Friday, June 2nd 2023
MSI First Motherboard Maker to offer USB4 Add-in Card with 100 W USB-PD
At Computex 2023, MSI was showing off its USB4 100 W Expansion Card—also known as the MS-4489—which is the first officially announced USB4 add-in card in the market. MSI didn't specify the actual chip being used, but we've verified that the card is based on ASMedia's ASM4242 USB4 host controller. Just as with Thunderbolt cards, the MS-4489 needs to be connected internally to the motherboard with a cable that handles some of the communication with interfaces that can be routed over PCIe and this is the reason for the lower pin-header on the card. We're not sure what the USB 2.0 pin-header is for, as on Thunderbolt cards, this would be an input, but the ASM4242 supports native support for USB 2.0, unlike Thunderbolt, but it could be a USB 2.0 output.
What makes this card stand out compared to MSI's Thunderbolt 4 card is that it offers 100 Watt USB PD support on the primary USB-C port, with the secondary port delivering up to 27 Watts of power. As with Thunderbolt add-in cards, the MS-4489 relies on a pair of full-size DP inputs if you want to use DP Alt mode over USB-C to connect displays to the card. To be able to deliver this much power, MSI has added a 6-pin graphics cards style power connector to the card to be able to deliver enough power to the USB-C ports. Another oddity with the card is that it has a physical PCIe x8 slot, but it's only wired up for PCIe x4. This could limit compatibility on motherboards that lack either an open ended PCIe x4 slot or a x16 slot that's wired up for four lanes of PCIe. We're expecting to see more products like this later in the year from all the other motherboard manufacturers and maybe even some third parties.
What makes this card stand out compared to MSI's Thunderbolt 4 card is that it offers 100 Watt USB PD support on the primary USB-C port, with the secondary port delivering up to 27 Watts of power. As with Thunderbolt add-in cards, the MS-4489 relies on a pair of full-size DP inputs if you want to use DP Alt mode over USB-C to connect displays to the card. To be able to deliver this much power, MSI has added a 6-pin graphics cards style power connector to the card to be able to deliver enough power to the USB-C ports. Another oddity with the card is that it has a physical PCIe x8 slot, but it's only wired up for PCIe x4. This could limit compatibility on motherboards that lack either an open ended PCIe x4 slot or a x16 slot that's wired up for four lanes of PCIe. We're expecting to see more products like this later in the year from all the other motherboard manufacturers and maybe even some third parties.
14 Comments on MSI First Motherboard Maker to offer USB4 Add-in Card with 100 W USB-PD
It's still vastly superior to Intel's Thunderbolt 4 solutions which are still using PCIe 3.0.
For DP, is it DP 1.4 or DP 2.1 Alt Mode?
Depending on the requirements for GPU bandwidth it's a solution.
Shame its not x8 with 4 USB/TB4 ports. Curious why they wired x8 card into x4 mode. Perhaps that's some prototype or little brother of full fat quad USB4 controller.
Anyway, as long as it is universal card - so it doesn't require special proprietary header on the motherboard - I'm all :thumbsup: on this one.
I'd expect second gen chip to comply with revised USB4 spec, increase PCIe throughput to 64 Gbps per port and introduce DP 2.1 interface at 80 Gbps.
www.asmedia.com.tw/product/e20zx49yU0SZBUH5/363Zx80yu6sY3XH2
Maybe I'm being obtusely naive when hoping for an AIC where the chip on the board does all, and any crazy communications are all handled over *gasp.... the PCIe slot. Especially when thing like "PCIe tunneling"are thrown around. Guess it's time to dig into the specs and see how off I am.
It's something I guess though.