When will USB 3.1 become "common" on motherboards?

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tankman1989

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I'm building a small mini-ITX pc and I'd love it to have usb 3.1 but can't find any MOBO's that have it and fit my needs. Does anyone know why it isn' t used more often and when it might become more prevelant?
 
The spec for USB 3.1 was put out right at the same time the new Intel 8 series chipsets and Haswell came out which pretty much sealed its fate for not being on the mass market. Intel didn't include it in the 9 series chipsets either, probably because it was just a refresh for Broadwell.

It also has the competing Thunderbolt standard to contend with which is just over 4x faster.

The only motherboards you'll find with it are ones that add a discrete USB 3.1 controller chip to the motherboard for support. You'd be better off just getting a PCIe addon card if you need 3.1 support.
 
zaniix said:
USB 3.1 mini Itx boards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130880
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157650
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128846
Click to expand...

Lesee here:
#1: Explicitly mentions Usb 3.1 Gen 1 so that's just the Type-C connector at usb 3.0 speeds.
#2: Same thing but isn't mentioned on the newegg page, it is mentioned on Asrock's site though.
#3: Looks like the only one that actually has a 3.1 controller on it.
 
FnordMan said:
Lesee here:
#1: Explicitly mentions Usb 3.1 Gen 1 so that's just the Type-C connector at usb 3.0 speeds.
#2: Same thing but isn't mentioned on the newegg page, it is mentioned on Asrock's site though.
#3: Looks like the only one that actually has a 3.1 controller on it.
Click to expand...

Forgot about that Gen 1 thing, deceptive marketing IMHO.

Looks like that Gigabyte board is decent though and they should have thee actual Intel USB controller too.
 
tankman1989 said:
I'm building a small mini-ITX pc and I'd love it to have usb 3.1 but can't find any MOBO's that have it and fit my needs. Does anyone know why it isn' t used more often and when it might become more prevelant?
Click to expand...

Who needs it at present?

Hardware.info used two mSata Samsung 850 EVO's to proof a point about sequential read and write of two of those drives RAID 0'd in a USB 3.1 enclosure (it was faster than over USB 3.0)
See;
https://youtu.be/IFgs_6TteYk?t=8m44s

Too bad 4K QD32 is only about 8% compared to just connecting to SATA. If you want fast external storage, use eSata.
This is what a single drive gets, on SATA, w/o USB;
cdm-msata.jpg


As for your question; as soon as Intel implements it in their chipsets, so not for another year at least.
 
jcvjcvjcvjcv said:
Who needs it at present?

Hardware.info used two mSata Samsung 850 EVO's to proof a point about sequential read and write of two of those drives RAID 0'd in a USB 3.1 enclosure (it was faster than over USB 3.0)
See;
https://youtu.be/IFgs_6TteYk?t=8m44s

Too bad 4K QD32 is only about 8% compared to just connecting to SATA. If you want fast external storage, use eSata.
This is what a single drive gets, on SATA, w/o USB;
cdm-msata.jpg


As for your question; as soon as Intel implements it in their chipsets, so not for another year at least.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Because USB 3.1 is still processor-oriented just like USB 3.0, it still has relatively high latency. You can improve sequential throughput with UASP, but this does almost nothing for random throughput.

You're better-off sticking with SATA, or paying the premium for Thunderbolt if every little microsecond counts. At least Intel looks to be saving Thunderbolt via USB C. You can even use standard cheap USB 3 cables to carry Thunderbolt (at half rate), but it will still have it's extremely low latency.

So yeah, the whole mess will come together in one cheap package in another 5 to 10 years or so. But it's anyone's guess if people will actually care enough about the improved random access to add Thunderbolt support to their external USB C SSDs.

EDIT: On the flip side, for the use case as a NAS, USB 3.1 will still be limited by Gigabit Ethernet for another 10 years. So don't let the low random throughput stop you from using an external USB 3.0 SSD for storage and streaming video.
 
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