Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Motherboards > USB 3.0 To The Front Panel: ASRock Leads The Way

USB 3.0 To The Front Panel: ASRock Leads The Way

07:10 - Friday 1 October 2010 by Thomas Soderstrom

1. Keeping Up With The Dells
2. Socket AM3: 890FX Deluxe4
3. 890FX Deluxe4 BIOS, Overclocking And Accessories
4. LGA 1156: ASRock P55 Extreme4
5. P55 Extreme4 BIOS, Overclocking And Accessories
6. LGA 1366: ASRock X58 Extreme6

7. X58 Extreme6 BIOS, Overclocking And Accessories
8. Test Settings
9. Sequential Transfer Graphs
10. Sustained And Repetitive Transfer Performance
11. Access Time And I/O Performance
12. PCMark Vantage HDD Performance
13. Conclusion

ASRock was the first company to respond to our impassioned pleas for a front-panel USB 3.0 connector. As other companies attempt to catch up, we examine the boards that started it all to see if the implementation maintains full USB 3.0-class performance.

It has been exactly one year since we sent off a series of emails asking motherboard manufacturers to get serious about standardizing front-panel USB 3.0. Our logic was that if nobody could agree on an industry standard, proprietary standards developed by various large-scale system builders would damage the custom-built and small reseller market.

While we received several responses about how it might be difficult to get any new connector standardized quickly by the USB-IF, we would have just as easily settled for any properly-functioning system, regardless of official sanctioning.

ASRock was the first to step up to the plate with a connector that, according to our sources at the firm, was an Intel design still pending approval. Regardless of who developed the connector, ASRock was the first to implement it, and deserves at least that much credit.

The big question we asked was “how well does it work?” To find out, we grabbed three motherboards to represent Socket AM3, LGA 1156, and LGA 1366. Then we threw them on our test bench.