I'm looking for a 1155 LGA motherboard and all the decent cheap ones only have USB2.0. Are there any downsides having a keyboard/mouse plugged into USB2.0 instead of 3.0? Or does it only generally affect USB stick transfer speeds?
Can't see it making any difference whatsoever to a keyboard/mouse It's to do with transfer speeds afaik
I gues I won't have any problems then seeing as how I don't bother plugging USB sticks into the back of my PC instead of the front panel connectors.
Every gaming keyboard/mouse I've seen has been USB 1 or 2, there are no USB 3 keyboards/mice. And what do you mean "decently cheap"? Every LGA 1150 mobo I saw had USB 3 ports if not all USB 3 ports. Are you looking at the lowest end for a quick el cheapo build?
http://azerty.nl/8-4924-554475/msi-h61m-p31-w8.html http://azerty.nl/8-4924-666535/asus-h61m-f-moederbord-mic.html
You said socket 1150 before. H61 pre-dates USB3.....in fact, the 6-series chipsets all pre-date USB3. You need a 7 series chipset to get native USB3 support. The 6 and 7 series chipsets are 1155, not 1150. 1155 supports SB and IB processors on the 6 and 7 series chipsets (not all 6 series chipsets/motherboards support IB). 1150 supports Haswell, Devil's Canyon and Broadwell on the 8 and 9 series chipsets.
The 6-series chipset based boards that support USB3 are mostly P67 and Z68. Most motherboard makers didn't see a reason to add extra expense/cost for USB3 on H61 based boards since they're entry-level boards anyway.
The only things I've seen that benefit from USB 3 are storage devices like thumbdrives and external hard drives. It would make no difference at all to a keyboard or mouse.
And in case motherboard caries third part USB3 controller you can get troubles with such USB3 ports (latencies, freezes).
Eh, the only thing I can guess 3.0 would have to offer is higher polling rates. 500-1000mhz on usb 1.0 is perfect already.
Only thing that will be different is power usage. On USB 3.0, you won't do constant polling if a device is idle. If you put your keyboard into a 2.0 and check latency monitor, you'll notice constant ISR counts due to continued polling. On a 3.0 port it won't do this.
