USB PCI-e card for passthrough

Hi, I have been lurking for about a year and built me a new Ryzen system this summer for passthrough based on the hardware @wendell recommended. Running a Asrock x370 mobo, 1800x and Vega 64 for gpu for my win10 guest. Some random old nvidia for the host.
Fedora 27 is my main os. It all works just as intended :slight_smile:

My only problem/issue is that I get random sound dropouts on the guest os. The guest has a USB soundcard passed trou from the motherboard USB-ports.

So im looking to buy a pci-e usb card that works and one that ends up in its own iommu group so I can pass the whole thing. I tested with a random card from a local store, but that card gave strange cpu and kernel errors in Fedora and never wanted to work in windows, not native or passed.

So does anyone have any recomendations?

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You can likely pass through an onboard USB controller with your current motherboard after applying the ACS patch. You can also do it with an addon card, but you’d still need to apply the ACS patch. The IOMMU groups are still not very good with Ryzen.

I bought a cheap 4 port Rosewill USB 3.0 card and have it passed through to my Windows VM. Works perfect. I have a keyboard, mouse, trackIR, and a USB 3.0 hub plugged into it. I have a super cheap USB sound card sort of thing plugged into the hub for sound and it works.

I have a no name 4 port PCIe USB 3 card from eBay that goes for like $8 and it works great passed through to a Windows 10 VM.

I highly recommend cards based on the Renesas uPD720201 / uPD720202 chipset. Stay away for AsMedia ASM1042A based cards. These will stop your VM from booting if the guest shuts down uncleanly until you reboot the host. Also avoid VIA cards like the plague.

You’d probs do well with a NUC with a eGPU. Have you looked at that as an option?

No, but I used to run a laptop with a eGPU a few years back, a bit wonky, but it worked. Its not an option now thou, performance is to low imo.

I will look into this and see if I can find a PCI-e card that has this chipset. Thank you.

If I dont find a card that works, I will look into this idea.

The Rosewill PCI-E cards recommended by @marasm that pop up on a quick google search seem to have the Renesas uPD720201 chipset that @TT_ZX mentioned.

I will most likely try one of those.

@TheCakeIsNaOH is it possible that you can check what chipset your noname card have? Just so that this can be used as a reference?

Thank you all for ideas and input.

A nuc with an EGPU has been shown to have better performance than a lot of the high end laptops at times. Someone on the JB shows has been operating on a NUC with eGPU for a while now and he says its the best setup he’s had in a while. So IDK maybe its a thing you do in the future.

@tunnelpacket the chipset is a VIA VL805.

I have seen a lot of people having trouble, in a way or another, passing through VIA cards so the only thing i can recommend is Renesas.

Yea, the card I found works, problem now is iommu groups, it shares with other stuff. So I guess its ACS patch or wait for new BIOS.