Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-4PM-E)
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FAQ (11)
IDArticle TitlePost Date
756 Do the Sonnet USB 2.0 or USB 3 cards support the Apple SuperDrive?Apr-02-22
759 My bus-powered USB 3 drive or SSD will not reliably mount or transfer data.Dec-14-19
817 Storage connected to a USB 3 PCIe card (or Tango combo card) gives an macOS error message upon wake from sleep.May-12-20
933 What versions of macOS support Allegro USB 3 cards?Apr-02-22
All Sonnet Allegro (and Fusion Dual 2.5" SSD RAID) PCIe Cards use a macOS pre-installed driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.10 in the MacPro 3,1; 4,1 & 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 Expansion chassis.

These cards are not compatible with macOS 10.11, due to a bug in the Apple driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.12 (2)-10.14 in the MacPro 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.15-macOS 12 in the 2019 Mac Pro and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.
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Notes:

- These cards are not compatible with Thunderbolt 1 expansion chassis.

- macOS 10.12 erroneously reports a 5Gbps connection when connected at 10Gbps.

- The maximum Apple-supported OS for the Mac Pro 3,1 and 4,1 is OS X 10.11. Dosdude1 offers patchers to allow installation of newer versions of macOS. The Apple USB 3 driver in these patched newer versions will support the Allegro cards.

- Performance of the Allegro cards may be limited by the Mac Pro 5,1 PCIe 2.0 bandwidth.


 
956 What generations of Thunderbolt chassis do Sonnet Allegro PCIe cards support?Apr-02-22
971 One or more of my ports has stopped working on my USB 3 card.Aug-24-22
1080 What is the difference between USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2?Apr-02-22
1099 What makes Sonnet USB 3.2 Cards more reliable than other USB 3 cards?Apr-02-22
The uniqueness of Sonnet USB 3.2 products is each USB port has a USB power switch (MOSFET) that manages and monitors the current flow of the USB port. The USB switch limits the current draw when a new USB device is connected minimizing the voltage droop of the main USB 5V power rail, thereby protecting devices connected to other USB ports from going offline because of port power droop. The USB switch is also a very effective current limiter that does not degrade over trips the way a resettable poly-fuse would.
 
1144 Why does Sonnet use only PCIe 2 to connect the two controllers on these 4-port USB 3.2 Gen 2 cards?Apr-18-21
We connect each USB 3 controller with two lanes of PCIe 2. Each controller has 1000MB/s bandwidth which is enough bandwidth for the fastest devices you can connect, such as USB 3.1 Gen 2 NVMe SSDs. Because the read/write bandwidth is independent, on one controller you can be reading from one SSD at 1000MB/s, and writing to another at 1000MB/s, plus the same on the 2nd controller for an aggregate transfer rate of 4000MB/s. What makes this possible is that Sonnet uses the advanced ASMedia 3142 Controller that supports Multiple INs, which means that reads can commence on one port before a write has competed on the other port.

A PCIe 3 Bridge chip would cost you $50 more, but would give you incremental performance only if you needed to continually simultaneously read--or simultaneously write--to four USB 3.1 Gen 2 NVMe devices, a very unusual use case.

 
1149 How to configure Linux to use Allegro Pro USB card models USB3C-4PM-E and USB3-PRO-4P10-EMay-04-21
1168 If I put a usb 2.0 and 3.0 device on the same controller will the speeds for the 3.0 device drop to 2.0 like older split-port controllers?Dec-07-21