June 2015 - Rejigged Test Rig

Just a budget Lumia cam shot while leak checking, love those tubes curving in poetic symmetry. : )

USB 3.1 Heaven For Everyone?

The current Asus list for officially supported USB 3.1 motherboards is decidedly miniscule and can be easily surmarised to just the latest Intel chipsets released in the past year or so... viz. strictly X99 and Z97 only (plus 2 token B85 models).

Official Support List From Asus

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

Another proviso, Asus also wants you to flash to the latest BIOS release for these models as well to be officially supported. So what happens to the countless earlier "unsupported" models on older BIOS then, seriously out of luck or what? Let's see.

Asus Z87-A Motherboard

Being a Z87 based model which is neither the latest nor greatest chipset from Asus, this is definitely NOT on the officially sanctioned list nor having any updated USB3.1 recent BIOS. In fact, the test set is running an old BIOS from way back August 2014.

OK, here goes the Asus USB3.1 Type A card into the Z87-A test rig...

Hey, it's properly detected with auto-installed Asmedia XHCI 1.1 drivers! (then updated to the latest).

Hmm, doesn't seem to be different in any way from the officially supported Asus X99-A mobo I had tested on earlier.

Next, the Asus USB3.1 enclosure is attached... seems OK so far!

Now, Q & D benched it and then let's try boosting with Asus Turbo UASP drivers, it's looking good still...

Benching it! 

As a quick and dirty bench, the AS SSD Benchmark comes in very useful here cos it reports both the driver used as well as condensing all results into a single benchmark score (for what it is worth) for a  comparison.

USB 3.1 Stock

USB 3.1 Boosted

Woah hitting 750+ MB/s, definitely looking good!

Initial Impressions

Everything's coming up roses, very nice! Now, just where are the cost effective USB 3.1 peripherals for everyone? lol

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."

Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 Kit

HyperX Predator DDR4 - Home

Packaging 

Comes in a rather modest looking brown box with a striking red-white product label.

Unboxing

2 blister packs of 2 memory sticks each, well cushioned by protective foam. Solidly crafted heavy metal heatspreaders on a matte black PCB make for a most beautiful piece of design work.

Test Setup

★ Asus X99-A | i7-5820K | HyperX Predator DDR4-3000 16GB Kit@XMP | Intel 730 480GB SSD | NiCu HK 3.0-GTX360 | AMD HD7850 | Corsair RM850 PSU ★

Here's a shot of the innards if you are curious enough
DDR4 Predator bare...

UEFI Identification

Supports JEDEC and XMP 2.0 - 2 XMP profiles are available at DDR4-2666 (for better compatibility) and DDR4-3000 (faster for capable motherboards/CPUs). Both are set at 1.35V and 125MHz bus speeds.

The DDR4-3000 XMP setting (remember bclk 125) was used for this testing as the test CPU-mobo combo did not have any issues using it.If your mobo is unable to POST at DDR4-3000, consider falling back to the other XMP setting of DDR4-2666 with tighter timings instead.

AIDA64

Quite a lot of SPD info is being dumped here eg. this is the first time I see onboard temperatures sensors being reported on these HyperX sticks. Other juicy bits of info include confirmation of SK Hynix modules usage, single rank config etc...

hwinfo64

The HyperX onboard temperature sensors are already supported by this great monitoring utility, nice!

And all sticks are running at great temps too thanks to the hunky heatspreaders  :)

MemTweakIt

Hyperpi 32M

Clears easily with the RAM run at XMP settings

Initial Impressions (or to DDR4-3000 and beyond... )

Running DDR4-3000 is probably overkill for most enduser rigs but for those who demand the meanest looking high end RAM around, the HyperX Predator DDR4-3000 kit is an automatic consideration.

Seems everyone loves the black PCB with the uber cool matte black heat spreaders. These HyperX sticks are hefty, simply oozing class and quality. They are also among the tallest around so factor in height restrictions when planning your rig.

Just remember, there is also some configuration legwork to be done to get the RAM working as intended since both XMP settings are using the 125MHz bus speed instead of the usual 100.

Quite a few reviews have lamented the difficulty in pushing beyond DDR4-3000 but one can't help but wonder where else the issue could possibly lie since there are still motherboards with difficulty going beyond DDR4-2666 even. Besides the mobo, the CPU IMC lottery is another possblle factor, And some may argue if there is any actual need (not want) for overclocking beyond DDR4-3000...

In the end the Intel X99/DDR4 platform is currently still novel and nascent, future BIOS improvements may smoothen things for more motherboards.

DDR4-3000 Recommended Reading

• DDR4-3000-Setup-Guide-For-Rampage-V-Extreme
• Kitguru - Running DDR4-3000
• DDR4 Overclocking with Hynix MFR