SYBA SY-PEX40039 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card

Pros: Easy plug & play. I installed this controller card on a HTPC that already had Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit installed and configured. After removing the old SATA controller, I popped this one in with the low profile bracket and powered up. Windows Update came up and found the drivers and then rebooted. After the system came back up it runs great. I rebooted at least 7 times after browsing the internet and watching HDTV in Windows Media Center.

Cons: None whatsoever.

Other Thoughts: You can't go wrong with these cards when upgrading to SSD drives on older computers. You don't want to run a new SSD drive with the onboard SATA controller. You need one of these!

Pros: Easy setup
Fast
Great for hooking up an SSD to an older motherboard to provide ACHI support.

Cons: I haven't noticed any so far.

Other Thoughts: I wanted better performance out of a system I had made around 2007-2008. It still worked well but I wanted the speed of an SSD.

I had a system with:

Biostar A770 A2+ mobo
AMD Phenom 9850 quad core
4Gb's of DDR2

My setup didn't support ACHI which I needed for my SSD intallation for proper operation. I got this card and intalled
it along with my Sandisk Extreme SSD w/ Windows 7 64-bit and it runs like a champ.

My system now boots in about 13-15 secs from after the post screen to the time I'm able to open a program. It used to take anywhere from 3-5 minutes before and I would dread having to reboot my pc.

This card was a cheap and easy way to let me add the SSD to the system and not replace the whole thing when it was necessary.

Pros: Fits well in the slot, cables fit well on the SATA connectors. Works fine with Windows 7- 64bit
Works fine with Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 motherboard

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: haven't done any speed tests, but file transfer speed seems as expected.

Pros: Setup is easy. CD comes with lots of other drivers, need to read the document for the correct driver.

Price is really good, only $20.

Cons: Speed is OK. Test the best SSDs on the market: 840 Pro, OCZ Vector, M4.
Both 840 Pro and OCZ can get max 310 MB/s Seq write, 330 Seq Read. These two are the fastest SSD on the market, the claimed performance is over 550 MB/s. So the limitation is this card.

Yes, I have it on PCIe 2.0 slot.

Pros: Setup was easy. As others have said, I had to bend the lower tab for it to fit. I assume it worked with no hassle. (Win 7, SATA III Corsair Neutron SSD, PCIe 2.0 x1). Gives me 2 more SATA ports.

Cons: Speed measured slower than with the native SATA II port on my Asus motherboard. CrystalMark 187 seq read vs 220 seq read on native port.

Other Thoughts: AHCI enabled, drivers updated. Should run much faster than that. As I understand it, PCIe 1x should handle 500MB/s.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Perhaps the correct drivers are not installed. If the drivers installed see this card as a "Standard SATA AHCI Controller", the default Microsoft drivers are installed and causes the card to not function properly.

If this is the case, please install the drivers manually using the .inf file in the CD or contact our Support team to walk you through the installation process at support@sybausa.com.

Please contact our technical support on this issue.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours.

Making affordable quality products is our goal. Our engineers will look into this matter. If it is a problem of our production design, we will improve it.

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an online RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 05082013

Pros: Mine came with a low profile bracket. Very pleasant surprise, since it was purchased for a SFF PC.

Excellent value at $15 with egg's discount code.

Quick, easy install (other than initial fit, see cons). Windows 7 Pro 64 bit installed MS drivers automatically. Works perfectly. Didn't use the drivers on the disk.

Cons: The product specs here and on Syba's site don't say anything about a low profile bracket at all. Happily, mine arrived with one.

The card on the low profile bracket didn't quite fit. Some modest bending of the bracket's bottom tang and mounting flanges resolved the issue.

Other Thoughts: Excellent speeds on hdd spinners, comparable to bench speeds of motherboard SATA 600 and Intel RST driver.
SSD's bench about 10-15% slower, but that's a limitation of 5Gbs pcie, not the card. Using for an additional hdd inside and a power esata outboard connection. Perfect.

Pros: The SYBA replaced a dead nvidia sata driver on the HP system. No need to purchase a new motherboard. The HP desktop has the same speeds as original sata drive.

Cons: I had to bend the mounting strip a bit, fits ok now.

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: Didn't really work that well.

Other Thoughts: Easy to put in, but getting it configured to work with my drives took about an hour or two of messing around. Turn comp on, turn comp off, got to bios, switch something, test, turn off, turn on, switch bios, test again, repeat repeat repeat.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

This method of installing this card should be simple. Connect the HDDs/SSDs to the card, log into the motherboard BIOS, set the Boot Priority to your desired setup, and save and exit.

The HDDs may need to be initialized within the OS, but that is the only setup you may need to perform. Testing is usually needed for all products like these for the customer to know the product's functions.

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback.

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an online RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours.

Regards, SYBA CST 04302013

Pros: I'm giving this card 3 eggs because I'm assuming that the problems I have had with it are due to Linux driver issues. Apparently it is working well for some, even some using Linux. It has been two years now since reading these reviews and much has changed.

Cons: In my case the card simply did not work under Mageia 2 Linux with a 3.4 Kernel. I would get the following output from the system:

ata7: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
ata7: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
ata7.00: failed to read native max address (err_mask=0x100)
ata7.00: HPA support seems broken, skipping HPA handling
ata7: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
ata7.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x100)
ata7: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
ata7: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
ata7.00: ATA-8: ST9500620NS, SN01, max UDMA/133
ata7.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata7.00: configured for UDMA/133

This scenario occured with every attempt to use this controller on a known good drive that is currently working flawlessly on a new SY-PCX40009 SATA II controller.

Other Thoughts: I am encouraged by 1) the recent feedback on this card, and 2) by the willingness of Syba representatives to respond to users having problems with their products. I was at the point of being ready to simply pull this card and give up on it. But I am now running Mageia 3 on a 3.8 Kernel. Hopefully some driver issues, if any, have been fixed since the previous attempts to make this card work, and I just may now give this card another shot. I may yet regret the badmouthing I've given Syba and Asmedia over this experience. Seemingly it works under the ACPI driver itself, since I can find no driver out there specific to Asmedia chipsets.

Pros: It works

Cons: Not going to get max SATA 6GB/s speed on a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. The x1 lane is limited to only 500 MB/s. If you are using an expensive current gen SSD, your read and write speeds will be limited by using this card.

Other Thoughts: I wasn't expecting miracles or anything, but the increase in speed of this card over the SATA II interface of my motherboard wasn't worth the hassle of using this add in card.