The USB, or Universal Serial Bus, standard is currently the most popularly used external interface for computer systems. It is used as an interface for devices ranging from input devices like mice and keyboards, to storage devices. It's only natural and inevitable that an integral technology like USB would advance with a new version. Being an industry standard for external connectivity, its new version should be backwards compatible with old versions, but it still should be a progression forward. That's what USB 3.0 is today. While the connectors used and the data signal are backwards compatible, USB 3.0 is a huge step forward in terms of performance. While this means little for low bandwidth hardware like input devices, it's important for storage devices like external hard drives and flash drives Realistically, USB 2.0 storage devices topped out in the 30MB/s range, while eSATA and Firewire 800 left those devices in the dust. Now with USB 3.0, the USB standard is competitive again. Today we'll be looking at an add-in card that allows you to easily add USB 3.0 compabilities to a computer system. The add-in card is Vantec's SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCI-e host card (UGT PC312). It's a PCI-e 2.0 1x card that adds two USB 3.0 ports.