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Hot!MSI First Motherboard Maker with USB4 Add-in Card with 100 W USB-PD

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rjohnson11
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2023/06/01 23:59:49 (permalink)
https://www.techpowerup.com/309532/msi-first-motherboard-maker-with-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.
 
I would think 100 watts would be enough.
 


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    Hoggle
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    Re: MSI First Motherboard Maker with USB4 Add-in Card with 100 W USB-PD 2023/06/02 02:55:46 (permalink)
    It will be interesting to see if motherboard are really made with a 8x slot to support it now that SLI is dead. It is nice though to be able to plug in and get 100w since a lot of laptops are now using USB-C for charging.

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    transdogmifier
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    Re: MSI First Motherboard Maker with USB4 Add-in Card with 100 W USB-PD 2023/06/02 04:11:25 (permalink)
    Very cool, but cost prohibitive for a while ....I think I'll be fine with what's on my current board
    for quite some time.
     

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