Sunday, September 28, 2014

HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB 3.0 - PCIe 2.0 4x

HighPoint RocketU 1144C

ASMEDIA Chipset

The card preforms well and had no problems recognizing several devices I tried (web cams, keyboard, mice, printers, scanners, Belkin hub, Inateck hubs, Docking Stations, thumb drives, portable USB drives etc…) and the list goes on and on…

This card is easily installed, and works immediately with the OS X 10.9+ built in drivers. It has no conflicts with any of my other hardware (including the installed Inateck KT-4004 USB 3.0 card.


I transferred dozens of TB to and from SSDs & mechanical USB 3.0 drives and it's extremely fast. Plugging in multiple drives does not slow the 1144C at all.
The 1144C easily powers 4x 7200 RPM 1TB laptop drives without any additional power requirements.
(This card does not require any additional power connections, it's fully powered by the PCIe slot). I've tested it pretty extensively and I can't find any negative characteristics to this card so far.

I had no bluetooth interfe rence during large or short transfers. So far I have nothing but great results with this card.

The HighPoint card is a bit more expensive than most (
$109), but consider that it’s a 4x card, requires no additional drivers for OS X 10.9+, has 4 controller chips (one for each port) to prevent slowdowns when transferring between multiple devices, and fully supports UASP transfers, and supports all sleep modes.
I can easily recommended this product to anyone who wants USB 3.0 in a cMP.
I tested this card with OS X 10.9.4 & 10.10 PB3

* Supports UASP: 70% Faster than traditional USB 3.0, with UASP Transfer Protocol; The UASP Transfer Protocol only can accelerate read and write speed of SSD hard disk.

The box includes:

1 - PCIe card in an anti-static bag
1 - Instruction Manual
1 - Windows Driver CD, and PDF version of documentation.

Note:
Initially I believed this card was having problems with my Seagate Backup+ 4TB drive. It turns out that none of my external drives that are 4TB (Seagate & WD) can be defragged while attached to ANY USB 3.0 card I’ve tried so far. When I get time, I’ll hook them up to a USB 2.0 port and see what happens. Otherwise, all drives and devices performed admirably on the HighPoint RocketU 1144C.

 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tried this card on 10.8.5 and 10.9.3 but had problem with UASP enabled drives.
Especially G-Drive and G-Raid freezes when transfer date for sure.
Haven't tried 10.9.4 or later though.
Haven't you gotten similar problem?

Bucknasty said...

I had trouble with one Seagate Desktop Backup+ drive. After contacting Seagate support it comes down to the drive's enclosure not following certain standards to assure compatibility. I removed the drive and installed it in a different enclosure to resolve the problem. I've never had an issue with UASP not working properly.

Please look at my latest review/post on the Sonnet Pro card. This is my current favorite and doesn't have an issue with the Seagate enclosures.