I've been wanting to post this info for some time, and am building up a Z600 so took some pictures. Here's the How-To:
In the Z workstations the PCIe slots are at least Generation II, but for the xw workstations in the xw6400 none are, and in the xw6600 only the two PCIe x16 video slots are. So, in the xw6600 put the USB 3 card in the second (lower) PCIe x16 video slot so you get the bandwidth that at least matches what USB 3 can do. Same idea for the xw8400 versus the xw8600. You can run this card in a xw6400 or xw8400 but will only get about 1/2 USB 3 speeds.
The +5V DC that USB 2 and 3 lives on does not come up from the PCIe slots..... the card will need a supplemental power source, and this HP card's SATA power connector has tolerances that precludes many SATA power adapters from fitting perfectly. You can carve on the rubber some, or buy a perfect fitting adapter which I have located, via Mouser.com, made by Molex itself. The Molex brand part number is 88751-1311. In a Z600 I put the card in the very top PCIe slot, just above the top video card. If you buy the whole kit from HP it will have a proper SATA power adapter to use, and that whole kit has Options part number QT587AA, costing about 70.00 with shipping. That will not include the 3.5" to 5.25" adapter kit detailed below.
There are two HP USB 3.0 PCIe cards, only one of which you should buy. It is the HP "2x2" card (2 ports at rear, potential for 2 ports out front via an on-card USB3 header). The older original card provided only 2 ports, at the rear, was based on a NEC chipset (which was sold off to Renasus), and is not really supported. The card you want is based on a Texas Instruments chipset, which is the same as is built into the Z620/Z820 motherboards, and thus the driver installer SoftPaq from HP for that is easy to find. For example, google search for Z820 drivers, go to the W7Pro64 OS section, and in the Driver-Controller listing you'll find the drivers installer released 6/26/14 (SP65043).
Do not try to load drivers until you have properly installed and powered the card up..... all parts of the card need to be activated with +5V DC for the driver installer to work properly. The bare card you want off eBay can be bought new, by searching for part numbers 661320-001 or 663213-001. As is usual, these are two HP numbers for exactly the same part.... Assembly versus Spares part numbers. I like the Alan guys, and have also bought directly from China. Cost will be roughly 25.00, or 18.00 from China if you want to wait a couple of weeks.
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Now, how to get the potential 2 front ports into reality? I have found what I consider the best 3.5" front interface that works perfectly in the floppy drive bay of the xw6600 and xw4600, etc, and also works with a HP kit for situations in which you need to use a 5.25" optical drive bay-to-3.5" form factor adapter. For example, in the Z600.
The 3.5" interface I use is made by Akasa, part AK-HDA-06BK, and it also has a part number of AK-HDA-06BKV2. How this v2 is different from the original I don't know, but I have only been receiving the v2 these days. It has a high quality anodized brushed aluminum face, and a rear 2-cord cable that plugs into the USB 3 card's header to feed the 2 front USB 3 ports. The cable is long enough you can use it in an xw8600, but it can be coiled and zip tied to the frame as short as needed. I use Lexan clear adhesive to glue in a thin wood support under the cable's front interface for added stability shown in one of the pictures below, but that is not really needed.
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The parts all together:
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The 3.5" to 5.25" adapter kit is made by HP, is reasonably priced, and I get these off eBay new at about 11.00 each by buying 4 at a time under a best offer option. The part numbers to search for are 48855-002 or 48855-004. The metal rails are of usual HP quality, but each rail has a punched projection that you should file/drill off so things fit perfectly. That must interface with a hole in the 3.5" HP media card readers these kits were intended for originally, and I marked that with an arrow on the picture below. The Akasa front face is a tight fit into the HP plastic faceplate, but it fits very nicely once in. Use 3 M3 "washer-head" metric screws for each side rail, and 4 of the 6 total needed will come with the Akasa. At least use washer-head ones out at the plastic faceplate tabs end of things. The assembly is very solid when done, and will make sense once you start.
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For a Z600 with the card in place you need about 13.25" from front of the Akasa face to tip of the cable plug for a perfect fit. I coil and zip tie the cable inside the Akasa frame so that the cable exits from the right rear of the frame, viewed from the front. That places the cable near the motherboard, and here is a picture showing how that leads to the card's rear header:
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Dan_in_WGBU, our favorite HP engineer who helps us here, has posted on how much work HP put in to optimize the USB 3 implementation in the Z620 workstations, and I believe they also did an excellent job of engineering this USB 3 add-on card. The speed benefit over USB 2 is remarkable, and I have been using this approach in my xw workstation builds for about 3 years now.... rock solid. I have two pics showing the implementation in a xw6600 and Z600, below:
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Finally, I very much like to use eSATA for backup, Acronis image captures, and Acronis build cloning.... I have found a short high quality BizLink eSATA backplane adapter off eBay shown below. The key is to search for D88522-001. The latching SATA plug is a bonus, too. I put that in the very bottom PCI backplane slot, and most of the HP workstations have BIOS settings for tuning a port for eSATA use. In the xw6400 I just run this adapter at normal SATA 2 speeds because there is no BIOS option. Most HP workstation chipsets do not support "eSATA hot plugging", but the Z400 does seem to with my early experimenting with that. It may be driver dependent in addition to needing to have a specific chipset.
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