USB 3.0 has a lot of promise for devices that need large amounts of bandwidth. So far we've only been given a glimpse of what the specification has to offer. The big marketing claim for USB 3.0 has always been 'up to 10x USB 2.0 speeds', but in our real world testing we've only been able to achieve around 200MB/s. With USB 2.0 topping out at around 35MB/s on a good day, 10x USB 2.0 has yet to be achieved. There are several reasons for this, but what it really comes down to is PCIe bandwidth and what current chipsets are able to make available after all those video cards, SATA, eSATA and USB ports take up. On top of the bandwidth limitations is the current crop of USB 3.0 controller and bridge chips. Many do not offer the 10x bandwidth we have been promised.

Late last year Crucial sent over several RealSSD C300 256GB drives to use for testing our storage products. The RealSSD C300 was the fastest drive available on the market at that time, and to this day is still considered one of the fastest SSDs money can buy. The C300 allows us to push products to their limits and find the ceiling of performance. As we stated, USB 3.0 on our X58A-UD7 has been limited to around 200MB/s....but that was before the Thermaltake MAX 5G graced us.