SYBA SY-PEX40040 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card

Pros: Made my sata II board lighting fast with my ssd! after having an X58m Msi with my i7-950 for a year (work build) i recently looked into the specs of my board,and realized i was somewhat bottlenecked running a sataIII ssd,on a sataII board..Installed super fast with no issues and no messing with bios!

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: I even bought this thing USED from the main online auction site,and this thing works minty fresh brand new! very pleased!!!!

Pros: Installed in the DVR/Server mentioned below and learned some new info to share. I don't feel guilty about the double review because I am reviewing it in two environments doing two different jobs.

Compatibility and speed are as stellar as before, but must now be qualified.

Cons: Booting to an attached DVD-ROM FAILED if the motherboard SATA ports were set to the all-important AHCI mode.

Booting to an attached DVD worked with the mobo RAID enabled, but the BIOS ROM on this card prevented the motherboard's RAID BIOS from running, essentially making the onboard SATA ports useless. Then again, that is a fault of the motherboard and not this card. If you need multiple boot ROMS to load, get a server motherboard or roll the dice like I did and risk losing one.

Booting to an attached DVD worked fine if the mobo SATA was set to compatibility/IDE, but that is slower, does not support hot-swapping (vital for a RAID), and is far from optimal all around.

I have submitted a support ticket to Syba about the boot issue but don't have high hopes.

-1 egg for forcing me to abandon hardware RAID (fakeRAID actually) for software RAID and take the DVD out of the boot sequence, thus necessitating the use of a USB DVD if I need to boot to an optical disk.

Other Thoughts: Before installing an OS or even creating a partition, I used the live XP on Hiren's 15.1 to test a Corsair Force GT 60GB SSD first on this card, then on a motherboard SATA3 port in AHCI mode using HDD-Tune. On the motherboard port the throughput was consistently 30-35% higher, access time was lower (negligibly, though), and CPU usage was slightly lower. This is clearly a limitation of the PCIe 1x interface. It's way better than SATAII (see my other review), but you get what you pay for.

Moral of the story: ALWAYS use motherboard SATA3 ports for speed-intensive disks or SSD's. The performance difference is substantial. ONLY use this card or one like it if a motherboard SATA3 port isn't available/doesn't exist and upgrading your motherboard isn't an option.

Pros: Super easy way to add a SATAIII port if your motherboard only has SATAI/II or comes up short of ports.

I ran benchmarks on my Corsair 128GB Performance Pro on the motherboard's SATAII ports, then installed the card/drivers, moved the drive to the card, and reran benchmarks using the native driver Win7 x64 installed. Performance roughly doubled instantly. I downloaded the drivers from Syba's web site (which turned out to be the same as on the included CD anyway) and couldn't get drivers from Asmedia because you have to have an OEM login to get them there. The driver update bumped performance up by another 10-15%.

Very nice!

Note that my dramatic throughput increase was largely buoyed by the extra headroom afforded by my Phenom II 1090T CPU. YMMV!

Cons: I see what the comments below mean about the bracket not being exactly right. I had to massage it a little to fit it in, but it wasn't far off and required no modifications.

Other Thoughts: I fail to see the booting problems people are complaining about. My boot times are faster now that my awesome SSD is on a SATAIII controller, but POST is (naturally) a little longer due to this card. It's a small and worthwhile tradeoff.

I bought two of these cards. The other will go into a security DVR/Server for a customer because an SSD and 5-disk RAID are consuming the motherboard's six SATA ports. With this card, the machine will now have a bootable DVD-ROM for them to never use.

Pros: Running in VMware ESXi host, using passthrough to allocate the device to a VM guest (running CentOS). All works well

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: Would love to know if this controller supports drives > 2TB. I can't find it in any documentation, and no response on the forums on SYBA web site.

Pros: Cheap, port multiplyer support, speeds not less than expected

Cons: Cannot boot PC IF there is a drive plugged in to this controller, tech support is no help

Other Thoughts: I had no intention of booting FROM this controller but, if there is a drive plugged in to this controller when booting my computer, not even the controller on the motherboard will boot a drive, with boot order properly set. Tech support insisted this is not a bootable controller card after repeated explanations that I am not booting this controller. Windows 7 had no problem recognizing two drives in the TT black duet on this controller but it can only be turned on after the system drive boots. Windows XP recognizes two drives sometimes. Other times the asmedia controller has to be disabled and re-enabled before it sees the two drives.
Should have gotten the Rosewell...

Pros: Showed a significant performance increase over my motherboard SATA-II ports when talking to my Sandisk Ultra120 SSD which is also SATA-II. Gain was about 25% on sequential reads, 10% on sequential writes, and almost 3X on random reads & writes with queuing enabled (qd 32).

Cons: First problem was during driver install. It went as normal, but when it was just about complete, the system froze. This is with a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P running XP home.

On restart however, the system installed the driver without even throwing up the plug and pray wizard, and Device Manager showed all was well.

I then ran benchmarks and saw the improved performance over my motherboard SATA.

However, over the next few hours of using the computer, I experienced two random blue screens. I then removed the card and the system is back to being stable, as it was before this fiasco.

Other Thoughts: The reason I purchased this card for this system is that I got a SATA-II SSD for my computer, but the performance using my motherboard SATA ports was well short of what SATA-II is capable of, roughly 170MB/S reads and 70MB/S writes. Curiously, the same drive in another system (Intel chipset) ran 210/150, and likewise, a different SATA-II SSD in my system ran 220/140. So it seemed this particular SSD model was just not a good match for this particular motherboard SATA-II.

So I got this card to see if I couldn't get more reasonable speeds out of the SSD, knowing full well it would still be limited to SATA-II speeds since that's all the drive can do. Unfortunately, it blue screens on me.

I purchased two of these cards, one for the above mentioned Gigabyte board and the other for a Dell Dimension 4700. Since I got somewhat different results between the two, I wrote separate reviews. However, the bottom line is the same, both are useless to me, and both are being RMA'ed.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

It is our goal to test our products with as many computer systems as possible and make sure our products work with all major computer equipements. There are times when our products will not work smoothly with some equipment. Our engineering team is working hard with chipset manufacturers for any driver updates. Please visit our website for driver updates. We will update our drivers once they become available.

Please contact us. We love to find out more from you, and learn from and figure out a fix to the problem.

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

SYBA offers an on-line 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)

Regards, SYBA CST 06202012

Pros: It didn't catch fire
As far as I know, I didn't catch any terminal diseases from it

Cons: Blue screen on every attempt to install the driver, on my Dell Dimension 4700 running XP Pro SP3. I tried everything I could think of to make it work:

- Installing the driver both from the XP plug-and-pray wizard and from the setup program that comes with the driver
- Installing the driver from the CD as well as the one downloaded from the Syba web site
- Installing the driver with and without a drive attached
- Most all combinations of the above.

The results were exactly the same in all cases: it looks like a normal driver install, everything is fine, it's just about done installing, and BAM! the blue screen. The message on the screen is the same on Jose reported in review #1:

*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity Error
*** The System has Halted ***

Perhaps not coincidentally, Jose also reports attempting to install on a Dell Dimension, albeit a different model.

Other Thoughts: In all of my attempts to install the driver, I had booted to a drive that was on a motherboard SATA port. I'm well aware that you can't boot Windows through the card until the driver is on your OS drive. My procedure for installing a new drive controller that requires a driver is to boot through the motherboard SATA port, install the driver, and then shut down and move the system drive over to the controller. Normally that's how I do it and it works fine. But of course, I couldn't even get the driver loaded.

Also, I bought two of these cards for two different systems, the above mentioned Dell and a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P. I got different results, therefore I'm writing a separate review for each.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

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

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

Regards, SYBA CST 06202012

Pros: Cheap.
Fast.
Works.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I got this to run a Samsung SSD on my Intel X58 motherboard. It works. Getting over 450MB/s on a Samsung 830 SSD. Completely worth it.

Pros: Fast Response
Fast Loading Bios
AHCI v1.3
*Best SSD Solution for any board bottle-necking bandwidth due to a lack of SATA III controllers.
**Excellent upgrade for any older SATA I or II motherboards.
***I searched over 30 similar PCIE cards from many vendors across North America. I contacted many manufactures asking technical support if they offered an O/S bootable controller with AHCI support. At the present time I could only find TWO for under $100 which had all the features packed in this puppy. I was specifically looking for a card with an AHCI enabled bios for communicating TRIM to a solid state drive.(The main feature most competitors lacked) This card had it all and has not let me down.

Cons: None regarding the cards performance & functions.
Manufacture error in placement of bracket screws on board pulls card away from socket. (It's a minor flaw which can be easily overcome in less than 30sec)

Other Thoughts: Despite the negativity surrounding this card I was prepared in advance to deal with the issues reported by the other reviewers. Here is some help if you're interested in this model or the (SY-PEX40039=2 internal SATA). First off the screws which connect the mounting bracket to the cards board are slightly off causing the card to pop out of the socket. Simple Fix: No bending or machining required. Remove one screw holding the circuit board to the bracket. The one farthest away from the socket point. Takes less than 30 seconds. Card sits perfectly & secure. Most BSOD are due to incorrect driver installations. You must F6(insert drivers)during a fresh O/S install if you don't want to experience the BSOD. Installing the driver on a windows ready system should be done on the motherboards SATA controllers before plugging in the card. Then boot at least once with a non-boot drive connected before switching to an O/S partition. Also copy the driver from system32 to WoW64.

Pros: Works as described, sort of...
Good value/price.

Cons: 1. I Have not been able to get the port multiplyer feature working as yet. (better to stick with sil 3132 I think)
2. WON'T FULLY SEAT IN PCI SLOT WITH ATTACHED BRACKET

Other Thoughts: I was having problems getting the system to see this card when installed only to find out that it wasn't fully seated in slot because of the mounting bracket. Removed the bracket and it seated fine. This is a design flaw, so took off one egg because you really need the bracket to be secured to insert eSATA cables without knocking it loose from the slot. I'm going to try to modify the bracket rather than return the item, but you shouldn't have to have a machine shop to install an add-in card...