StarTech 7-Port PCI Express USB 3.0 Card, 5Gbps, TAA (PEXUSB3S7)

Installed in my Win 11 machine…flawless install, no problems at all!

If you have an open slot it’s great for decluttering a desk by eliminating a USB hub. One word of advice, if you will be connecting power hungry usb devices you should really get an SATA cable to connect the card to your power supply. The card has an “optionally used” SATA connector to boost the power available through the ports. I am powering 2 external 1 TB expansion hard drives and a USB telco modem with zero power issues. I am using an old Dell 537s slimline desktop and this card fits like a glove and works perfectly with no apparent latency in access time.

Although this USB card is a bit more expensive than similar cards, it works well and provides plenty of power to attached devices. There are 6 external USB ports and one internal. The included SATA power cable ensures that you can draw power directly from a PSU connection rather than pulling it though the PCI slot. One caveat is that this card has the USB ports mounted horizontally. If the ports are mounted vertically then there's no issue, the connectors have plenty of room since they're oriented up and down. (See the image for a comparison.) Since the ports are horizontal, you'll want to make sure there's enough clearance in the card cutout. Some cases have card slots that are just too narrow to be able to plug USB connectors into it. My PC case was one of those, so I had to take a Dremel tool to the slots and grind them on each side so they had a wider opening. After that was done everything fit properly. Chances are your PC has backplane slots that are wide enough, but you should check before buying this (or buy a card that has the ports mounted vertically). With that said, the card provides plenty of ports and plenty of power to handle most devices.

I built a NAS using an old Lynnfield-era PC running CentOS 7. I had previously used a Highpoint SAS/SATA controller to keep all the HDs internal. The Highpoint controller works well, but requires a kernel module that must be compiled with each kernel upgrade. I found this annoying and wanted a hardware solution that didn't require a kernel module. I picked the StarTech card even though it is 3x the price of the Chinese cards because of my experience with StarTech stuff. They make very high quality stuff. Their engineers design great boards that are not flaky. Since I'm relying on the data in my system, I picked high quality components. I purchased two of these cards. They each provide six external USB 3.0 ports so I have a total of 12 ports connected to 12 USB 3.0 HDs. I'm running zfs with raidz3. That's 48TB of raw storage with ~30TB of usable storage. I'm seeing ~60 MB/sec writing to the array from /dev/zero with 'dd'. While it's nice having internal drives for the NAS for a clean, compact setup; it will be nice to be able to easily disconnect and connect a replacement drive when I experience a disk failure. I got two large power strips to plug in all 12 of the HD power transformers.

Works fine as expected. I opted for the model with the SATA power, just in case someone plugs in a high power device. This was the most ports I could find on any USB expansion card. StarTech makes great products. I've been in IT for 20+ years, and I think they make the best niche tech parts out there. They are so much better than the cheaper no name random alternatives on Amazon. StarTech is worth paying a little more. The best part is their support! The chat is great, and you can find downloads and manuals as you need them. That is really important when dealing with technology. I always default StarTech for hard to find and specialty adapters.

Even with "optional" dedicated SATA power connected, device fails to provide sufficient power to USB devices. Tested game controllers, external sound cards, storage devices, VR HMD, etc, all non-functional when connected to this device despite its high price tag. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the StarTech.com brand. Tested on Mar 10, 2026.

I bought this because my mATX motherboard didn’t have a lot of USB connectors. It installs easily and the port speeds seem accurate but even though the card requires an external power source the ports don’t provide 2.1 amps as they should for USB3 spec.

Yes, it's pricy - but it actually works well and is really fast. Wasted my time with 3 other crappy cheap cards that ended up having issues. So far thus Startech card works great and the devices attached are screaming fast. Using it in Lenovo low profile computer. 5 Stars so far. No issues and plug and play with Win 10

OK so Startech is an unusual brand. They do not employ huge marketing department and you will not see them in every shop, because they cost rather more than typical Chinese electronic and do not appear to have catchy unique selling points - unitil you look into detail. For example, in this case we have a combination of two best of the crop USB3 chips: Renesas uDP720201 (4 channel USB3 controller for ePCI) and uDP720210 (4 channel USB3 hub). Each connector is protected by a reasonably sized capacitor. The bracket features 4 ports past the hub and 2 ports attached directly to controller. On the inside you will find another single port attached directly to controller (the last port of the controller is driving the hub, obviously). You could buy cheaper USB3 controller obviously - but it wouldn't have this many ports and also, most likely, it wouldnt have this quality of components. Of course you could instead buy another Startech controller, 4 port where each port is driven by a dedicated Renesas chip for ultimate performance - useful if you need this much bandwidth. I did not, and wanted maximum number of port instead. It works great. One point to note: due to orientation of USB3 sockets, the USB plugs will fill space of PCI bracket with very little tolerance left. Be sure to plug an USB cable/device/anything into the bracket ports before you close the chassis, otherwise you may need to re-open your computer and readjust the card later.

Pedi uno y me vino con un usb que no funcionaba,solicite un remplazo y antes de que me diese tiempo a devolverlo ya tenia el nuevo en casa.

Achetée pour augmenter le nombre de ports USB d'un PC un peu pauvre en USB, la carte fonctionne parfaitement. Je l'ai installé sous win 8 et une config I5 sur une carte mère Lenovo. Je n'ai pas essayé les drivers livrés sur le CD mais j'ai téléchargé les plus récents sur le site du constructeurs. Les 6 sorties externes fonctionnent. Je n'ai pas testé la prise interne. Livraison rapide.

I was considering 2-port cards for half the price, but 6 external ports with a SFF PC low-profile back plate? Sure, I'll try that. And I'm glad I did! It takes a bit of tweaking to position the card in such a way as to ensure all the ports are able to be plugged into, but so long as your computer's case isn't over-designed around the expansion slots, it should work. I currently have 5 devices connected with no issues! Also, if your peripherals are all self-powered (mine are), then the SATA power connection is indeed optional as I'm not using it (my SFF power supply only had two SATA power ports - one for the DVD and the other for the SSD). The speed is about 5 times faster than transferring data over the motherboard's USB 2.0 ports, and it's consistent (around 90MB/s transferring between two external HDDs), so that is fine by me. It has breathed new life into my older PC.

I got this as a replacement for another card I was using to run my Oculus rift. I run Windows as VM so I needed something quite high-spec that was also Linux compatible. Needless to say I was not disappointed and it performs extremely well.