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We have received a few e-mails about a specific piece of hardware in one of our Test Benches so I thought I might post some pictures and my thoughts on it; it is the RocketU 1144C 4-Port USB 3.0 PCI-Express HBA. Long story short, the 1144c increases my USB 3.0 count by four but it does so much more as well.
The HighPoint RocketU 1144C is a PCIe 2.0 x4 device that uses the latest and greatest UASP (Unattached SCSI Protocol). With UASP, the Rocket 1144C is able to claim transfer speeds up to an incredible 20Gb/s through four USB 3.0 ports each claiming 5Gb/s.
The card is a full height card, fits into any PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and is fully backwards compatible with Linux, Windows and USB 2.0 and prior. When combined with the HighPoint RocketStor 5122B, it allows you to reach transfer speeds of up to 400MB/s from each of the two HDD/SSD docks.
Components on the card include the ASMedia ASM1042a USB 3.0 host controller which is complies with Intel xHCI. If you hear the term Super Speed, it originated with the ASMedia USB3.0 controller family. Also located on the card is the PLX 8 lane 8 port PCIe Express switch.
We are a bit embarrassed to admit but we don’t have any devices that reach the speeds that this device is capable, however, we do have a USB adapter with a SATA 3 interface for which we can test the Seagate 600 Pro SSD. here is a quick ATTO result:
The bottleneck here is the fault of the connector and not the RocketU1144C. We have been waiting for some time for the RocketStor 5122B and when it arrives, we promise an update, or even a supplemental to this report demonstrating full speeds as we had done previously on our sister site with the HighPoint RocketStor 5322 and HBA. The HighPoint RocketU 1144C can be found around the $100 mark with an additional $80 for the 5122B.
