Hi to all,

I have recently completed an Asus Prime X299 Edition 30/i9-7900x system which whilst bringing considerable advances in many areas (e.g. WiFi 6, NVMe, Thunderbolt etc.) these improvements however come at the small cost of limited conventional on-board USB port provision. Accordingly it seemed sensible to add two further USB 3.0 ports by way of a surplus Asus U3S6 add-on PCIe card. I have 2 of these available (both are Rev1.0G cards) one of which has served me well in my previous Asus P6T7 X58 system running successfully on 64 bit Windows 10 Pro for many years. Both cards have been fully updated to receive the latest available firmware for their respective SATA & USB controller chips. (Marvell 88SE9120-NAA2 SATA controller chip (V1.0 0.1038) and the Nec D720200F1 (Renesas µPD720200 USB xHCI) USB Controller Chip (V3.0.3.4)).

The cards were both tested in the X58 PC and the original installed (working) card was duly assigned to a spare PCIe X16 rail on the X299 Edition 30 (PCIE 3.0/2.0 X16_3) and a pair of SATA BluRay/DVD drives attached to the SATA ports to keep the on-board SATA ports free for conventional SDD/HDD's to supplement the recently purchased Samsung NVMe drives one of which hosts the Windows 10 Pro 64 bit OS on which it is installed. The latest released drivers were then installed and the SATA optical drives function entirely as expected. The two USB ports recognise flash drives attached to them though I suspect that these may not be at USB 3.0 Gen 1 speed and Device Manager reports a code 10 error for the Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller with the familiar yellow warning triangle & exclamation mark flagged.

The Renesas device hardware ID is reported as PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_0194 and the latest installed driver (Renesas V2.1.39.0 - 21.08.12) manually installed, as previously installed to the earlier (and working) X58 also running X64 Win 10 Pro. Accepting the MS offered alternative does not resolve the issue and so I reverted to the V2.1.39.0 Renesas driver but alas still with no success in overcoming the frustrating code 10 issue …..

Alongside Generic Hubs, the X299 Edition 30 offers native Universal Serial Bus Controller support via the ASMedia USB Root Hub (USB\ASMEDIAROOT_Hub&VID1B21&PID2142), ASMedia USB3.1 eXtensible Host Controller (PCI\VEN_1B21&DEV_2142) and Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.0 (Microsoft) (PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A2AF) which do not appear to conflict with the Renesas Host Controller.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions board members can offer as to how best I might resolve this matter.

Many thanks,

PC Pilot

The NEC/Renesas card is really old (2009), compatible with XHCI specification pre 1.0 (0.95) and many things have changed since then.

If you really need an additional USB card, try one with a newer controller. such as ASMedia (preferably), Etron, Fresco Logic, VIA, TI or even Renesas μPD720201.

Hi Daniel_k,

Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful reply and apologies for my rather late response....for some reason I did not receive an email informing me of your post.

Indeed, as you note the card is indeed of 2009 vintage which I have perhaps dismissed too readily as it continues to function so well in the X58 system! Do you have any specific recommendations in respect of AsMedia (3.1/3.2?) based PCIe cards which ideally would also support a couple of SATA 6 ports for the optical drives??

Best regards,

PC Pilot

You're welcome.

Actually no specific recommendation of an ASMedia USB 3.x card, they are new enough, will surely work on your system.

About SATA cards, I'd recommend that you do some research on buyer's opinions on Newegg, Amazon etc regarding compatibility with current motherboards.

AFAIK, there are some 6 port SATA cards based on Marvell controller, but I'm not sure if they really support AHCI, which would accept your Optical drives.
Don't know if there is still driver support. If the controller works with native Windows AHCI driver, it'd be great as you wouldn't depend on Marvell's to have it working.