USB Card vs Powered USB Hub

[James Skinner]

Hi all,

Just after some advice please - I'm reaching the point where I've run out of USB ports on my PC, and am about to add new pedals and shifter and will need extra ports. However I have seen anecdotal reports of some people having issues with too many peripherals connected via the motherboard, so just wondered if there is any consensus over the best way to add additional ports, would a PCie USB card be okay or would it be better to do this via a powered USB hub, or should this not be a concern? I have a 1000W PSU and 12700k / 6900xt (hopefully soon to be 4090 but should still have enough headroom) and running several bass shakers (off 2 amps), button boxes, seq shifter, wind sim and Quest 2 VR via USB 3. Any tips much appreciated!

 

[RasmusP]

Hi all,

Just after some advice please - I'm reaching the point where I've run out of USB ports on my PC, and am about to add new pedals and shifter and will need extra ports. However I have seen anecdotal reports of some people having issues with too many peripherals connected via the motherboard, so just wondered if there is any consensus over the best way to add additional ports, would a PCie USB card be okay or would it be better to do this via a powered USB hub, or should this not be a concern? I have a 1000W PSU and 12700k / 6900xt (hopefully soon to be 4090 but should still have enough headroom) and running several bass shakers (off 2 amps), button boxes, seq shifter, wind sim and Quest 2 VR via USB 3. Any tips much appreciated!

Hi,
There are a few things to take into consideration but it's really not that bad, especially since with that pc, you probably have enough money to buy the "wrong" thing for 50 bucks without having a financial crisis

1. Intel has a limited number of "Endpoints" for USB.
If you reach the maximum (per USB controller), you can have all kinds of weird bugs.
The issue here is, and that's why there are so many horror stories on the Internet:
You don't know which port is connected to which USB controller.
One controller always has multiple ports connected to it and you simply have no idea what's what.

This is why "take everything out and plug it in different ports" often works! You simply got a better split of endpoints.

This is the most important part of this all.
The big issue is:

2. Active or not, Hubs and most pci-e add-in cards don't actually come with an additional USB controller!
So you don't get more endpoints.
In fact, the hubs/cards need some endpoints too for their layer of splitting usb ports.

3. USB max power per controller (and per port).
If you add too many passive USB hubs, the one port/controller can't power all devices and will bug out or simply shut off.


So final conclusion:
Normally an active usb hub should work fine. It doesn't really matter whether you're using an active USB hub or a pci-e card (without an extra controller) that's powered by the pci-e slot and connects by using mobo endpoints.

Both will often just work fine!
Btw, usb 2.0 has more endpoints and a longer max cable length!
Which is why many mobos still have some 2.0 ports and internal 2.0 headers!

Good to know:
The USB 2.0 ports/headers and the 3.0 ports/headers are always different controllers!
But in theory all usb 2.0 ports/headers can be attached to only a single 2.0 controller and all 3.0 ports/headers to one single 3.0 controller.


So the best, but also lost expansive solution is a pci-e card that has its own USB controller.
You actually create endpoints that are connected via pci-e lanes, not via the mobo USB controllers.

I sadly have no models for each solution at hand but you see the price for cards with extra controllers being 2-3x of the cards without controllers.

 

[James Skinner]

Amazing - thank you so much Rasmus for the incredibly detailed and informative response!

 

[RasmusP]

Amazing - thank you so much Rasmus for the incredibly detailed and informative response!

A friend of mine ran into the endpoints issue and tried a few different things without success.
So we did some research and I stored the explanation in my notes

 

[RCHeliguy]

Was just talking about this somewhere else today.

USB 2.0 going into a decent USB 3.0 hub is converted to USB 3.0 traffic by a transaction translator at about 5Gbps. So all traffic from a good USB 3.0 hub like the one below is USB 3.0 traffic and the hub is operating like a multi-speed switch.

The XHCI spec allows for 7,906 endpoints which should be plenty, but some poor implementations limit this to 96

A single USB device can use a maximum of 16 endpoints both incoming and outgoing. As an example an Oculus Rift used to use 10 endpoints.

Most of the issues I've seen are device driver related and specific to Linux etc.. but I've seen some related to various AMD chips.

Currently I have the following running on a single 10 port USB 3.0 hub with no issues.

SC2 Pro
D-Box
G-Belt
Stream Deck XL
HE Ultimate+ pedals
Bodnar 64 input button box
PSE USB wheel
ProSim H pattern shift
HE hand brake
HE sequential Shift

 

[RCHeliguy]

@RasmusP Are you familiar with any tools to sniff out how many USB endpoints or pipes in Windows are being used?

Now I'm curious to see how many are actually being used on my computer.

 

[RasmusP]

@RasmusP Are you familiar with any tools to sniff out how many USB endpoints or pipes in Windows are being used?

Now I'm curious to see how many are actually being used on my computer.

Sadly not.. I'm actually not sure that Windows even knows which device uses how many and which endpoints.
Which is why you can experience all kinds of weird bugs when running into issues.
Freezing mouse, lagging audio, ffb drop outs, devices disconnecting and reappearing etc.

From what I know there's some standard how to use USB and the endpoints aren't really managed at all.
It just "takes what's there and needed" and whatever comes through the port gets sorted by what it is, without a clue at which endpoint it arrived.

This can all be completely wrong though. But I didn't really find any information when doing some basic research, apart from this...

 

[Durge Driven]

I use Orico 15 port hub for everything, that in turn is connected to the same port on either tower I use so as not to have constant windows messages of changed ports.

Most important for mine get a good hub with chipset that controls voltage for ports individually rather then constant which is what motherboards and cheap hubs do.

https://www.orico.cc/usmobile/product/detail/id/3738

https://www.macfixit.com.au/products/sabrent-usb-3-0-16-port-aluminum-hub-with-power-switches-and-leds?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImqynvsur_AIVd51LBR0J0AzeEAQYBCABEgI6bPD_BwE

 

[RCHeliguy]

I looked at the Orico 10 port USB 3.0 hub which is similar to what I got. The only difference I could see is that the Orico only had a 36W PS and the Anker had a 60W PS for more power hungry devices.

The block diagram I shared above simply mentions "integrated voltage regulators". How many they have, I don't know. It's plural so anywhere between 2 and 10.

Also technically that chip is a 4 port device, so my 10 port hub likely has 3 chips in it with 2 ports unused. That would imply there are multiple voltage regulators for each chip. ( No idea exactly how that is implemented )

 

[James Skinner]

I looked at the Orico 10 port USB 3.0 hub which is similar to what I got. The only difference I could see is that the Orico only had a 36W PS and the Anker had a 60W PS for more power hungry devices.

The block diagram I shared above simply mentions "integrated voltage regulators". How many they have, I don't know. It's plural so anywhere between 2 and 10.

Also technically that chip is a 4 port device, so my 10 port hub likely has 3 chips in it with 2 ports unused. That would imply there are multiple voltage regulators for each chip. ( No idea exactly how that is implemented )

thanks for the responses guys - Is this the hub you have? (or similar):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerIQ-Charging-Macbook-Surface-7-Ports-3/dp/B00VE4UJD4/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1L1W2GP8W3XCJ&keywords=anker+usb+hub&qid=1672767723&sprefix=anker+usb+hub%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-5

 

[blekenbleu]

any tools to sniff out how many USB endpoints

USB Device Tree Viewer shows USB device - hub associations,
then one can click on each Composite Device
and scroll details for Child Devices, bNumInterfaces and bNumEndpoints

 

[Neilski]

I learned a lot about the limited-endpoints issue from this video (which may have first been mentioned to me by @RasmusP, I can't recall ):

Also, someone (same person perhaps ) pointed me towards UsbTreeView from Uwe Sieber (www.uwe-sieber.de) which doesn't do everything I'd have liked, but a hell of a lot of it all the same.
[Oh, ninjad by @blekenbleu ]

 

[RCHeliguy]

.

 

[blekenbleu]

ninjad

I first used USB Device Tree Viewer for debugging a composite USB implementation, discovering that ESP32-S2 supported too few end points.

Last month, my PC began booting very slowly,
taking a long time before Windows' orbiting balls appeared.
Firing up USB Device Tree Viewer revealed that,
despite having 2 motherboard USB host controllers,
all but 1 USB device was attached to the USB 3.0 controller,
with 36 end points among 12 devices.

Migrating half the devices to the 3.1 host controller solved the slow boot issue...

Oops edit: I neglected to account for hub end points.

 

[Durge Driven]

I looked at the Orico 10 port USB 3.0 hub which is similar to what I got. The only difference I could see is that the Orico only had a 36W PS and the Anker had a 60W PS for more power hungry devices.

Orico uses Via-Labs VL812 industry first integrated 5V DC-DC switching regulator. As I mentioned 10 years later most are
still fixed 5v 24/7

 

[RCHeliguy]

Orico uses Via-Labs VL812 industry first integrated 5V DC-DC switching regulator. As I mentioned 10 years later most are
still fixed 5v 24/7

The Anker did as well, but the current Anker 10 port uses the VL812-B2 which was slightly updated about one year after the VL812 was released and has improved firmware.

This update happened in 2013, so it’s likely the current Orico has been updated as well.

 

[Novopaine]

I use Orico 15 port hub for everything, that in turn is connected to the same port on either tower I use so as not to have constant windows messages of changed ports.

Most important for mine get a good hub with chipset that controls voltage for ports individually rather then constant which is what motherboards and cheap hubs do.

https://www.orico.cc/usmobile/product/detail/id/3738

https://www.macfixit.com.au/products/sabrent-usb-3-0-16-port-aluminum-hub-with-power-switches-and-leds?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImqynvsur_AIVd51LBR0J0AzeEAQYBCABEgI6bPD_BwE

I have the following Orico USB Hub that I bought in 2021: https://www.orico.cc/usmobile/product/detail/id/7177

It's wall mountable, which opens up options for cable clutter. No issues to report, but I'm only using 4 out of the 10 ports on the hub at the moment.

 

[dbx71]

hi guys, random question here:
i'm using a logitech g920 wheel and pedals (just getting started in sim racing). generally speaking, i'm very happy with the wheel. however, the pedals are really bothering me. the brake and clutch are too close together, and the edge of my shoe or foot always catches the clutch pedal when i'm braking and throws me off. also, the brake pedal is too stiff.

this leaves me wondering if i can just upgrade the pedals. the issue i see is that the damn pedals are hard-wired to the steering base. am i stuck with these original pedals?
also, i sometimes get an error when i try to connect new USB devices to PC, something to the effect "insufficient USB resources available". wth? this is a newly purchased, next generation PC and motherboard... i don't even have a lot of USB devices connected..

i'm concerned that if i somehow manage to connect separate pedals to USB that i will get the same USB error.... any advice would be appreciated (i know rasmus has extensive knowledge of these things).

what to do, what to do...?

 

[Novopaine]

Your pedal question might require it's own thread. Without knowing your current setup it's hard to make any suggestions, but what I can tell you is that I was able to use Heusinkveld pedals with my super old (now retired) Logitech Momo wheel without any issues. Be warned, you will need a solid rig for most aftermarket pedal sets though.

The USB issue may be unique to your PC platform. Do you happen to know if it's Intel or AMD, and do you know the models? e.g. i7-12600k or R7-5600x
It could just be a bios setting, or perhaps moving to a different USB port would help. I'm not an expert on USB issues... but maybe someone else can assist.

 

[RasmusP]

1. The G29 should be the same as the G25 and G27. Take the wheelbase off the table/wheelstand and you'll see the pedals (and shifter) cables in the bottom of the base.
So yeah, it has some standard plug and can be taken off the wheelbase

2. If the game/sim supports multiple input devices, you can use any pedals you want with a separate USB port. I don't know of any game that won't work!

3. About your PC giving the warning:
Please list your PC specs. Do you know the exact motherboard model? Like "MSI B550 Gaming-Plus AC". Brand, chipset, model, extras.
The next step would be to make a drawing for us (or a photo + paint descriptions or so) so we'll know what goes in where.

There can be multiple issues:
1. overloading a controller with too much power needed
2. using too many endpoints (more of an Intel problem afaik)
3. some device is a bit edgy like an Oculus Rift

So indeed replugging everything into different ports might give you a "better" combination.
It's not like 1 Port = 1 ontroller! The motherboard has 1-3 USB controllers and the ports are "randomly" connected to these controllers.
Ofc not randomly but we can't know without analysing the mobo layout.

Here's my PC as an example:
Mobo: Gigabyte B650 Gaming-X AX