StarTech.com 2 port PCI Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card with UASP Support - 1 Internal 1 External

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

For £29.66 ex-VAT, this is a sensible “get more USB into the box” card rather than anything you’d use for serious I/O workloads. The big win is that it gives you a clean, stable internal/external USB 3.0 setup and it supports UASP—so when you’re using a proper UASP-friendly SSD enclosure or drive, transfers are typically noticeably snappier and more consistent than older USB 3.0 adapters. In day-to-day reseller reality, it’s a good fit for office desktops, small server-ish machines, or lab PCs where you just need extra USB without faffing about with hubs and flaky front-panel connections.

That said, I wouldn’t buy this if your expectation is “network adapter” performance—this sits in the USB world, not true networking. Also, performance will only be as good as your storage device/enclosure; cheap external drives/enclosures often don’t actually benefit from UASP, so you may not see much beyond “works reliably.” If you need high throughput for multiple concurrent external drives, you’ll be better off with a more premium multi-port PCIe USB controller; for single-drive use cases, though, it’s hard to beat the value.