These videos are fantastic. I like how he just keeps it real with no BS. The subtle humor is well delivered too.

3:11 PCI slot color matches the new 3.1 USB plug color. Conspiracy intensifies...

Your videos are very 90's in their style which is pretty amusing, but they're very informative and concise nonetheless. Thanks for sharing! I'll have to look for this on motherboards when I build a new PC. =)

Great Video as always, i really like how much Details you Show us and Point to the fine Details ^^ Continue your work please !!

Who remembers when USB 2.0 used to be fast? lol

I really appreciate your videos. They sort out so much of the confusion that derives from never ending evolving technology of pc's. Thanks for your work.

Great job as always. Your channel has become my favorite source for information about computers and hardware, thank you for your contribution. I wish I found your channel earlier but now that I have I am having fun digging in and checking out all of your fine videos. Thanks again!

My newest addition to my sub list. Currently here - been binging Chris’s channel from video #1 for a week now ;) how I didn’t find this years ago is beyond me! Loving the subtle humour and straightforward presentations

Always enjoying your videos, Chris.

Thank you for making an informative video. Also, thank you for NOT making it an hour long just to get to them important parts. Straight to the point.

Imagine all the pc components screaming Come on ! You can do it ! at the USB 2.0 port and data bus.

A very good presentation. SOlid facts without the fluff that some manufacturers try to throw in. Whenever I tune in I always find something interesting to learn and enjoy on your channel. I look forward to your upcoming videos no matter the subject. Thanks.

It was so informative and helpful . Please do continue your videos! Thank you

USB3.1 is a rev of USB3.0. Gen 2 is 10Gbs, Gen 1 is 5Gbs, USB3.0 no longer exists. USB3.1 applied to the Standard A, Standard B, and microB, Type C came later. USB3.1 did not increase power. USB Power Delivery is what provides the higher current. Rev 1 and 2 weren't accepted by the market. Rev 3, which was based on the USB Type C connector, has been accepted. USB Type C is the latest USB connector. Both ends are the same (no A & B side) and there is no top and bottom on the plug. USB Type C also allowed alternate protocols, and has been adopted by DisplayPort, rev 1.4, Thunderbolt, Rev 3, and HDMI is in the works. The design goal was for USB Type C to be the universal cable. The full feature Type C has 4 high speed channels, that supports 2 USB3.1, each requiring a TX and RX, or all 4 channels of DisplayPort. Those high speed pairs are specified for 20Gbs, which is why Thunderbolt 3 can operate at 40GBs, or a future USB 3.1, Gen 3.

I'm not sure why, but your transitions and channel music remind me of the early 2000's educational videos I watched in grade school.. its weird but I kinda like it. :P

I love your presentation and the way you explain! Very informative for a new tech guy like me

another awesome & very informative video! Thank you Christopher!

You are so British and so 90's but also very informative! Love it!

Very good and informative video. Well produced. Thanks.

Great explanation and demonstration! Cheers!

I really enjoy watching your videos, very well explained, good job ! ;)

06:16 I could recommend making a virtual RAM disk that you copy from. That ought to help fill the bandwith

Great info and tips - thanks for sharing

I like how unboxing and product placements are smoothly integrated without missing a beat.

Love your channel, thanks for the content.

Aahh this brings me back! I recall I may have found your channel by the video you did comparing usb 2.0 and 3.0

Quick, clear, and concise. Thank you.

I subscribed For full details and classic explanation for 2019 and beyond

great video man. im an IT from the philippines and i love your videos. keep it up!

Very interesting, easily understandable and enjoyable video.

You're making high quality content. Keep doing that !

excellent work mate! love it

the reason you can't see much difference between USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 in your setup because SATA connection bottle neck at 6Gbps which means even USB 3.1 has 10Gbps connection speed you will only get maximum of 6Gbps.

Excellent video.

Great Video chris

Dear Explaining Computer, thanks for an excellent explanation. pierre from New Mexico

Glad I found this for I have a 64 year old brother who said it is not worth worrying about 3.0 that it is not faster even though the PC I built him has 3.0 and 3.1 he will watch this even if I have to stand over him -- Thanks -- Also First 65 or Older

Excellent Chris as always! You answered every question I could have had. It was great to see the test done in a real world environment. What the consumer wants to know is "Will this work for me?" and "what kind of results can I expect?" You answered both questions with great skill and knowledge! My only question would be if you were using typical hard drives instead of solid state would the transfer be slower? I am stuck for now in the world of 2.0 just because I don't have any hardware that requires anything better yet. I do use external hard drives but I am not moving large data to them at this point, however this would be a perfect arrangement to do a backup on with the use of an adapter cable. Thanks again, you got me thinking which is a good thing. So are you retired from teaching yet? I know you were going in this direction, I didn't know if you are full time now on your other goals? I appreciate all you do! Rich

I am a bit late to the party but just wanted to say I like how detailed your video is! I am going to check out some more of your videos for sure! subbed

I have the exact same 3.1 card and you inspired me to fit it to my pc :)

I think you have proved the point that it is not really worth spending the money on 3.1 at the moment. Sure if buying a new motherboard then getting 3.1 on is fine, but not really worth getting a 3.1 card.

A USB connector going in both ways ... witchcraft I say.

Great video! Thanks once again! USB 3.1 Type C will really be useful in smartphone and external GPU docks for up coming laptops. It's an incredibly fast data transfer socket.

Thank you Sir, for sharing

very informative! thanks

I was happy to see this because I recently just built a new super-high performance rig with a motherboard that came with USB 3.1, and until I got the motherboard, I had no idea it existed! I was even happier to see that the adaptor you got was ASRock, because that's who I got my motherboard from! It came with two USB 3.1 slots in the back, but I don't have any devices that can use them, yet. I think I'm most excited that finally we have a mini-USB that is reversable! No more playing guessing games with which way to plug it in.

Chris, another very clear presentation of USB options. In the future, you might expand your USB presentations by adding a discussion of the "frame" improvements that occurred between USB 3.0 and USB 3.1, which were very similar to the "frame" improvements that occurred between PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 3.0. USB 3.1 adopted what is known as the 128b/132b "jumbo frame", which transmits a block of 16 bytes with the addition of 4 more control bits: 16 bytes @ 8 bits = 128 + 4 = 132 binary digits per frame. Similarly, PCIe 3.0 adopted the 128b/130b "jumbo frame", which transmits a block of 16 bytes with the addition of 2 more control bits: 16 bytes @ 8 bits = 128 + 2 = 130 binary digits per frame. The prior PCIe 2.0 and USB 3.0 standards still retained the 8b/10b "legacy frame": 1 byte @ 8 bits + 1 start bit + 1 stop bit = 10 bits per byte. These comparisons can be important, particularly if USB 3.1 hardware is not controlled with a software driver that supports the new 128b/132b "jumbo frame". I believe the 128b/132b "jumbo frame" is defined as a USB 3.1 "option" i.e. it's not a mandatory feature of the USB 3.1 specification. Given the obvious bandwidth increase that results from increasing the clock from 6G to 10G, it's quite strange that SSD manufacturers have not at least adopted PCIe 3.0's 8G clock and 128b/130b "jumbo frame". This one change would increase MAX HEADROOM from 600 MB/second (6G/10) to 984.6 MB/second (8G/8.125). And, when PCIe 4.0 becomes standard, then MAX HEADROOM increases again to 1,969.2 MB/second (16G/8.125). Instead, storage vendors are steering consumers to the M.2 form factor and the NVMe protocol. Hope this helps.

Good explained thanks! =)

i have a next bit robin with a type c port. got to tell you, the charging time when you give it 2 amps from a wall socket is heroic.

SATA 3 is 6Gb/s. That translates to theoretical 768 MB/s. I wonder if Your adapter is the bottleneck for the SSD. Maybe do a video on comparing different USB 3.0/3.1 disk adapters? Did some testing myself a while ago and the difference between adapters can be up to 50-100MB/s. Great video as always :)

To add to the confusion: USB 3.0 is also known as (rebranded) 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.1 is also known as 3.1 Gen 2 USB C also comes in 2.0 and 3.0/3.1Gen1 flavors as well.

Your channel is good

(7:40) - Wow, That USB 2.0 is sooooo sloooow I would love you to now copy the same file(s) over USB 1.0 Go on, Chris. You know you want to...

Awesome, I have been enjoying your regular videos. Tech websites have been very focused on the Type C connector, and I didn't even know there was a traditional 3.1.Do you think the traditional formed USB 3.1 plug will get much attention?

Good stuff.

Because a friend of mine keeps asking me to explain USB 3.1 Type C compared to Thunderbolt, which also uses a type C connector, I would love to see you do a video explaining the relationship between the two and why you can use USB-C devices with Thunderbolt. That way, when he keeps asking after I've already explained it, I can just keep sending him to your video.

Good channel ..keep it up

I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS KK

I have bought a similar card to fit onto my ASUS Z87 motherboard but the USB 3.1 card I got has external power connection which is always more ideal since it's more stable and can take advantage of USB-PD for compatible devices. Plus it has front panel connectors too for extra non power heavy devices like card readers, flash drives and dongles

i really love your videos , it reminds me of watching tomorrows world when i was younger :)

OW, THAT WAS FANTASTIC, NOT THAT I COULD DO IT, BUT IT REALLY WAS INTERESTING.

BTW, I do love your videos, I had never heard of a SBC before you. & I have been working in electronics - PCB manufacture mostly - from the early '70's. My first, non-specialized computer ran CPM, then later DOS, much later... then the OS changed so quickly... I remember when 8Kb was a large memory card, & 16 Kb the Max of the system... then later, with a S/W upgrade, 32Kb... now, I just bought some 64Gb USB 3 drives for almost nothing... home times change... in only 45 years... I wonder what the next 2,000 will bring :-)

The method of the disk format will create a difference in the speed Disk part Fat32 with a unit size of 4k will a bit different to NTFS with a unit size of 16k

Mr Barnatt!! Could you please make a video about thunderbolt (types, generations)? Finally, I would be grateful if you could mention 1) the different connections between thunderbolt cables-ports and mini displays cables-ports and 2) the different connections between thunderbolt cables-ports and usb type c cables-ports. Best regards, Stavros

Because you have 8GB of RAM you are able to create a storage for 3GB file directly in RAM , so you can compare r/w speed of (RAM to SATA or RAM to USB)

Lol, I was scratching my head about why the hell my 3.0 external HDD connector is so large then I see in the video it's because it has to carry all the 3.0 additional data lines, I thought it was so large because it consumed more power so it needed more pins!. Thanks for clarifying all my confusions. Cheers :)

biggest problem with USB-C right now... I forgot my phone charger on night shift 2 weeks ago, working in a large media company, building full of tech, all kinds of Macs, PCs, servers, portable USB 3.0 drives... had to turn my phone onto extreme power saving though, not a single USB-C cable in the building... the toils of an early adopter... lol.

Magnetic connectors please! It takes about 6 months usually to kill those tiny ass connectors. At least my 3.0 connector lasted pretty long.

Also, Mr. Malik has made a good point. A better benchmark is to run ATTO separately on a 6G SSD, a USB 3.0 drive, and a USB 3.1 drive, and/or to READ from and WRITE to a ramdisk using all 3 devices. Then, you can compare the efficiency of each device, as compared to its maximum theoretical bandwidth: "efficiency" is the percent of MAX HEADROOM that is actually achieved. With a 6G SSD, MAX HEADROOM is 6G/10 =600 MB/second. With a USB 3.0 "legacy frame", MAX HEADROOM is 5G/10 = 500 MB/second. With a USB 3.1 "jumbo frame", MAX HEADROOM is 10G/8.25 = 1,212 MB/second. The latter divisor of 8.25 is calculated by dividing 132 bits / 16 bytes = 8.25 bits per byte in the 128b/132b USB 3.1 "jumbo frame". You might try repeating your tests, but instead substitute a fast ramdisk for your Samsung SSD: in that way, your results won't be hampered by the Samsung SSD. Lastly, you can extrapolate your results to future PCIe 4.0 SSDs that utilize a 16 GHz clock instead of an 8 GHz clock. Thus, a standard M.2 NVMe SSD now uses x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes. At PCIe 4.0, x4 lanes @ 16G / 8.125 bits per byte = 7,876.9 MB/second; and, we can scale up from there with RAID-0 arrays using multiples of these PCIe 4.0 SSDs. p.s. There are a few ramdisk freeware programs available now e.g. DATARAM is one (the free version is limited to 1GB of RAM): www.dataram.com/

"AS-Rock" dammit. never thought of that name, i've always called it like ass-rock...

Good channel

You could do more tests, just create a white noise file directly on disk. Or try random access. Or copy from raid 0 to raid 0. For data applications this is great, can push a lot of sensor data through that. Also makes it really easy for connecting mini PCs on a 10GBe network. What is the latency of this?

Can someone please explain to me how USB 2 has a transfer speed of 480Mbps and USB 3 even faster but all I ever get when using them is something around 25 Mbps or so at best? I transfer data between an external HDD and my PC. Even at his own test at 6:39 USB 2 only shows around 25 Mbps....

Did you test the transfer speed using the USB-C interface? I would imagine it should be identical to your USB 3.1 test results but I'm not one to assume. Also it's worth noting that though USB 3.1 has a max transfer speed of 10GB/s, the max speed for SATA3 is 6GB/s. Great videos by the way.

My motherboard has a usb 3.1 rev 2 header. My case has a 3.0 blue header that connects two usb 3.0 ports on the case. I purchased a cable that plugs into the 3.1 r2 header and converts that to a blue 3.0 male. If I connect this to the 3.0 case header will this give me two 3.0 ports? Is it backwards compatible?

Fun watching this in 2022 in retrospect

Seeing those USB 2.0 speeds made me cringe because I only have a laptop with USB 2.0 on it >.

so with the c connector on one end the usb 3.1 male is on the other end right? what use is that can you tranfer data from one pc to another that way?

A very useful tutorial, thank you. As my (twisted) logic and learning goes, inserting another pci-e card in a slot shares the bandwidth, even when it's not being used and so the 'cripple' to the system for me is not worth the upgrade of saving a few seconds. Also, if I were to use a pci-e slot in this way, I think I'd go for M.2 or U.2. If you have any chance, Chris, to test out M.2/U.2 against SSD, I'd be very interested because this would mean much faster bootup times etc, if the claims are to be believed. Finally, I wonder why it seems pci-e is not hot-swappable? This would allow us to configure the base unit exactly as we need it for each session. Thank you again for a great video! I hope you have a great week!

What powers up the usb ports on the motherboard? I ask because my pc case doesn't have usb 3.0 ports but my motherboard has usb 3.0 and 3.1 built in on the back of the board. I only have a usb 2.0 wire connected to my motherboard but my usb 3.0 and 3.1 ports seem to work okay. But would they work better if I had a 20pin usb 3.0 wire plugged into my board header instead of the 2.0? It has me a little confused.

What I'm really looking forward to with USB 3.1 is the reversible connector and the larger power supply ability - the speed is actually secondary to me. Although I do wonder if my gaming PC could do a better job at pushing out enough performance to saturate the connection.

thanks to this video

M.2 Would be a great way to test the speeds of the interfaces. Only problem is getting an enclosure that it's garbage.

Nice intro, but a little misleading in places. The problem is the suggestion that 100W power and USB-C connectors are part of USB 3.1. They aren't. USB-C is just a new connector. USB 3.1 is a signalling standard. 100W power delivery is part of a new power delivery standard USB-PD. All are independent. So for example a device using a USB-C connector doesn't have to be running USB 3.1, and indeed there are already devices out there with USB-C connectors running only USB 3.0, or even just USB 2. In fact USB-C isn't confined to USB signalling at all. Other protocols such as DisplayPort or the new Thunderbolt 3 can also run over USB-C connectors. Also USB-PD isn't confined to USB-C connectors, or devices using USB 3.1. A device can use USB-PD to supply 100W over a USB-A standard connector to a device with a USB-B standard connector (e.g.: a printer) at the other end of the cable, as long as both devices support USB-PD. Note however that there are restrictions - USB-A can only be a power source compared to bi-directional power via USB-C, and also USB Micro-A and USB Micro-B connectors are restricted to 60W. Bottom line is that for any device you have to consider separately (a) what connector is it using, (b) what signalling standard(s) does it support, and (c) what power delivery capability does it support. All very confusing for the typical consumer. Even more so when you consider that the cables between the ports are also different, particularly when using USB-C connectors. The cable itself may introduce signalling or bandwidth limitations, even to the extent of no signalling support at all in a dedicated USB-C power delivery cable. One other point - testing USB 3.1 using SATA devices doesn't effectively test USB 3.1 as SATA has rather lower signalling bandwidth (6Gb/sec compared with 10Gb/sec). Hence you don't get much improvement compared to USB3.0 with SATA. It's only when you used with something much faster than SATA that USB 3.1 throughput can fully be exploited. A currently available example might be a USB 3.1 device that contains two SATA disks striped together (RAID 0), such as the SanDisk Extreme 900 series. The conclusion still stands though - devices not limited by a single SATA connected disk are still rare and so the benefits of upgrading to USB 3.1 are limited. The benefits of USB-C and/or USB-PD are perhaps more useful, an example being using USB-C with USB-PD to connector a monitor to a laptop whilst charging the laptop (no USB 3.1 involved!).

I know that this is a bit late, but Would it make any more of a difference if you were to remove SATA out of the equation and copy to an M2 ie Samsung 960 EVO

yes transferring data from disk to disk is limited by the speed of the discs and not by the USB three point one port and all that but could you run say two screens from one USB port? so if you had a laptop with the new standard and wanted to add a couple of USB to HDMI ports for some screens would it be fast enough?

100 watts out of it ? Impressive. Hope the cable can manage it though. The future ? Maybe automatic quantum secured wireless transfers.

Good gravy...does this mean the days of a "de-facto universal" phone charger are over?! _Just great._

The video was very nice but 2 comments: 1. A detail about usb 3.1 gen1 and gen2 should be mentioned because it's a marketing thing. 2. Maybe if you tried a motherboard with onboard usb 3.1 would be different from the add-in card. Again nice video, keep up the good work!

I am so glad they invented the USB C connector, my backup drive has a worn out USB 3 connector and cable, not a very good backup at all :( Since it's only a little faster I am guessing it will work fine if I got a new drive and used it with the existing blue USB 3 ports?

Hello, Thank-you for this Nice video. What is the real trueput of the sata adapter ?

Does this card have any limitations? For example, will it go into ANY motherboard's x4 slot or just one capable of something in particular?

I'm just wondering that with a small form factor that the USB-C has, how much thermal issues are with delivering 100W at 5A and 20V. Even 2A micro usb connectors sometimes have problems at 2A, so I imagine some problems arising at 5A. Also, another question, since the USB 3.1 has to be downwards compatible, how does it switch to the 20V mode? I'm assuming it stays in the 5V mode unless it recognizes a specific 3.1 device and knows it can switch to 20V. So if I simply want to power something off the 3.1 port with 20V I can not do that with just a cable - I need to do the software handshake to get it into the 20V mode. Is the USB-C also compatible with this 5V mode or is it already 20V by default?

A USB connector that without fail will go in on the first try. We truly are living in the future.

Excellent excellent video! I'd put together my entire rig and couldn't for the life of me find a slot to put that little bugger, in even though it came with my motherboard. I'm about to crack it back open and look for that slot.

3:24 or a small piece of Blue Tack on the screw head to hold it on

Streaming HiDef, (possibly 4K) rapidly moving footage at 60fps from a capture device, into your computer for it to compress to an Mpeg4 stream it records on your SSD is the application which requires something like USB3.1 or Thunderbolt.

I really like 3.1 for the new micro connector. Micro 2.0 is garbage!

Is it possible to connect 2 computers via a USB-C cable (and when what kind? Thunderbolt?)? So that I could transfer files like on to a ext. harddisc. Or to maybe even combine the processing power of the two (e.g. when I have Adobe PremierePro on both, to render with the processing power of 2 (or more) computers at once. Is something like that possible in a way? Thank you very much

If I ignore the accent, his speech reminds me of James T. Kirk. But the video was very informative.