Need a good USB 3.0 Hub

Hey what's up? I'm looking for a USB 3.0 hub that is reliable enough to connect two dvd burners and an external hard drive to at the same time. They will all be powered, so they won't rely on the USB hub for that. I just want something that won't slow down the speed of the dvd burners. Any ideas?

 

any hub will work. it won't slow the speed. usb3.0 has a theoretical maximum of 625 MB/s. pratically it's a bit lower then that but certainly superior then 500MB/s.
even a blue ray drive maxes out at 54MB/s @12x writing speed. a dvd will be less then that.
an HDD will be certainly lower then 100MB/s.

so any usb3.0 hub will do.

there are a few rare and very special and expensive pci-e hubs that have more then 1 controller chip. they are great because instead of being 625mb/s dividing by the number of devices it's multiple times 625mb/s.

 

The dvd burners I want to connect are USB 2.0. I just wanted to make sure before I spent money on anything.

 

you may want to buy a powered hub with more ports since the dvd burners will be connected to other AC units. you can either opt for a 4port unpowered hub or 7 or more ports powered hub (that I known of, up to 49ports)
you may also consider expresscard to usb3.0.

 

The Envy doesn't take express cards, but I'm looking at a powered hub for sure. Thanks for your help.

Yeah I said it!

 

If you can find a good USB 3 external powered hub with 4 or more ports please post it here. They are hard to find and when you do find one they don't have good reviews.

 

the usb3.0 performance only depends on the chipset used and imo nowadays there's very little, if any, diffeerence among several chips. the made in china hubs also need those chips so the performance is always the same as branded overpriced ones. sure built quality might not be the same that's why reviews are bad sometimes.

it's hard to find usb3.0 4 port powered hubs because with 4ports it doesn't need external power. but with more then 4 ports is easy to find.

but really, get the cheapest stuff.

 

I'm also here to ask the same question.

Since most ultrabooks don't allow docking, I'm trying to find the next best thing: a USB 3.0 hub to connect keyboard, mouse, DAC, gadget charging, flash drives, etc. without having to constantly reconnect every one of them when I move my computer from my desk.

munnarg, where are you looking for a hub? Newegg?

 

Finally found one that appears to be powered. On Newegg. No reviews.

Newegg.com - Syba SD-HUB20058 USB 3.0 Super Fast Speed 5Gbps 4-Port Hub for Internal or External Use

 

I've never heard of that company before. Has anyone else?

Product looks good on paper, though...

 

check ebay. there's thousands of powered models. really easy to find...

 

Theoretical question about 3.0 or 2.0 hubs:

I've only ever used an unpowered USB 2.0 hub in the past and I want to say I experience some issues due to slower speeds being split into multiple ports.

Does a USB 3.0 hub alleviate that automatically or is there just more transfer speed to split up amongst the hub ports? Does a powered USB 3.0 hub alleviate the issues?

I guess I'm curious what a "powered" USB hub does over a non-powered one.

I know Thunderbolt supposedly allows you to daisy-chain devices without a loss in throughput. I'm assuming USB does not allow this regardless of whether the hub is powered or not.

 

forget thunderbolt and daisy-chain. no way whatsoever that you can keep the same bandwith across several devices. the chip just doesn't handle it.

what happens with a hub is that it devides 1 port to 4 or more. of course if you connect several devices the performance is worse. but with usb3.0 the bandwith is much higher so the performance should be the same across several devices. unless you connect several SSD's or something like that.

powered hubs have nothing to do with the bandwith. it's not because it has more electical power that you can get higher speeds. you get exactly the same speeds. an hub is powered in order to provide more eletricity to the devices and hub itself. that's why you can't find 7port unpowerd hubs. because usb can't draw that much power to provide to the hub and all ports.

BUT there are some rare special "hubs". you can't get higher speeds if you connect an hub to an usb port but you may have higher speeds if you connect for example to pci-e. a pci-e usb hub may provide higher speeds because the pci-e interface has a much higher bandwith then usb. but that only happens if the hub has multiple chips instead of just 1 chip for all ports. in some cases you have hubs with 4 ports each one with each one chip. that will increase the bandwith per port.

 

Thanks so much for the explanation.

And since laptop docks do not run off USB bandwidth/power, they are able to have a produce a the normal amount USB 2.0 or 3.0 bandwidth?

I've only ever experienced one USB hub and it was very unstable.

I'm trying to determine whether or not I actually need 3 full USB ports on a laptop if I always have 3 USB devices connected (keyboard, mouse, DAC). If I can find a laptop with 2 and then use a splitter that may be the route I take. I'm assuming keyboards and mice would work better post-splitter than a DAC or external harddrive would, right?

 

really depends on the dock. docking station conectors are proprietary so we really don't known anything about bandwith. but there are some with usb3.0 which may indicate higher bandwiths, but also I never seen one with more then 2 ports.

an usb hub is unstable only if, it doesn't have enough power to connect all devices (powered hubs shouldn't have this problem) or because lack of bandwith (usb3.0 solves that too).

most notebooks have 3 or 4 usb ports so that shouldn't be a problem. also notebook ports are almost all powered (there are some exceptions where the notebook is badly design and it has an hub inside that doesn't work very well). if you connect devices with low bandwith and power then you shouldn't have any problem connecting them to an unpowered hub. it always works. for example if you connect 4 keyboards they will work without issues. But for example if you connect 2x HDD's and 1DAC you will have problems.
so if you only need those ports don't worry about it and just buy any usb3.0 (future proof) 4port unpowered hub, or if you want to spend just a few bucks get a usb2.0 one.
just be sure to connect the DAC directly to the notebook and the other devices to the hub.

you may also want to consider this rare device:
Dual USB 2.0 Male Ports to 3 USB Female + 1 Mini USB Ports Charging/Data Hub - Black - Free Shipping - DealExtreme
that's the only 4 port hub that it has data + power cable. it delivers more power it's great. it has 3full size and 1 mini but you can also get 1mini to full size usb adpter.

also if you plan to charge things I recommend you this:
USB 5.0V to 6.0V Voltage Step Up Dongle - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

 

So, basically, it sounds like a USB 3.0 would solve my problems. Thanks for the into.

However, if I'm charging something (Sansa Clip, iPod, Nook) I'll probably want to run it straight out of the laptop.

 

if the hub is powered, should be fine to charge devices on the hub.

 

any powered hub usb2.0 or 3.0 would solve your problem. if you only want to connect the devices you said, any hub powered or not will work.