ASUS U3S6 compatible with P5K-E?

allday247 · 23 Dec 2010 at 11:33

Want to buy a USB3.0 controller card and noticed that the ASUS U3S6 also provides SATA3. I would like to know if the controller is compatible with an ASUS P5K-E as although not officially on their compatibility list other people have had some success using it on other mobo's.

Should i get one or just get a standard usb3.0 controller like the following
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-001-LL&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=

I would like to get the ASUS for potential future SSD upgrades for when SATA3 is utilized more but need some advise before purchasing.

Ch3m1c4L · 23 Dec 2010 at 11:52

if it has the correct pci-e slot then it will work.

allday247 · 23 Dec 2010 at 12:07

hmmm thanks. it'll have to run on the 4x PCI-e slot so i guess it's not an issue.
just wanted to know if anyone had it working as i've heard lots of stories of it not working on this board.

I predominately want the controller to use a USB3.0 external HDD dock. Would i be better off with just the usb3.0 controller rahter than this, considering what it connects to on the mobo. (Asus - PCI-e x4, other controller PCI-E 2.0 x1)

allday247 · 23 Dec 2010 at 12:13

Read this somewhere

This was tested on a P5K-e mobo with 4 sata hdds and an optical sata drive attached to the ICH

U3S6 installed into secondary x16 pcie slot - bios picks up hardware fine, windows requests drivers blah blah blah, installed all is good. Then powered down and swapped the sata lead on the burner to the U3S6 and then powered back up. Marvel controller is detected with 1 optical drive attached to port 0, Jmicron controller is detected but ICH fails to be picked up....

Now disabling the Jmicron controller in the bios allows the ICH to work with the U3S6 fine (usb and sata both confirmed working)

1) what is ICH?
2) does the above quote sound promising?

Ch3m1c4L · 23 Dec 2010 at 12:50

ICH = I/O Controller Hub, so the onboard sata host controller I assume.

The reason it needs the PCI-E 4x slot is because there is more stuff on it, and to avoid a bottleneck on the PCI-E bus, it needs more bandwidth.
If you dont need the sata ports, just get the usb one, then later if you decide you need the sata ports you cuold get a 2 port sata controller and put that in another 1x PCI-E slot or something?

I mean, in theory, it should just work, but from what you have posted there are obviously some conflicts, most likely software drivers/bios so may well get fixed in an update. You could try emailing Asus since both parts are made by them, they have probably tested it in their labs and as such could give you a good answer.

Also, are you using the Jmicron controller? If its like on my board the Jmicron controller is only used for the Esata ports, and Ive never really used them, and when I have Ive had a lot of crashes while transferring data from drives on those ports so I gave up with them and make do with USB anyway lol.