ASUS Reveals USB4 PCIe Gen4 Card

Last year at Computex, MSI introduced the first USB4 add-in card. Now, ASUS has unveiled its own USB4 add-in card called the USB4 PCIe Gen4 Card. The design of both cards seems to be quite similar, especially in terms of inputs and outputs. Both cards feature two USB4 outputs and two DP 1.4 inputs for connecting to a display. Additional inputs include a USB 2.0 header, a custom USB4 header for motherboard communication (similar to Thunderbolt add-in cards), and a 6-pin graphics card power input. The card supports up to two monitors and three devices, or one monitor and four devices when daisy-chained.

ASUS has added a shroud to its card, making it difficult to see specific details. However, based on the manual, ASUS has installed a smaller heatsink on the ASM4242 USB4 host controller from ASMedia compared to MSI. The ASUS card also supports 60 W USB Power Delivery, while the MSI card supports 100 W. The impact of this difference in a desktop PC is debatable and would depend on specific use cases. On the other hand, ASUS allows for 60 W through both ports, while MSI only delivers 27 W through its secondary port. The card is compatible with any ASUS motherboard that has a TB/USB4 header. Pricing information has not yet been announced.