SilverStone FP37 Front Bay Card Reader

Category: Multifunction Panels and Fan Controllers

Created on Saturday, 21 April 2012 16:54

Written by Steve

Installation & Testing:
Installation of the FP37 is incredibly easy - it's as plug-and-play as things get. Simply screw it into an available 3.5" drive bay, plug the USB 3.0 header in, turn on your system and you're good to go. The FP37 is bus powered and does not require any additional drivers that aren't already available in your operating system. The FP37 is compatible with Windows XP and newer systems as well as Mac OS 9.x and newer. Remember that you will need a USB 3.0 card or motherboard which supports the internal USB 3.0 header. If USB 3.0 isn't available on your system then you could always buy a USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 internal header adapter and use the FP37 on a legacy USB 2.0 system - but you won't get nearly the same transfer speeds that way.

To test the FP37, I'm going to put it up against an FP35 and run a benchmark on SD card transfer rates using CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64. Results are posted below - FP35 on the left and FP37 on the right. As you can see, the FP37 did have a small (but noticeable) speed increase over the FP35 in all tests (some larger than others).

 
(Left: FP35, Right: FP37)