Sorting out the world of modern USB (at least a bit)
Part of thinking about new machines for home and work is figuring out what motherboard I want, and part of that is figuring out what I want and need in motherboard features. I've looked into how many SATA ports I want and what it will take to drive a 4K monitor with onboard graphics, so now I've been trying to figure out USB ports. Part of this is trying to understand the different sorts of USB ports that there are and what you can do with them.
(This would be easier if I'd kept up with all of the twists and turns in PC hardware standards, but I haven't.)
USB is a vast and complicated world, with both a set of signalling standards (the old USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and now USB 3.1 aka USB 3.1 gen 2) and a set of port shapes and sizes (the original USB-A and now USB-C) that may be combined in various ways. Fortunately I'm only interested in modern and non-perverse motherboards, so for me I believe that it breaks down this way:
- old fashioned USB 2.0 ports (with black USB-A connectors)
are too slow for disks but are
(probably) fine for things like keyboards
and mice. But I only need a few of these, and there's no need to
have any USB 2.0 only ports if I have enough better USB ports.
- USB 3.0 ports (often using
blue USB-A connectors) are good enough for general usage
(theoretically including disks) but are not the latest hotness.
USB 3.0 is old enough that any decent modern (desktop) motherboard
should really include a bunch of USB 3.0 ports. Even inexpensive
H270
based motherboards have a number of them.
USB 3.0 is not infrequently called 'USB 3.1 gen 1' in advertising and product specifications. This is technically correct but practically misleading, because it's not the type of USB 3.1 that you and I want if we care about USB 3.1.
- USB 3.1 ports are either USB-C or USB-A, and you may need to look for things specifically described as 'USB 3.1 gen 2'. It's the latest hotness with the fastest connection speed (twice that of USB 3.0 aka USB 3.1 gen 1), but the more that I look the less I'm sure that this will matter to me for the next five years or so.
Then there is USB-C, the new (and small) connector standard for things. When I started writing this entry I thought life was simple and modern USB-C ports were always USB 3.1 (gen 2), but this is not actually the case. It appears not uncommon for H270 and Z270 based motherboards to have USB-C ports that are USB 3.0, not USB 3.1 (gen 2). It seems likely that over time more and more external devices will expect you to have USB-C connectors even if they don't use USB 3.1 (gen 2), which strongly suggests that any motherboard I get should have at least one USB-C port and ideally more.
(The state of connecting USB-C devices to USB-A ports is not clear to me. According to the Wikipedia page on USB-C, you aren't allowed to make an adaptor with a USB-C receptacle and a USB-A connector that will plug into a USB-A port. On the other hand, you can find a lot of cables that are a USB-A connector on one end and USB-C connector on the other end and advertised as letting you connect devices with USB-C with old devices with USB-A, and some of them appear to support USB 3.1 gen 2 USB-A ports. There are devices that you plug USB-C cables in to, and devices that basically have a USB-C cable or connector coming out of them; the former you can convert to USB-A but the later not.)
USB-C ports may support something called alternate mode, where some of the physical wires in the port and the cable are used for another protocol instead of USB. Standardized specifications for this theoretically let your USB-C port be a DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port (among others). On a desktop motherboard, this seems far less useful than simply having, say, a DisplayPort connector; among other advantages, this means you get to drive your 4K display at the same time as you have a USB-C thing plugged in. As a result I don't think Alternate Mode support matters to me, which is handy because it seems to be very uncommon on desktop motherboards.
(Alternate Mode support is obviously attractive if you have limited space for connectors, such as on a laptop or a tablet, because it may let you condense multiple ports into one. And USB-C is designed to be a small connector.)
Intel's current H270 and Z270 chipsets don't appear to natively support USB 3.1 gen 2. This means that any support for it on latest-generation motherboards is added by the motherboard vendor using an add-on controller chipset, and I think you're unlikely to find it on inexpensive motherboards. It also means that I get to search carefully to find motherboards with genuine USB 3.1 gen 2, which is being a pain in the rear so far. An alternate approach would be to get USB 3.1 gen 2 through an add-on PCIE card (based on information from here); this might be a lot less of a pain than trying to find and select a suitable motherboard.
(As for how many of each type of port I need or want, I haven't counted them up yet. My current bias is towards at least two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, at least one USB-C port, and a bunch of USB 3.0 ports. I probably have at least four or five USB 2.0 devices to be plugged in, although some can be daisy-chained to each other. I'm a little surprised by that count, but these things have proliferated while I wasn't paying attention. Everything is USB these days.)
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