Is my USB Controller displaying usb 3.0?

[shutteringfocus]

Still confused about the USB thing though. Why would the ports be different color? The ports I thought were USB 3.0 are red, all the other ports are regular black.

Also, why would I get 1mb/s in the regular black ports, and 28mb/s in the red ports? Even though those are both slow, why would they be different?

 

[TVeblen]

What ports are we talking about? The ones on the motherboard or the ones on your case?

 

[TVeblen]

I can see why it is confusing. But those are USB2 ports for sure. Because that board was manufactured pre- USB3 I think they were not following any convention. They made them red because they look cool?

The convention is that USB3 ports are blue, and USB1-2 ports are black. The red is just stupid.

 

[shutteringfocus]

Oh, ha. Yeah. Didn't think of that.

The ones on the case.

Ok, never mind.

 

[shutteringfocus]

Ok, I think I'm returning this computer and building one on my own.

The motherboard is not what I thought it was, and neither is the CPU. I thought I had a 3rd Generation i5 3350, but this is the 1156 socket i5 750. I originally decided to pay a little extra for help because I felt like I didn't know enough about everything to do it on my own, but I ended up not getting the computer I wanted.

Can you help me check all the compatibility and everything for the parts in my Newegg shopping cart? I've attached a PDF.

This machine will be for Photo Editing running Lightroom and Photoshop. Any suggestions?

Newegg Shopping Cart Here

I already have hard drives out of the current machine. They were mine before I bought the new stuff from this guy.

 

[TVeblen]

I suggest you start a new thread with the title "New Build - Are My Components Compatible?". That way you will get lots of eyes on the subject and get more help.

Right off I think that power supply is too small. Others may disagree (this is a common argument among builders). But I personally would start out at 650 watts for an Ivy Bridge system with more that one drive. Unless you are planning on never using a dedicated video card.

But the process is this (for me):

• I choose the processor that I will build the system around.
• I then shop for and drill down to find a motherboard that supports that processor out of the box, plus all the motherboard features I want.
• Then I check the motherboard's QVL (Qualified Vendors List) for system RAM. I choose a brand and model of RAM that has been tested by the manufacturer for that board.
• I then shop for a chassis (case) that will fit my preferred video card, processor fan (these can be quite tall) and have the ports (USB3 for instance I want).

If you start your new thread you will get lots more feedback. A lot of folks here love to help with new build's

 

[shutteringfocus]

Followed the instructions for the AHCI mode enabling. The computer loaded the drivers and rebooted. However, still not much of a change.

In fact, my Segate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1tb drive is running a little faster, 156mb/s

The Sandisk Extreme 120 SSD is running slower at 102mb/s

A pair of WD Blues 250bg 7200 RPM in a software RAID 1 config are running at 164 mb/s

This seems super weird? Whats up?

What type of real world speed should I be expecting here?

I think I'll start a new thread about this internal drive problem.

 

[TVeblen]

Anything over 140 for a spinning drive in real world transfer is pretty good.
The SSD should be maxing out the controller. At least 250.
I'm wondering if it is properly aligned.
Check out this thread here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html?filter

 

[shutteringfocus]

I found out that the problem might be with the benchmark program I was using.

On the SanDisk website someone posted a similar problem and the SanDisk rep told them to use ATTO Disk Benchmark to do the test.

I did that, and here are the results:

According to this I'm seeing about 275mb/s read speeds and 225mb/s write speeds.

Now, the 120bg Sandisk Extreme SSD advertises over 500mb/s for each.

Why am I still short? I did the SanDisk firmware update. Also, I originally installed Windows on this disk, so according to the link you sent me, alignment shouldn't be a problem.

Could it be that I'm running this drive on a MoBo that only has SATA 3gb/s and the drive is rated for SATA 6gb/s, but it is backwards compatible? If that is the case, then I guess there isn't anything more for me to do. It is running about twice as fast as my spinning disk according to these new tests.

 

[indianacarnie]

That could very well be the case. I don't get the advertised speed of my ssd either. It was suggested/recommended to me to use an intel sata port to get better speeds.

 

[TVeblen]

You could only get those speeds if you had a SATA3 controller, which you don't. You are getting decent speed for a SATA2 controller.

 

[shutteringfocus]

OK I'm back.

SUB 3.0 card plugged into PCI-Express slot. Device manager showing usb 3.0 is working. Updated firmware on the WD Passport USB 3.0 external drive.

ATTO Disk Benchmark says write speed to the External HD is only about 35mb/s

USB 2.0 was giving me 20mb/s

Shouldn't it be faster?

 

[TVeblen]

It depends. There is more to the real-world transfer rate than just the USB protocol.

For one, you are reading from one device and writing to another. Writing is usually much slower than reading, so reading from a fast drive, or over a fast connection, and writing to a slower drive is going to have a much lower actual transfer rate than the other way around.

The transfer rate can also be affected by the file(s) you are transferring. If they are highly fragmented they will take much longer to transfer.