Good powered USB hub recommendation?

Hardware and technical stuff
21

I am starting to run out of USB ports on my PC. I have four USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. I have the following devices:

Brother printer
Logitech webcam
Two phone chargers
Logitech bluetooth mouse/kb adapter
Xbox 360 gamepad
No-name multi card reader
Others I can’t remember off the top of my head

What kind of USB hub should I get? Powered or unpowered? USB 2.0 or 3.0? I have no USB 3.0 devices at this time. I also just noticed a few minutes ago that you can plug USB 2.0 devices into a USB 3.0 port, which makes the situation a lot less urgent.

22

warning: i had a post recently in the last year or two here from a reputable usb hub maker that pointed out our maximum usb limit (i hit it often, no surprise, windows reports ‘out of usb resources’ like the old ‘out of irq’ things in the old dos/windows days) due to intel system on the drivers, even though the usb daisy chaining theoretical limit touted is 255. this is no matter the hub type/manufacturer.

i hit the windows resource limit of <10 devices with usb3 easily. :( have to re-find that link.

23

here’s the first time i experienced this in win8.1 in 2015: 127 USB device limit my ass

i had it recently again in 2016/17 sometime. there’s an updated mfr knowledge base resource link somewhere.

24

Intel controller resource limit I think.



giant pain in the ass.

i will see if my new budget ryzen build has the same issue.

25

I went with whatever The Wirecutter recommended and it works fine.

26

That’s funny. So USB 3.0 architecture has like 96 “IRQs” and new devices can use up to 16 “IRQs”.

27

If you add more USB host controllers to your PC via a PCI card (do manufacturers still make these?), do you get more than the 96 “IRQs” to use? Or is it 96 “IRQs” per system/motherboard?

28

The workaround according to Rei’s link is to put stuff that doesn’t need USB 3.0 on a USB 2.0 connection.

29

I haven’t tried it myself but I THINK a PCIE (not PCI these days) 1x SATA card should have its own “IRQs.”