“Does a USB hub add latency to mice and keyboards (e.g., does a USB hub affect gaming)?”

Those are really two different questions.

“Does a USB hub add latency?” Yes. A USB hub isn’t passive wiring: It receives a signal from a source (PC or peripheral), decodes the embedded address information, and then actively retransmits that signal to its destination (peripheral or PC). That process takes a small, but measurable amount of time; usually a few milliseconds, in a good-quality, standards-compliant hub.

Connecting hubs to hubs — “stacking” hubs together — aggregates the latencies.

Plus, any extra cabling (PC to hub, hub to peripheral) will add a tiny bit of nanosecond scale propagation-delay latency to the connection.

“Does a USB hub affect gaming?” Probably not. In real life, nano- and millisecond scale events are totally and utterly imperceptible to humans. Besides, there are myriad other factors that have a vastly larger effect on system latency and gameplay — CPU and GPU type and speed; RAM amount, type, and speed; system bus speed; hard drive type and speed; network effects; etc.

Don’t worry about USB hub latency issues until after you’ve totally game-optimized all the other elements of your system. 🙂

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