Motherboards/components to eliminate USB Bandwidth issue

I'm currently running web streaming from a Dell XPS 15 running Windows 7 with a i5 M480 2.67ghz processor and 6gb of ram.

I connect TWO EasyCap DC60+ devices and a TV Tuner to all three of my available USB ports.

Typically all three will connect fine, and I'll get the stream running. But after a few minutes, sometimes hours, I'll get a error message telling me that I've exceeded the available USB bandwidth, and one of the ports will shut off. Sometimes this happens frequently, sometimes not.

I'm planning on building a desktop PC to run these streams and hopefully solve the USB bandwidth issue. How do I make sure I don't run into this on my desktop? Are there certain motherboards or components I should look into? I'm unfamiliar with what the exact problem is, and thus how to fix it.

Luke Shaheen

Posted 2012-05-01T00:51:21.263

Reputation: 173

Get or add USB 3.0 or 3.1 ports. – cybernard – 2017-12-12T00:17:01.810

1If you go into Device Manager / Universal Serial Bus, how many USB controllers are listed (of each type Universal UHCI and Enhanced EHCI)? – Paul – 2012-05-01T00:59:55.763

@Paul - 2 x "Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller" (one 3B354, one 3B3C). Also one Rensas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller, although none of the three devices are 3.0. – Luke Shaheen – 2012-05-01T01:04:23.730

Answers

Your notebook has two USB controllers, most likely split between internal functions (such as touchpad, webcam etc) and external functions - namely the three usb ports.

This means that the three ports must share the bandwidth that USB 2.0 is capable, so 480Mb/s divided by three.

This is common in laptops, but uncommon in desktops, which tend to have more USB controllers. In any case, this is the spec you are looking for, how many controllers the motherboard has, rather than how many ports (though more ports tends to mean more controllers). Then when you come to build, you would just make sure that the streamers are plugged into separate controllers - or even get additional PCI usb cards.

Paul

Posted 2012-05-01T00:51:21.263

Reputation: 52 173

So each controller has the 480Mb/s cap? So if I have three controllers, I should be able to plug each device into each controller, and each device will have the full bandwidth available that they possibly can? – Luke Shaheen – 2012-05-01T01:27:41.453

1Yeah thats right, it is at the controller level, so provided the are in their own controller the should go at full speed. – Paul – 2012-05-01T02:21:33.477