ASRock Has USB 3.1 Front Panel That Connects to SATA Express Connector

ASRock unveiled the World’s first SuperSpeed+ USB 3.1 3.5-inch front panel this week at Computex 2015. The front panel will be shipping with select ASRock 100 series motherboards when the are released later this year. The front panel uses the motherboards internal SATA Express header to give you USB 3.1 Type A and Type-C ports on the front of your case. ASRock uses a third party controller in the device itself to go from the PCI Express to USB 3.1 interface.

We think that this is a brilliant idea and hope that ASRock considers bringing this to market as a stand alone product in the near future. If ASRock does not bring it to market we are certain that someone will introduce something similar. Not too many people are using the SATA Express header, so this device allows you to do something with it, granted you happen to have a case that still features a 3.5-inch drive bay!

ASUS also appears to be using the identical front panel from what we have been told, but ASUS is unable to provide us with pictures. Since multiple companies are going to be using a front panel device it looks like this will be a popular part later this year and chances are good you can buy one for your existing board. This is great news as we’ll finally be able to get front panel USB 3.1 support as the case makers are waiting for Intel to add USB 3.1 support into their chipset and for a standardized pin header to be ratifed before they can add support for front panel USB 3.1. We talked about how no case manufacturers had front panel USB 3.1 support due to this reason just a few weeks back.