Hardware Bistro

Product: SP332CB
Manufacturer: Spire
Supplied by: Spire
Price: 7.5USD/RM28
Launch Date: NA

 

Memory cards are being widely used nowaday with couple of reason and one of the major contributors is the cheaper manufacturing cost with better stability and maturity of the technology. A card reader is an important device to read the data of these memory cards and let us take a look on Spire SP332CB; an internal 3.5" card reader which can read up to 51 different kinds of memory cards.

 

Company Profile

Spire-Powered by Innovation: Founded in 1991, Spire is a leading premier brand for computer thermal solutions, power supplies and enclosures. In order to meet the requirements and demands of the global market, we have established our production facilities and corporate office in ShenZhen, China. Our overseas branches are located in USA, The Netherlands, U.K, Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and Brazil. All locations are strategically located to better work with the customers we serve.

At Spire we continually strive for success and quality products. To improve and develop a wide range of computer products, we have invested heavily in our quality manufacturing process and Research & Development. Our objective is to provide top quality products for national distributors as well as for ODM and OEM clients. Our focus is to build on the current success of the Spire brand so that our brand is recognized worldwide as a provider of top quality computing solutions. We will continue to work to maintain the satisfaction of our customers and share the knowledge of our experts - Spire 'Powered by Innovation'.

 

Features

* Stylish & compact solution for multiple connectivity
* 4 active memory slots enabling cross format data transfer
* Reads most available memory cards
* 1 USB 2.0 ports compatible with all USB 2.0/1.0 devices
* Maximum transfer speed at 480 Mbit/sec
* Owners manual included

 

Specification

 

Package & Contents

 

Spire SP332CB comes with a small and standard packaging box (mostly in red and black colors). Product features and specifications are written at the back of the box.

 

Spire SP332CB only comes with the 3.5" card reader device, driver CD, user's manual and some installation screws. The driver is not necessary except for older OS like Win 98; a plug and play device. These user's manual and driver can be downloaded from Spire website.

 

Spire SP332CB

 

Spire SP332CB is a combo multi card reader version II which is designed to fit in all 3.5" driver bay. Although floppy drive is going to end of life but most of the PC case manufacturer will keep this drive bay for the upcoming or future PC case as many peripheral devices are still designed to be fitted in this 3.5" drive bay such as this card reader, fan controller and etc.

 

Spire SP332CB has four active memory card slots allowing cross format transfer between different memory cards. All these four active memory slots can support up to 51 different kinds of memory card such as CF/MS/XD/SD/TF. Besides all these memory card slots, there is one more additional USB 2.0 port which support up to 480Mbit/s. There are two LEDs on this card reader for indicating the power and accessing activity.

 

Here is the inner construction of Spire SP332CB and there is only a small piece of PCB. The reason for Spire and other memory card manufacturers design the card reader casing much bigger than the PCB is to ensure this 3.5" card reader can be fitted and installed properly in the 3.5" drive bay. Spire SP332CB has a very long shield USB cable which needs to be connected on the motherboard USB port.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

Test Bed:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33GHz
Motherboard: Asus P5K SE/EPU
Heatsink: CoolerMaster X Dream P775+
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM Fujitsu
Hard Drive: 80GB 7200RPM Western Digital
Graphic Card: OEM Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
PSU: Seasonic M12D 850W
In Win Stealth Bomber B2
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Card Reader: Spire SP332CB
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Operating System: Microsoft Vista Home Premium
Benchmark Software: Prime 95
Ambient Temperature: 28 Degree Celsius

Installation is not hard for Spire SP332CB as it is a simple 3.5" device and we have installed it on our latest In Win B2 case with the patented shock-free railing system. We didn't encounter any issue with Spire SP332CB which is excellent as some other drive bay device's rail system will have compatible issue with peripheral devices. For the testing purpose, we have performed some daily memory cards, USB flash drive reading, copying and etc; everything is perfect. The benchmark result above is just a reference which has nothing special or lagging behind compare with other card readers.

 

Conclusion

Spire SP332CB is a simple 3.5" memory card reader which is designed to be fitted in a 3.5" drive bay of a PC case. Spire SP332CB can support up to 51 different kinds of memory card; CF/MS/XD/SD/TF and a USB 2.0 port is included for better internal card transferring. For a 7.5USD memory card reader, Spire SP332CB is a value product and if you are looking for an internal bay memory card reader then it is a not a bad choice for you.

 

Pros:

* Value
* Support up to 51 different kinds of memory card
* Plug & play device

Cons:

* None

 

Thanks to Spire for providing this sample for us to review.

 

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