really amazing, it's certainly been a long way from the humble beginnings of the paltry 1.5-12Mb/s USB 1.x, then derided as the cheap rival of Firewire.

So is USB 3.1 with Asus Boost Turbo enticing enough for the market yet, what do you say?

* Teal Trivia

Teal (Colour) - Wiki

"Teal gets its name from the colored area around the eyes of the common teal, a member of the duck family."