Does a USB hub affect performance?

[jimenezarmando37]

I'm thinking about getting a usb hub for for a few devices and for my mechanical keyboard and mouse. I mostly want one because so I can hide my cables better, so my questions are, does a USB hub affect performance in a mechanical keyboard or mouse? And can it affect something like a wifi adapter?

[Oberon.Smite]

I seriously doubt it unless it's an active adapter. Most USB hubs are just circuitry reroutes.

[dragoon20005]

I am not sure how true is it

 

But i do believe if you use the hub for keyboard and mouse

 

it still ok

 

but I am not sure how will the wifi adapter will affect the keyboard and mouse

 

USB means Universal Serial Bus

 

so data is transferred using a single data line

[Xenift]

No the USB hub is not reliable source to chain your USB devices.

 

The single connection has a limit in which it connects to the computer, and if you maximize the use of all ports, it will bottleneck entire thing.

[jimenezarmando37]

I seriously doubt it unless it's an active adapter. Most USB hubs are just circuitry reroutes.

Okay, thank you for your response [emoji1]

[jimenezarmando37]

No the USB hub is not reliable source to chain your USB devices.

The single connection has a limit in which it connects to the computer, and if you maximize the use of all ports, it will bottleneck entire thing.

Has this happened to you?

[Xenift]

Has this happened to you?

Yes, voltage bottlenecks and speed bottlenecks.

[jimenezarmando37]

Yes, voltage bottlenecks and speed bottlenecks.

Alright, thank you for your response. You've been really helpful.

[BrightCandle]

You can get powered USB hubs and they can remove the power limitation which is often a problem with hard drives and other power hungry devices. Its rare to hit reserved bandwidth limitations on USB 2 and especially on USB 3 hubs because most devices don't use that much but it can occasionally be an issue. You usually these days hit power limits much faster because 500ma from the USB port isn't enough for 1 hard drive let alone a load of devices.

 

I personally run a USB 3 powered hub with 7 ports that has my mouse/keyboard/phone/trackir/headphone amp etc etc in it. Most of the reserved bandwidth budget is the mouse, but the power draw of an AMP + phone exceeds what the port on the computer can output, so powered vastly improves the recharge rate of both.