“hey Tim, we are too damn cheap to spend the extra 4 cents and get USB 3 for all ports, even though it’s been a standard for almost 2 decades… what should we do to help the users realize they got a piece of shit case?”
I mean, so are multi-core cpus and anything above ddr2 ram, 7,200 rpm hard drives; you don’t need much for basic computing. Or 3G cellular data speeds, or DSL internet at home. Or over-the-air 480p broadcasting and movies on VHS. But we aren’t limiting ourselves to those ancient standards - why are we accepting any less here? If it was new, sure, cost-cutting blah blah… but it’s not 2010 anymore. USB3 is 17 years old, that’s an absolute eternity in the tech sphere.
I feel like that’s a little disingenuous because all those things actually serve a purpose. You need that computing power to keep up with modern software. But in 99% of cases, plugging KB+M into a USB2 vs USB3 makes no difference whatsoever. Excluding edge cases where say, your keyboard has its own USB port that you’re then trying to put a splitter on, or charge your phone on, it otherwise just legitimately doesn’t need the extra power of USB3. The basic input processes of the keyboard and mouse haven’t changed in 40 years and that’s why such a comparatively ancient piece of tech is still usable. Even just USB2 already has enough power and bandwidth on a keyboard to run your RGB backlights while still taking input with no additional latency.
I think if the manufacturer cared more about their customers and their brand image, then yeah, they’d just go ahead and make all the ports USB3 regardless. But if you’re cranking out 10,000 shitty PCs a week that you want to sell for under $500, and you can save 3 cents a unit by making two USB ports USB2, that’s still a technically viable product that can be sold and used without issue (at least, without issue pertaining to these USB ports, anyway). It makes the manufacturer a bit skeezy, but it’s not like they’re selling you something you can’t use, the things work just fine. You just don’t want to be doing mass file transfer or power transfer through them because they’re bad at both, that’s what your 3.0 port is for, which you have been provided.
This is a Minimum Viable Product sort of thing, this isn’t going to win any awards or any glowing customer praise, but for the market it was intended for (likely business) it’s a cheap ass PC tower that works well enough. I don’t know if that’s actually the case for what OP is posting here but that’s what I imagine the design decision was behind this sort of style, and it makes sense to me. I don’t really like it, but I do understand it.
Even if there are good reasons that some motherboard headers can’t all support the newest USB spec (due to bandwidth limitations), AFAIK there’s no good reason for the socket on the case not to support the newer standard. It’s just a few extra wires and a couple grams more plastic, and you can still daisy-chain an old-style connector for motherboards that need it.
Besides, usually the ports intended for the keyboard and mouse would be on the motherboard backplate itself. Front USB ports on the case tend to be used for things that do benefit from the speed, such as flash memory.
(Of course, that’s on a DIY PC where the motherboard and case are bought separately. If they’re designed together, I suppose it makes sense to save a few cents matching the plug to the header.)
I had a problem with my boss’s computer yesterday where Windows decided it didn’t need to load the drivers for one of the two built in USB 3.0 controllers. On boot, only one of the two controllers would work, either the one for the front ports, or the one for the rear ports, completely randomly. It would not load the driver for the other controller until I disabled and reenabled it in the hardware manager.
BIOS recognized a keyboard or mouse in any of the 2.0 or 3.0 ports at POST, but if Windows failed to load the rear 3.0 driver at boot time, it dropped the keyboard and mouse.
Workaround was to swap them to the 2.0 ports. Final solution was upgrading to Linux.
“hey Tim, we are too damn cheap to spend the extra 4 cents and get USB 3 for all ports, even though it’s been a standard for almost 2 decades… what should we do to help the users realize they got a piece of shit case?”
“fuck em and piss em off”
“I like your style”
On one hand yes, on the other hand though USB3 is wildly overkill for driving your keyboard.
I can really see both sides of this argument to be honest.
I mean, so are multi-core cpus and anything above ddr2 ram, 7,200 rpm hard drives; you don’t need much for basic computing. Or 3G cellular data speeds, or DSL internet at home. Or over-the-air 480p broadcasting and movies on VHS. But we aren’t limiting ourselves to those ancient standards - why are we accepting any less here? If it was new, sure, cost-cutting blah blah… but it’s not 2010 anymore. USB3 is 17 years old, that’s an absolute eternity in the tech sphere.
I feel like that’s a little disingenuous because all those things actually serve a purpose. You need that computing power to keep up with modern software. But in 99% of cases, plugging KB+M into a USB2 vs USB3 makes no difference whatsoever. Excluding edge cases where say, your keyboard has its own USB port that you’re then trying to put a splitter on, or charge your phone on, it otherwise just legitimately doesn’t need the extra power of USB3. The basic input processes of the keyboard and mouse haven’t changed in 40 years and that’s why such a comparatively ancient piece of tech is still usable. Even just USB2 already has enough power and bandwidth on a keyboard to run your RGB backlights while still taking input with no additional latency.
I think if the manufacturer cared more about their customers and their brand image, then yeah, they’d just go ahead and make all the ports USB3 regardless. But if you’re cranking out 10,000 shitty PCs a week that you want to sell for under $500, and you can save 3 cents a unit by making two USB ports USB2, that’s still a technically viable product that can be sold and used without issue (at least, without issue pertaining to these USB ports, anyway). It makes the manufacturer a bit skeezy, but it’s not like they’re selling you something you can’t use, the things work just fine. You just don’t want to be doing mass file transfer or power transfer through them because they’re bad at both, that’s what your 3.0 port is for, which you have been provided.
This is a Minimum Viable Product sort of thing, this isn’t going to win any awards or any glowing customer praise, but for the market it was intended for (likely business) it’s a cheap ass PC tower that works well enough. I don’t know if that’s actually the case for what OP is posting here but that’s what I imagine the design decision was behind this sort of style, and it makes sense to me. I don’t really like it, but I do understand it.
Hey, you don’t know my apm! I need all that USB3 goodness!
I don’t, but I doubt it beats my autoclicker script ;)
Noooooo foiled again, I will be the cookie clicker mvp!
Even if there are good reasons that some motherboard headers can’t all support the newest USB spec (due to bandwidth limitations), AFAIK there’s no good reason for the socket on the case not to support the newer standard. It’s just a few extra wires and a couple grams more plastic, and you can still daisy-chain an old-style connector for motherboards that need it.
Besides, usually the ports intended for the keyboard and mouse would be on the motherboard backplate itself. Front USB ports on the case tend to be used for things that do benefit from the speed, such as flash memory.
(Of course, that’s on a DIY PC where the motherboard and case are bought separately. If they’re designed together, I suppose it makes sense to save a few cents matching the plug to the header.)
Nah, for some reason no device puts USB3 on every port.
I had a problem with my boss’s computer yesterday where Windows decided it didn’t need to load the drivers for one of the two built in USB 3.0 controllers. On boot, only one of the two controllers would work, either the one for the front ports, or the one for the rear ports, completely randomly. It would not load the driver for the other controller until I disabled and reenabled it in the hardware manager.
BIOS recognized a keyboard or mouse in any of the 2.0 or 3.0 ports at POST, but if Windows failed to load the rear 3.0 driver at boot time, it dropped the keyboard and mouse.
Workaround was to swap them to the 2.0 ports. Final solution was upgrading to Linux.
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