USB 3.0 Could Support 100W Devices In Near-Future

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
When USB 3.0 was first made commercial a couple of years ago, its introduction was a welcome one. While we didn't see quite the same sort of leap going from 2.0 to 3.0 as we did from 1.1 to 2.0, USB 3.0 is faster than a SATA 2 port and sits just behind SATA 3. In gist, it's fast, and most people will never be able to totally saturate one single port (the fastest external USB 3.0 SSDs only manage to use 50% of the bandwidth they're given).

usb_superspeed_usb3_081011.png

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
The monitor built into the side of a case mod just got a whole lot cooler if there's no additional power cables needed!

main.jpg
 

Psi*

Tech Monkey
100W! I am working on a USB 3.0 project & #28 cable gauge. But specs do have some latitude so I am interpreting this as yet another spec with compliant cables that have specific applications ... as in not every compliant cable is compatible with every device that is USB 3.0 compliant.
 

RainMotorsports

Partition Master
100 watts at 5 volts is 20 amps... Why do I feel skeptical about that?

10 watts I might believe...

Needless to say there is going to be a power connector right behind your USB port stack if it does happen. I just checked and that would pretty much saturate the 5v rail on the PSU I just ordered.... damn!

Can you imagine accidentally trying to use an out of spec cable.... disaster.
 
Last edited:

2Tired2Tango

Tech Monkey
Needless to say there is going to be a power connector right behind your USB port stack if it does happen. I just checked and that would pretty much saturate the 5v rail on the PSU I just ordered.... damn!

Can you imagine accidentally trying to use an out of spec cable.... disaster.

I'm not waiting till some idiot brings me a burnt-to-a-crisp USB cable and complains that his hedge trimmer damaged his power supply. This is yet another case of "Technology looking for a home"... I'm quite content with my little collection of wall warts, thank you...
 

marfig

No ROM battery
It's exciting news nonetheless. I don't see this changing anything for home users. But I see potential elsewhere.

Hospital operating rooms could be a lot more simplified and its equipment made more powerful and better connected. Factories could benefit greatly from USB driven peripherals too. Basically anything that can benefit from centralized or cascading transmission of data and that doesn't necessarily need to adhere to widespread architectures.
 

2Tired2Tango

Tech Monkey
It's exciting news nonetheless. I don't see this changing anything for home users. But I see potential elsewhere.

Hospital operating rooms could be a lot more simplified and its equipment made more powerful and better connected. Factories could benefit greatly from USB driven peripherals too. Basically anything that can benefit from centralized or cascading transmission of data and that doesn't necessarily need to adhere to widespread architectures.

Tell you what... the day my Dentist plugs his drill into a USB Port... I am Soooo out of there!

:eek:
 

2Tired2Tango

Tech Monkey
That what I was thinking....damn that's a lot of current! As it is, USB draws 500–900 mA @ 5V...would the connection be able to handle the current?

More accurately it can provide up to 500ma ... many devices draw considerably less... eg. a mouse probably works on about 15 or 20, keyboard maybe 100...
 

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
My standard KB is 100mA, the other is 500mA, and my mouse is 100mA... Sure, these are maximums, but peripherals suck in a lot of power already.

The other thing to bare in mind was 'Variable Voltage' too, so we're not talking flat 5V here, but probably between 1.5V and 12V. The other thing... 100Watts would most likely be the maximum the bus could handle, not a single port - otherwise yes, that would just be plain silly and burn out cables (and PSUs, motherboards and I/O cards) left and right. They probably have to introduce another connector for high powered devices with strict standards, because people WILL do dumb shit... so will manufacturers...

USB2 devices used to break the power limit, they'd just report back a lower number while consuming much more (as linked by others in the forum before).

Think it kind of defeats the point of efficient devices if they have to keep cranking up the power. I mean, think of the poor little netbooks and laptops out there that'll suffer... Mind you, I remember the days when you used to plug monitors into the back of the PSU too (and manually setting 115V or 230V), so meh. This will quite literally blow up in someones face at some point...

All I'm saying is, I have no clue :p
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Well, USB 2.0 capped at 500ma, while USB 3.0 raised that to 900ma. I still remember a plethora of devices that would plug into multiple USB ports just to draw enough power to operate... disk drives are the easiest example. There is a reason external drives don't power off the USB port, although doing so would not only make external drives significantly cheaper (no power brick), but the computer's power supply is much more efficient at power conversion than most cheap powerbricks anyway.

How many powerbricks are around on your desk? Cable modem, router, inkjet printer, laptop, one brick for each LCD monitor, a brick for each external hard drive, even a set of headphones I tested has a power brick for the pre-amp. In any case the average user probably has six power bricks laying around, and most of them would be lucky to get 80% power efficiency ratings... just hold them and feel how warm they are, for a tiny device like a cable modem they can get quite warm indeed. Trashing all of those in favor of a single high-efficiency PSU and USB network is appealing in some ways, although perhaps not easy to implement and not practical for most.

Given how my desk is set up though, it would be easy to run a USB cable to my monitor (my monitor already has a USB hub built in, many do), and since my monitor is next to the printer, modem, and router I could very easily connect them all off one daisy chain. Apple is already doing this with Thunderbolt and their monitors / devices...
 
Top