Back at the beginning of summer, I rebuilt my PC for the umpteenth time. Since it had started its life in a small form factor ITX case, it was still using a tiny ITX motherboard that, although wasn't giving me any performance problems, was stuck with Raptor Lake processors. As a CPU reviewer, I needed to move on. But there was a problem with the new board I picked. I thought something had gone wrong when I rebuilt everything because when I had all of my USB devices plugged in, the entire gaming PC kept shorting.
It made me question everything. I was troubleshooting in every direction, trying to find the problem. Was it a screw I had wrongly used to secure the new motherboard to the case? Was it a faulty motherboard? Was it some other tiny mistake I had made with the rebuild?
Actually, it turns out it was a very, very niche problem with one of my bits of content creation gear, and one that any owner of the Rodecaster Duo could run into depending on how they use it.
From the beginning, having all of my USB devices plugged in was causing issues - that includes a mouse, keyboard, a few controllers, a Stream Deck+, and the RodeCaster Duo (twice, since it has dual USB connections you can use to separate audio channels). Shorting the board would cause the PC to crash, trap in a boot cycle, or even clear the CMOS and reset all of my BIOS settings.
Read on to see how a high-speed USB hub like this one fixed all of my issues. To be clear, I'm not the biggest fan of a fairly simple USB hub costing $149/£149, and I'm almost certain you could find one with similar speeds for less money. I'm recommending Rode's because it's the one that I have hands-on time with and can vouch for. It's also pretty heavy-duty in its design, so it doesn't get lifted into different angles by heavier cables. It also has mounting options, so it's kind of perfect for content creators.
To avoid the problem, I was ensuring that I was clearing any residual power from the board every time I shut down, which was a giant pain in the ass. That meant turning off the PSU switch after shutdown, holding down the button, and waiting until all the inner lights turned back on, then went off. It also meant shutting down the Rodecaster Duo before the PC so there wasn't this weird power cycle going on, leaving more inside the PC for the next time I came to boot it up.
Oddly, if I turned the Rodecaster on before my PC, it would be less prone to shorting.
It was inconvenient, but seeing as I literally could not work out what I had done wrong in the building process, and the Rodecaster Duo hadn't given me any trouble before this on an older, less powerful motherboard, I figured it was happenstance that the Duo was triggering something - it must be the PC itself, I thought.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.gamesradar.com/hardware/desktop-pc/my-entire-pc-was-shorting-after-i-swapped-my-motherboard-and-youll-never-believe-why-this-simple-usb-hub-fixed-everything
