 Of course to the most astute YouTube viewers, USB 3.1 and the Type-C connector aren't exactly gonna be anything new. But what is new is having actual hardware to play with and try it out. So here's the kit I got from MSI. So I guess the next step then is to bring you guys along for the ride while I take it for a test drive. The Corsair HX1200i power supply delivers 80 plus platinum efficiency for quiet efficient power and Corsair Link Digital for advanced monitoring and control. Click this place right here to learn more. So much of the hype about the USB 3.1 update is the all new Type-C connector. We've gotten updated USB connectors before. Micro-B compared to Mini-B was more difficult to orient by eye and theoretically rated for more insertions. But in my experience much more fragile so it's only real benefit was being smaller. USB 3.0 Type-A added more pins deeper in on the connector and came in a new sexy blue compared to the black or white of previous USB standards. But never have we gotten anything as paradigm shifting as this. The Type-C connector is smaller than anything but a proprietary lightning or mini or micro-B connector. All of which can only handle USB 2.0. Yet it contains all the pins necessary for 3.0 or 3.1 transfer speeds of 5 gigabit or 10 gigabit per second. While being significantly more durable than previous connectors that were optimized for thin devices like phones, tablets and ultrabooks. Not to mention it's reversible on top of all of that. So you'll never have to guess what goes where and in what orientation while fumbling around in the dark. And lord knows that kind of thing would come in handy for me if you know what I mean. And there's more cool stuff too. USB 3.1 will allow some of the pins to be used for power with the USB power delivery V2.0 specification up to 100 watts allowing not just smartphone or tablet charging but even laptop charging. And an alternate mode that will let the Type-C connector be used on a per approval basis to carry alternate signals such as display port along with USB data. So that's cool. You could plug your monitor in with one cable for display power and the built-in USB 3.1 hub. But while these are super sweet techs and together allowed Apple to build the 2015 MacBook with only a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and a USB 3.1 Type-C port for all its external storage displays and charging. Although whether or not Apple should have built such a device is an entirely separate matter. This is where the waters also get a little bit muddy when discussing USB 3.1 and the Type-C connector. USB 3.1 works with the old connectors which has the benefit of making it physically backwards compatible with 3.0, 2.0 or heck even 1.1 devices if you can find drivers for anything that old. But the drawback of being basically just a speed bump then from 5 gigabit to 10 gigabit with supported 3.1 devices. That's right guys without the Type-C connector power is limited and there's no support for alternate modes to carry those other fancy signals. So then with that out of the way let's see what's inside that care package from MSI. We've got an Intel 750 series PCIe SSD to ensure we've got no bottlenecks on the other side of our file transfer tests. A custom controller board that can be connected to two SSDs in RAID 0 to remove bottlenecks on that side of the USB 3.1 connection. Two Intel 730 series SATA 3 6 gigabit per second SSDs. A cable with USB 3.1 Type-C connector on one side and the horrendous and hopefully soon to be completely forgotten to everyone but Samsung note users USB 3.0 micro B connector on the other and finally a Z97A gaming 6 motherboard complete with USB 3.1 and a Type-C connector for all that functionality. Which leads us to benchmarks. I am completely out of space in the office right now so I actually ended up being set up in the hallway where I've also been working on performance numbers for the network file servers that we're deploying at the new office. Stay tuned because those videos will be coming soon I hope and got to work. I'll be honest with you guys between the driver that Windows 8.1 picked up on its own the one in MSI's page for the board and the slightly newer one I found on pluggable.com performance actually wasn't as good for me as I found people reporting elsewhere on the web. Now to be clear I'm not accusing other publications of posting bogus numbers and I don't think that they are. I think it's more of a reflection of the early state of this hardware and the software drivers that go with it that from one revision to another I can see improvements in random read and write performance at the cost of sequential reads and writes or the other way around. It just seems like they're in the process of doing a lot of fine tuning right now. So even if we were getting the same numbers as everyone else the point is it's not the improvement we saw going from 2.0 to 3.0 but that was never what it was made out to be it's just a minor rev I mean if it was going to be 10 times faster again I'm sure they'd have called it USB 4.0. What USB 3.1 is though is a wonderful technology for the future it's an obvious replacement for the previous mini and micro connectors whether you've got the power and the additional data on the other side or not and in the longer term I think it's also an outstanding competitor for thunderbolt a faster and in many ways more advanced technology that I've always found interesting in a geeky sense I mean who doesn't want you know six 20 gigabit connections on their PC but one that appears will never overcome the limits imposed on it by its cost that puts it up against 10 gig ethernet in any kind of professional setting with more than a couple of users and its inability to handle more than point to point connections which makes it uncompetitive with the aforementioned 10 gigabit ethernet in my mind. So right now it looks like it's poised for huge success the decoupling of the 3.1 speed standard from the type C connector will undoubtedly lead to some confusion and unnecessary trips back to best buy once folks realize they brought they bought the wrong USB 3.1 cable but it's a small price to pay since this way phones or any devices that won't have any need for 10 gigabit transfer speeds for now won't be made more expensive not to mention the hotter and more power hungry by additional chipsets to handle USB 3.1 speeds for no apparent reason but they can still benefit from the better connector until such time as they're ready for turbocharged data transfer speed something I suspect will actually just never happen since it's not like the wireless standards bodies are sitting with their thumbs up their collective butts either. Speaking of having a thumb up your butt Nick I guess since we don't have a sponsor spot for today way to go Nick now my children will starve just kidding you work hard bro. So thanks guys for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment below the video if you have feelings about the video that are more complicated than this preferably at the link to our forum also linked in the video description is a place where you can contribute to us if you like our videos and you want us to make more of them a place where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one and a place where you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code which whenever you buy stuff on Amazon gives us a small kickback helps us out a lot. Thanks again for watching as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all that good noise.