Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.2 Type A PCIe Card (Four SuperSpeed 10Gbps USB Connectors)

The card was easy to install. Performance measurements are well beyond my expectations. Brought new life into the Mac Tower for increasing data rates to/from my USB devices. I also installed a 3.0 hub that allows me to install multiple USB drives on the first port of the card. On the second port I connected a 3.1 RAID (4 drive system) from OWC which runs independently form the first port. This allows maximum speed from two independent ports on the card. Highly recommend the addition of this card for increasing the usefulness of portable USB drives and backup systems!

I got this to use on my 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 running Yosemite. I purchased a mediasonic USB 3n1 Gen2 external enclosure and wanted the best speed. I already own several mediasonic USB 3.0 enclosures. I have been using a FirmTek 4 port USB 3.0 PCIe card with these externals for several years without issues. After installing this, I connected 3 mediasonic 3.0 and one 3.1 enclosures. I immediately had issues. All the drives kept unmounting and giving me errors. Some would read as connected but wouldn't mount. Some would unmount while writing to the drive, which is not good for data! Sadly I uninstalled it and went back to my FirmTek. Fast forward a month. After heavy research, I FINALLY gave in and updated my firmware to 5,1 and OS to High Sierra. After this I decided to try the card again. I reconnected everything the same way as before and voila! Worked perfectly! No issues at all! The speeds are fast, but limited by my processor but better then b4. So far it's been a week of heavy use transferring close to 100 yes 100TB of video and photos across drives. So far no disconnects. I have since purchased a 4x Sonnet USB-C card which I now have the mediasonic 3.1 connected too. All working flawlessly now. Hopefully I am ready for another few years before needing another major upgrade!

All the drivers work and there is no issue at all. Great to access storage, but doesn't seem to grant access to using my controller.

I installed this in my HP Z4 G4 workstation running the latest version of Windows 10 Pro. The Device Manager correctly identified it but the card was unresponsive with the standard Windows driver. Sonnet advised me to use updated ASMedia drivers. Those caused my machine to crash almost immediately after install. Never having had an issue like this with a USB adapter card, I assumed the card was bad or incompatible. Turns out it was the latter. I replaced the Sonnet with StarTech adapter card that used the same ASMedia 1142 chipset. I experienced the exact same results. StarTech support indicated that they had received multiple similar reports from customers trying to install their card in an HP Z4 G4 workstation. Bottom line: it appears the ASMedia chipset is incompatible with the Z4. There is a previous gen StarTech USB adapter that does not use an ASMedia chipset. Its max speed is 5Gbps rather than 10Gbps but it has four independent lanes so with four devices connected the speed is the same as this model. It is less expensive and can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Express-SuperSpeed-Dedicated-Channels/dp/B00HJZEA2S/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=PEXUSB3S44V&qid=1580503310&sr=8-2 I've got one on order. I'll try to remember to report back with my results. UPDATE: The card referenced above is also incompatible with HP Z workstations. Both ASMedia chipsets and Renesas (NEC) chipsets are problematic. The chipset that does work (confirmed) is made by Texas Instruments. I have only been able to find them used on older adapter cards like the SIIG JU-P40212-S1 that are based on the USB 3.0 spec rather than 3.1 or 3.2.

Recently purchased a PCIe USB card from Amazon. This card prevents windows from booting. I removed the card and now my computer boots properly. I do not have the original packaging, so I cannot return to Amazon, and I would like RMA consideration. Below is the card I purchased. Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.2 Type A PCIe Card (Four SuperSpeed 10Gbps USB Connectors) -- Regarding the issue: this may be that the USB devices are pulling more than 2A of power per device. The Allegro cards include resettable fuses built into these cards’ ports that will trip when a connected device pulls more than 2A of power. Have you tried connecting one device to port 1, and another to port 4? See our tech note here for more details, and how to reset these fuses for testing. Your PC computer, or the USB peripheral, may require additional setup for best connection usage. Have you also tried updating the BIOS of the computer, as well as the USB and motherboard chipset drivers? Does the USB peripheral have (or require) a firmware update for optimized usage? Is there additional USB software required or recommended for use of these? We have seen that some complex USB devices require firmware/software updates for use, otherwise, errors (like no connection, or, a BSOD) can occur when using more complicated devices connected to the same domain. You can also enter BIOS/EFI and look for advanced options like ‘PCI > ‘Auto’ or similar and set this to ‘Gen2’ then test again. Regrettably, Microsoft lags in supporting new, faster controller chips. You can try downloading the latest driver here. You may also find additional downloads from Microsoft directly. See here for additional, albeit older, downloads. Your OEM may also have other drivers available directly from their website. Look for the drivers for the ASM3142 chip. These are the chips used in the Allegro Pro cards. Similar drivers (ASM1142, ASM2142) may also help. See the Device Manager for more information.

I've never opened up my Mac for anything. When I've needed to add a hard drive or a cooling fan I always had a friend who did that sort of thing for me. But I no longer live near that person, so I decided to take a chance and do this myself. DO NOT WORRY. It is easy. Simple as pie. There are YouTube videos showing you what to do. Took me a couple of minutes total. And now I have some fast, modern USB ports that transfer data MUCH faster than the original ports on the computer did. I'm so glad I bought this. I wish I'd done this years ago. Seriously.

It worked well in my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 3.46GHz Intel 6-core computer PCIe slot. The overall fit and quality of this PCIe made it a well design and function with quality connections. Definitely better than the stock USB 2.0 on this Mac which now has USB 3.1 making it more reliable!!!

I have a trusty, upgraded, dual core 2009 Mac Pro. It's been flashed with the 5,1 firmware and I installed OpenCore to fully take advantage of it and upgrade to Catalina (not going for Big Sur yet). I had a previous Sonnet 3.0 card and replaced it with this. I'm not getting the full potential of the Samsung T7 drive, but it did pretty much double my transfer speed (both read and write). I get about 680 write and 660 read.. not the full potential of the drive, but that's a due to the dated architecture of the computer and not a fault of the card. I'm very happy with this and it worked out of the box with no drivers needed.

Funktioniert ohne abzustuerzen, Braucht aber einen Reboot nach dem USB Geraete angeschlossen wurden.

The Sonnet Allegro Pro is a seriously impressive USB expansion card. What makes this card special is its architecture: the four USB 3.2 ports are split across two independent channels, which means you can run multiple high-speed devices at the same time without them fighting for bandwidth. Copying data from one port group to the other is incredibly fast and consistent — it feels like having two separate USB controllers in one card. In real-world use, this makes a huge difference. I regularly connect multiple SSDs, card readers, and capture devices at once, and performance stays stable instead of collapsing the moment you plug in a second device. Transfers between devices on different channels are especially quick, which is exactly what you want in a professional workflow. Build quality is excellent, as you’d expect from Sonnet. It installs cleanly, is instantly recognized by the system, and just works without drivers or fiddling. No glitches, no disconnects, no weird behavior. If you need serious USB performance in a desktop or workstation, this card is on a completely different level from cheap multi-port USB cards. It’s built for real work, and it shows. Five stars.

Product as described and delivered quickly

Ottimo prodotto, Sonnet rimane un costruttore di device pro.

I have a maxxed-out 2010 MacPro 5.1, 12-core 3.46Gghz with 80Gb RAM (currently has High Sierra OSX) computer for video and VFX work. I use a combination of Sata SSDs, and latest generation NVMe drives internally, and have been recently trialling the 'Anyoyo' aluminium external Enclosure Box cases for my spare M.2 NVMe sticks (Has USB-C out to USB-A SuperSpeed connection). I use these for Disk and Preview caching within Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects CC 2019. As a comparison my internally PCIe-mounted, AHCI NVMe gets (real world) 1.5GB/s READ/WRITE for my main Work Drive. A normal HD Drive would do about 80Mb/s. Up until today I was using a standard (cheap £25) 4-port Inatek KT4004 USB PCIe card internally, like many MacPro 5.1 owners. I was getting real-world 370Mb/s WRITE speed with its USB 3.0 interface on my Anyoyo NVMe external drives. Replacing the Inatek with this flagship Sonnet Allegro PRO 3.1 Gen2, has instantly **DOUBLED** my write speed on the NVMe's from 370Mb/s to 741Mb/s. My jaw is on the floor. It's not 10Gb/Sec or any theoretical maximum, but that blows ANYTHING I've ever seen on existing USB 3.0 Superspeed before and for Premiere and After Effects is tremendous. Seriously, for £150 quid, this is an amazing and simple upgrade for a 9yo computer. I spent hours researching all the various competitors out there, and folks, this is the one to go for. Yes, it's expensive compared to the £100 quid next-in-line but when you compare the specs, and the compatibility, it's a no-brainer. PRO TIP: For maximum iOS/iPhone compatibility on MacOS, defo load in Sonnet's extra "dskcd-usbpwr-103" driver software to the Mac (installs and runs perfectly on High Sierra). This works beautifully on the MacPro 5.1 and i thoroughly recommend it as an upgrade. The proof is in my photo attached to my review. A++ Sonnet!