HP Proliant DL380 G5 USB 3.0 card support?

[RobClarke41]

Hi All,

As the title states I'm after a USB 3.0 card for a Proliant DL380 G5.  From what I've read it seems that there is no official HP USB 3.0 card yet?  This means I will be buying an aftermarket one.  On the many forums I've been through I can see that people has fitted USB 3.0 cards to Proliant servers with varying degrees of success.  Some have got them working, others not at all and many seem to have the problem where the fans speed up 50% as the system cannot get thermal data from the card so ramps up the fans as a precaution.

Does anyone know of a working USB 3.0 card for Proliant servers or even better does someone have this running in their setup?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Kind Regards

Rob

[waaronb]

Technically, any USB 3.0 add-on card that works with the PCI-e or PCI-X slots of the server should work just fine (I'm assuming you have the normal PCI-E riser in there).

What you mentioned about fans running full speed, I wouldn't know since I don't tend to add non-HP cards to my systems, but I guess if other people report that problem, you're probably going to have it too.

You could try asking a more generic question (or Google search) about adding *any* 3rd party cards to a Proliant, not just USB 3.0, because you might find out more information about how that affects the HP thermal management and any potential solutions/options. I don't know about that personally so I can't help with that aspect. :)

[RbBsmn]

There is indeed no official USB 3.0 pci-card that is supported for ProLiant servers.
However people are using 3rd party cards which often work, but when they cause issues HP will not be able to help you, even if they worked for a long time before without any problems.

[RobClarke41 · Accepted solution]

Thanks I bought a Startech card in the end that works perfectly. (

PEXUSB3S4

)

[waaronb]

Thanks for sharing the info.  Hopefully that will help anyone else looking for a USB 3 add in card on their own system.

[appsoftint]

I bought a no-name 2-port USB 3.0 card off eBay and that works great. I had previously tried an Orico 7XUSB3.0 Card but that didn't work.

Note that the card is identified as an Etron USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller and uses a Microsoft Driver on Windows Server 2012 R2.

The important features are the Etron chipset and the lack of an external power connector. I used the low-profile bracket and inserted it into the PCIe 2 slot.