Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Max on April 14, 2016, 11:30:57 AM
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Conventional wisdom suggested that a CH Products HOTAS was best served by a USB power hub. Would this still be the case given the fact I have a 750 watt PSU?
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Yes.
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Confirming.
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It has more to do with MB, and OS limitations. The hub will have its own power supply, so the available power to each port will remain stable.
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The power supply is irrelevant. It has to do with how much current the USB hub in the computer will deliver to each port. Those parts of the computer are very limited in what they can deliver.
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Got me with that concise thing again.
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What they said, Max.
But along the same line of thought concerning power, there is another option to consider using to adequately power CH USB controllers by incorporating use of a USB to PCI-E add in card in an open PCI-E slot on your mobo as the PCI-E slot power standard is rated at 5v 75A. The avg CH USB controller uses approx 500mA power per controller so a typical CH USB HOTAS will consume approx. 1.5A total power....a PCI-E slot can power these up full w\ no issue using your power supply and then the controllers will have a more direct path to the DMA controller (depending on which PCI-E slot you install the card on) as opposed to being routed thru the mobo southbridge chipset and up the DMI link to the DMA controller.
You will also have the option to either use a USB hub in bus-power mode to hook up your controllers to the add in card OR you can install a 3-port USB to PCI-E card and attach the controllers direct w\o any auxillary power needed if you choose to. The 2nd option mentioned here is what CH recommended to use when these USB controllers 1st came out....the difference was that the add in card was USB to PCI back then as PCI-E hadn't been invented yet.
I just did this myself as recent as 2 days ago w\ my current computer upgrade (CPU, mobo, mem & SSD's) in sig below as it was giving me fits until I figured out what was going on. Couldn't find my power brick for my USB hub BUT I did have a freebie Gigabyte GC-USB 3.1 PCI-E add-in card sent w\ this Gigabyte X99M-Gaming 5 mobo to give me USB 3.1 capability (which is backwards compatible w\ older USB standards). I installed this card and hooked my controllers to it thru my existing Belkin ExpressBus 4-port USB hub in bus-power mode then installed the USB drivers for this card and the rest is history....works like a dream....in hindsight I should have done this a long time ago.
Just putting out there another option to solve the same power issue w\ CH USB controllers to choose from.
:salute