Ah, I didn't notice that, thanks. How odd.

On the plus side, some report that it does come with a low-profile bracket (I'm trying to confirm), and the chipset (ASMedia ASM1061) is very well respected and has late-2012 drivers available. It's also in stock at Newegg.

Thanks for the perspective, it's good to hear.

Coincidentally, I was looking at almost the identical card, which is in stock.

That one lacks HD activity LED pins and it may not have a low-profile bracket. Not recommended!

Yes; I have a collection of Dells, and I've equipped several of them to boot from third-party SATA cards. In fact, it's the only technique I know of that will allow a Vista or later installation to be moved from one chipset to another.

I suggest one of these: Syba SATA 3.0 card

I bought both earlier this year and you may be right about the low-profile bracket. However, the HDD activity LED will be something you may miss.

Reportedly with the SY-PEX40039, the low-profile bracket wasn't included early in its run but now is.

How old of a system did you use with this card?  I think the chances drop that it would work as you precede 2009 or so, since those systems are less likely to support "boot override," the feature that allows boot drives to work from an add-on card. Some cards seem to be more of a stickler about this than others for some reason.

Do you recall if this is something that takes place behind-the-scenes or whether it's an explicit setting that you need to take in the Dell Bios before a given card will work?  If it's something visible, I can at least check to see if I have it before deciding on a card.

Another facet is AHCI, which my Dell doesn't have (nor RAID). Some add-on cards forcibly use AHCI by default, which I think is something that works independent of system BIOS support but haven't yet confirmed.

The oldest Dell I've booted from a PCIe-x1 card is a Vostro 220s, circa 2009.

I can report now that the SY-PEX40039 does in fact work with the C521 by some miracle.

Sequential reads get up to around 190 now vs 130 -- certainly nowhere near the spec's max of 250 (let alone the 500 that the SSD itself can do), but this is in line with other reports. This is only testing with the MS AHCI driver so far. There's a new ASM106x driver out that I'll be getting to soon to see if it makes any kind of leap, but I doubt it.

Update: I've now tried the late-2012 Asmedia driver from station-drivers, but it yields more or less the same speeds.

WIN8 SECURE BOOT prevents the bios for the SYBA SY-PEX40039 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card loading and prevents the drivers from installing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045

Type     SATA III (6.0Gb/s)
Internal Connectors    2 x SATA 6.0Gb/s
Interface    PCI-Express 2.0
Transfer Rate  Up to 6Gb/s
Operating Systems Supported
Windows 7 (32/64bit)
Vista
Server 2003
Windows XP
Windows 2000

ASM1061 Chipset (Asmedia 1061 SATA Host Controller)
Compliant with PCI-Express Specification V2.0 and Backward Compatible with PCI-Express 1.x
Compliance Serial ATA AHCI Spec. Rev. 1.3, Serial ATA Rev. 3.0

I'll take your word for it, but the C521 is years too old to be able to use secure boot. You need UEFI for that, I think, and if you had a MB that new, why would you be using this card?

Newer Dells in the consumer realm HAVE Win8 but do not come with USB 3.0 and SATA 3 ports/chipsets.If you check there are people that have 3rd party issues with Secure boot and All kinds of cards including but not limited to TV cards, Sata Cards,  Video Capture Cards, DVR cards,  Video Cards NVIDIA/ATI, Sound Cards, WIFI Cards all being X1 PCI-E cards.

:emotion-3:

UEFI Class 3 permanently disables using any of these cards because CSM (Legacy) mode is removed from UEFI class 3 Bios.  Secure boot Prevents ANY Drivers or OS from loading that are not in the Bios certificate store.  It also REQUIRES x64 BIT OS only.

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Secure boot Prevents ANY Drivers or OS from loading that are not in the Bios certificate store.

AFAIK Secure Boot requires drivers signed with a certificate in the certificate store. If signed drivers are available, the hardware should be compatible with Secure Boot.

Windows 8.X won't boot with unsigned drivers, either, except in 'Test Mode.'

I haven't been following Secure Boot, since on the one UEFI system that I have that supports it, I disabled it, but I'll just add that the Asmedia driver is signed with a Verisign Class 3 Signing Certificiate--and if you want you can simply use the Standard SATA AHCI Controller driver (built-in) instead.

All 3rd parties are onboard for the evil Class 3 UEFI bios.

Its in all their roadmaps.

The end user is not guaranteed the ability to install extra signing keys in order to securely boot the operating system of their choice. The end user is not guaranteed the ability to disable this functionality. The end user is not guaranteed that their system will include the signing keys that would be required for them to swap their graphics card for one from another vendor, or replace their network card and still be able to netboot, or install a newer SATA controller and have it recognize their hard drive in the firmware. The end user is no longer in control of their PC. Microsoft is also making no provision to allow others to sign their OSes.

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"Verisign Class 3 Signing Certificiate"  this makes no difference whatsoever.

Secure boot requires MICROSOFT Certificate to load/boot/install.

Ubuntu got past this barrier by paying the extortion fee to get said certificate for 64 bit ubuntu 12.0.4.2

Microsoft has REQUIRED if computer makers wish to distribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to implement a measure called "Secure Boot."

The final evil step in this plan is UEFI Class 3 Bios.  This REMOVES CSM(Legacy) boot options.

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This is a deliberate attempt at boot restrictions in a way that will prevent users from booting anything other than 64 bit Windows 8.  Which goes beyond boot restrictions due to not allowing 3rd party boot roms, video roms, bios, drivers etc.

Distributors of restricted systems usually appeal to security concerns.
They claim that if unapproved software can be used on the machines they sell, malware will run amok.
By only allowing software they approve to run, they can protect us.
This claim ignores the fact that we need protection from them.
 We don't want a machine that only runs software approved by them .-
Our computers should always run only software approved by us.

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