I just bought a new PC, based on Lenovo Legion gaming desktop. It comes with 2 USB port in the front, 4 regular USB port in the back + 1 USB-C port. That’s a total of 7 USB slots.
It’s been like 2 decades that every possible hardware device comes with an USB interface. Keyboard, mouse, joystick, hard-drive, memory stick, headset, webcam, spot/photo camera, and many others.
Of course it’s my fault, I should have thought about USB connectors when shopping for a new PC and check before buying. but seriously, 7 USB slots is so few compared to all the device I have using USB
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Answer: the vast majority of people don’t use 7 USB devices at a time. You are an outlier and should have purchased accordingly
Also, it’s generally cheap and easy to install a PC IE board for the back of your pc, if you really need it, and you’ll have another 6 or 7.
Thank you. I was getting very confused.
7 ports seems like heaps. How could anyone use that many at once.
Keyboard, mouse, usb extension to have a port on my desk, wireless charger, dac, xbox wireless controller dongle and a usb microphone. That’s 7 and I’d use an 8th port to charge my vr headset. So yeah, it’s not that hard to use 7 ports at once.
Now imagine charging your phone or watch, or using a thumb drive
Does your PC do full power to those chargers? Eg. full wattage from USB-C is 240W. Times 8 that would be 2000W.
Huh? Why would it? This is about having enough ports for your stuff. How much power they consume is completely irrelevant.
It’s not irrelevant. Why would you connect more things than your PSU can support?
Why would you charge things from your PC?
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Lemmy is pretty caustic platform if someone doesn’t agree with you.
My VR headset needs two more ports for the cameras as well.
I ended up with a 4 port switch on my desk and a PCI-E card for more ports.
You could save some ports by using Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and controller, maybe even a wireless microphone. Cables are whil
That way instead of having cables for data and power you can have cables for just power and pay more for the device.
I don’t understand the appeal of Bluetooth mice and keyboards while at a desk.
Some people like them for the aesthetics. In my case, I have a custom made desk with a tray for the keyboard and mice so the cables are not even visible. Longevity wise they’re obviously inferior and have an expiration date basically. The performance is also worse unless you’re using a wireless dongle instead of bluetooth.
I just see three cables on my desk for keyboard, mouse, and headphones and I prefer it like that.
Aesthetics are illogical and often times social conformity rather than personal desire. Like those stupid coiled USB C cables for keyboards that do nothing.
My keyboard has a 2.4ghz dongle, bluetooth and wired connectivity. I choose to use it wired because it has lower latency and I don’t have to worry about the battery dying. The mouse is wired and I chose the wired version because it costs half as much (razer deathadder v3) and I don’t really have any benefits if’d bought the wireless version (which also uses a dongle). A bluetooth mouse would have much higher latency and a lower polling rate. Same thing with the controller. Bluetooth is slower and not as reliable. Regarding the mic, yeah, no. It’s the mic I use for my camera as well and I’m not buying a dedicated wireless mic that would be more expensive and have a lower audio quality. Also, and this goes for everything, batteries can flat out die and they’re usually not user replaceable. Not to mention that you have to charge all of these battery powered things and that’s a pain in the butt.
Bluetooth latency makes that extremely unattractive
Bluetooth for comms not controls
Even that sucks. Random interference, low battery, etc.
Bluetooth audio is great when you’re driving in the car, or like at the gym.
I mostly use 3, sometimes 4 or 5 at most.
I have 4 things plugged in permanently (mouse, keyboard, audio interface, wireless headset receiver). It used to be 5 but I haven’t used my wireless controller since I built this PC.
I have a midi keyboard I plug into the front when I’m going to use it. And a USB cable in the drawer if I ever need to plug my phone in (which otherwise sits on a wireless charger plugged into AC)
My bedroom media pc (old-ass enterprise tower) has 8 on the back and 5 on the front. So 13 usb ports. It doesn’t have any wireless anything, physical ports only, and there’s no room to add internal cards for it, but plenty of usb ports for dongles!
I use 3 of those ports at most (I use Ethernet, since it’s my acquisition machine, or it’d be 4), and 2 are for keyboards and mice (one handheld with touchpad, the other a normal set).
I’m struggling to even come up with 7 things that would all need to be plugged in together… I guess webcam, mouse and keyboard if they can’t run off a single port, and headset maybe if you got one that bypasses the audio jacks for whatever reason… but that’s still only 4.
There’s plenty of legitimate reasons to need a ton of USB ports but it’s not on the PC manufacturer to appease the edge cases like OP.
It’s like getting confused why your house doesn’t have a 20amp outlet to the dining room for your 48U server rack.
Chipsets have tons of connectivity available, there’s more than enough physical space in the back panel and it’s not expensive to add. So yeah, your analogy doesn’t make much sense.
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7 USB ports seems like a decent amount, to me.
7 seems like a pretty good amount but if you need more, you can always add them if you have a free slot (if not, there’s always hubs). Alternately, you could build your own next time you need to upgrade.
There are USB headers on EVERY motherboard most have 2 usb 2.0 that can be expanded into 4 usb each
You bought a prebuilt system, which in general tend to not be very expandable and cut corners in various ways because they target the average customer, and not the enthusiast.
On a similar note, my pet peeve is the limited number of pcie slots in modern motherboards (and to a lesser extent, pcie lanes), but this is also understandable given the trend away from using those ports (except for GPUs).
Because the USB standard allows the number of USB ports to be significantly expanded through the use of hubs.
I’ve actually found that I cannot add too many more ports without it being a powered USB hub. Expanding 3-4 is fine, but if you’re trying to add on like 10-15, it won’t work unless the hub is powered.
Yeah, the spec is only 1A or something, if you try to share that with 5 devices that all need 250mA it just isn’t going to work.
Do you know how motherboards split up this 1amp spec? Does each USB port on a motherboard have 1amp, or do they often end up sharing?
To be compliant with standards, USB ports directly on the motherboard must supply at least 500mA each for USB 2 or 900mA each for USB 3.
They can supply more, but that’s the minimum that should be expected.
Awesome thanks!
I don’t know if this is a gaming PC or high end etc, but for me 7 USB slots is a lot. I usually need 2, in most extreme situations I would need 4 I think. So maybe the PC is just designed for an average person who is not too tech savvy? I have to think really hard about what I would do with 7 slots.
I have to think really hard about what I would do with 7 slots.
This is roughly what is plugged to my PC
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Keyboard,
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Mouse
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Headset
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Joystick
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Rudder pedals for flight sim (OK that one is a bit specific)
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Audio interface (OK another one a bit specific)
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Webcam (which isn’t even always on)
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USB 2 wire to load/connect some devices
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USB C loose wire to load/connect some device
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USB stick/hard drive on a case by case basis
Why would you need usb headset when you have audio interface?
Audio interface is great to plug the guitar to the PC, and is used when I put sound the speaker. Headset (which is actually a wireless USB, It would make sense to update to Bluetooth) is used when doing voice call/chat(A decade back, I was living abroad, and playing TTRPG through voice chat, got the habit to use a wireless USB headset at this time, but indeed, it’s something I could rationalize considering that I don’t use it much anymore)
I find wireless USB to be superior to Bluetooth, probably just because windows and Linux don’t handle Bluetooth audio right
Why use an audio interface when he can just use USB? Some people don’t give a fuck. Stop being such a snob ffs
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Buy a USB hub buddy
I mean… That one’s on you, you should have looked at the specs to make sure the PC fit your needs and could have built one yourself (especially if you’re into flight sims, why waste money for sub par tech?)…
My motherboard has more ports than your whole PC plus I’ve got two ports at the front…
that depends on what you bought, my motherboard has 10 in the back, and my case has 5 most are usb 3
granted my case and mobo are both 250 usd individually
Your mistake was buying a prefab.
Yeah, the pattern with a lot of prebuilt PC makers is they’ll build the PC to be marketable with a few buzzwords that get the most attention and then go as cheap as possible for everything else.
Though even those big main ones can be gamed, like only reporting the CPU is an i7 or r7 when that covers new CPUs as well as ones from a decade ago. Or only giving RAM size because most people don’t even think about the speed (and maybe aren’t even aware that it’s possible for a machine with 16GB of RAM to run circles around one with 128GB of RAM).
Some companies even use proprietary connections to make upgrading more expensive (in that you need a new motherboard to go along with your new PSU).
It all depends on the case and mother board you buy.
My desktop has 12 USB ports with the option of installing quite a few more by using the internal headers.
You can buy pcie usb controllers to give you more ports.
Unless it’s like the stupid HP Omens where the motherboard has only one slot and that’s for the graphics card.
Install a PCIe USB expansion card. Will give you an extra 4-8 slots.
Usb PCIe cards are a thing.
As well as USB hubs. It’s generally true that the rear USBs are hard to reach anyhow, amd hubs on the desk are more convenient and offer better cable management than a tower case offers anyhow.
Hubs
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