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@ 2011/03/28USB 3.0 is all around us these days. It's in our motherboards, our PC enclosures, and our external hard drive docks. It's even in some of our laptops—provided they don't have a glowing piece of fruit on the back, at least. That's all well and good, but what if, like me, you put together a PC just before the USB 3.0 craze?
There are two avenues available to folks in this situation. First, you could bide your time until your next motherboard purchase, at which point getting something with a couple of built-in USB 3.0 ports is pretty much guaranteed... as is the likely fact that those ports will be hanging off a third-party controller chip, because both Intel and AMD are dragging their feet on chipset support. Two, you could shell out 30 bucks for a USB 3.0 adapter, which will offer the same number of ports and probably the same controller chip in the form of a PCI Express x1 card, and get your SuperSpeed on much sooner.
There are two avenues available to folks in this situation. First, you could bide your time until your next motherboard purchase, at which point getting something with a couple of built-in USB 3.0 ports is pretty much guaranteed... as is the likely fact that those ports will be hanging off a third-party controller chip, because both Intel and AMD are dragging their feet on chipset support. Two, you could shell out 30 bucks for a USB 3.0 adapter, which will offer the same number of ports and probably the same controller chip in the form of a PCI Express x1 card, and get your SuperSpeed on much sooner.
