NZXT Powered Internal USB Hub -> Possible BIOS lockup issues / freezes; Windows crash

[lightknightrr]

This is an intermittent bug, but does seem to be traced back to this hub. Background: since Asus gave us only 2 internal USB 2.0 ports, and many of us are using cases with at least 2 external case USB 2.0 connectors with internal headers, plus something like a water-cooled processor (which has a USB cable for feedback, thank you Corsair) and possibly something like a USB cable from the power supply (for power use feedback, thank you Thermaltake), 2 internal USB 2.0 ports are not enough. Solution? Use an internal hub to expand the number of ports. Better solution? Use a 'powered' internal hub, because powered is usually better.

NZXT's hub seems like a fine solution there...except it apparently doesn't respond to requests to reset the hub (controller). At least, not all the time. Sometimes it will boot fine, other times, you will end up on a screen that shows "American Megatrends", their logo, and nothing else; unplugging the hub (possibly rebooting) allows it to boot normally; plugging the hub in while the computer is on seems to have it working again fine.

Once the problem manifests, not even a BIOS reflash (with a BIOS reprogrammer) will fix it; the hub has to be unplugged. Turning off the machine, killing the power supply switch does not seem to work either. No idea if there is a stored charge that needs to be dissipated, not willing to wait the several days needed to find out.

Short term solution is switching to unpowered hubs (4-port Amazon Basic Hubs), and installing the appropriate male & female internal to external headers to connect everything up. I currently have mine on order.

No idea if this is a NZXT bug, an Asus bug, an AMD bug, or (somehow) an ASMedia bug.

[sirsatyr1966]

my nzxt has given me b2 post erros, and also power usb poweroversurge protection kicked in and turns off

[JustinThyme]

Ive been running the same hub (as in exact same one) for 3 builds now. Maximus VIII Extreme Assy with 6700K, Maximus IX Forumula with 7700K and now Rampage VI with 7900X. No issues noted at all. There is no firmware with it, or software. Its simply a powered hub. Id be looking more at if anything you are running is overloading the horrendously slow speeds of USB 2.0 or having conflicts of hardware connected to it.

Its not out of the question for there to be a defective hub here and there as in like 5% but much outside of that its limited. There are tens of thousands if not more running this hub with no issues.

[jbasemoine]

lightknightrr wrote:
This is an intermittent bug, but does seem to be traced back to this hub. Background: since Asus gave us only 2 internal USB 2.0 ports, and many of us are using cases with at least 2 external case USB 2.0 connectors with internal headers, plus something like a water-cooled processor (which has a USB cable for feedback, thank you Corsair) and possibly something like a USB cable from the power supply (for power use feedback, thank you Thermaltake), 2 internal USB 2.0 ports are not enough. Solution? Use an internal hub to expand the number of ports. Better solution? Use a 'powered' internal hub, because powered is usually better.

NZXT's hub seems like a fine solution there...except it apparently doesn't respond to requests to reset the hub (controller). At least, not all the time. Sometimes it will boot fine, other times, you will end up on a screen that shows "American Megatrends", their logo, and nothing else; unplugging the hub (possibly rebooting) allows it to boot normally; plugging the hub in while the computer is on seems to have it working again fine.

Once the problem manifests, not even a BIOS reflash (with a BIOS reprogrammer) will fix it; the hub has to be unplugged. Turning off the machine, killing the power supply switch does not seem to work either. No idea if there is a stored charge that needs to be dissipated, not willing to wait the several days needed to find out.

Short term solution is switching to unpowered hubs (4-port Amazon Basic Hubs), and installing the appropriate male & female internal to external headers to connect everything up. I currently have mine on order.

No idea if this is a NZXT bug, an Asus bug, an AMD bug, or (somehow) an ASMedia bug.

Just wondering since in you're latest post you said you have removed the hub!?
Anyway, did you got random crashes in windows and while gaming while you had the hub installed ?
Did these crashes disapeard after you removed the hub ?

Thnx in advance!

[Sting3r777]

Hey Guys,

Might seem odd but i ended up ripping out the NZXT hub, then amazingly my G.Skill 3200 actually was able to run at 3200 stable on 1701.
At first i thought i was crazy, so i put the hub back in and then the ram fell back to 2400, took it out and was able to load 3200 again.

I never would have thought in a million years this would be the case but now that NZXT hub is in the bin and i'm enjoying the much MUCH faster load times with 3200.

Might not work for you but it worked for me

Cheers

[jbasemoine]

Sting3r777 wrote:
Hey Guys,

Might seem odd but i ended up ripping out the NZXT hub, then amazingly my G.Skill 3200 actually was able to run at 3200 stable on 1701.
At first i thought i was crazy, so i put the hub back in and then the ram fell back to 2400, took it out and was able to load 3200 again.

I never would have thought in a million years this would be the case but now that NZXT hub is in the bin and i'm enjoying the much MUCH faster load times with 3200.

Might not work for you but it worked for me

Cheers

Some where on reddit i have read multiple people suffering from the same isseu as you had only with different motherboards.
Some have changed the PSU and now don't have any isseus any more with the hub, but must have discarded the hub!
At least it is nice to hear you have you're ram working on 3200 mhz!

[JustinThyme]

Sting3r777 wrote:
Hey Guys,

Might seem odd but i ended up ripping out the NZXT hub, then amazingly my G.Skill 3200 actually was able to run at 3200 stable on 1701.
At first i thought i was crazy, so i put the hub back in and then the ram fell back to 2400, took it out and was able to load 3200 again.

I never would have thought in a million years this would be the case but now that NZXT hub is in the bin and i'm enjoying the much MUCH faster load times with 3200.

Might not work for you but it worked for me

Cheers

trying to make sense of this. *The only thing that does make sense would be if your 5V is getting pulled down horrendously. This is the only thing that is partially common. The USB controller is downstream of the PCH controller and the * VRAM is controlled by the CPU. Even with the 5V standby getting pulled down I can’t equate that to a clock setting. Maybe instability from Vdroop. I’ll have to digest this one a bit further.*

[bcountry]

After reading this thread i unplugged my nzxt hub and now I can get into my bios and my crosshair vi/ryzen 5 1600x are running great again, would have never thought that a usb hub could cause so much havoc on a system, thanks to whomever figured this out.

[jbasemoine]

jbasemoine wrote:
Just wondering since in you're latest post you said you have removed the hub!?
Anyway, did you got random crashes in windows and while gaming while you had the hub installed ?
Did these crashes disapeard after you removed the hub ?

Thnx in advance!

I have changed the amount of device's connect to the hub, and completely removed my internal Card reader.
So atm i have the NZXT 62x kraken pump and the 2 usb ports of the front of my case hooked up to the hub, have played 2 game both for over a hour without any crashes so far, normaly 1 of theses games would have crashed!
I am not holding my breath so far and gonna play some more games (that often crashed) and gonna test this setup for +/- a week if the crashes keep occuring within this weak i'm gonna try to see what happends if i fully remove the hub and just connect my Pump to the usb 2.0 header of the mobo in order to see if the HUB is at fault here.
Gonna report back when a crash(es) will occure and how the system runs with the hub removed, as far as i can tell the 3 devices i had hooked up to the hub might have been the cuase of some of these crashes (read different problems on different forum of people who also use this particulair hub that they have been getting problems with there pc after installing the hub).

[lightknightrr]

Lol. So, apparently NZXT isn't the only one experiencing these issues, as preliminary tests seem to indicate on our third CH6 WiFi machine that some Amazon Basic hubs (2.0? 3.0?) can cause the lockup problem as well; mind you, these are the external, powered hubs...the internal 4-port mini-hubs seems safe at the moment. We replaced them with another brand, and everything boots fine now for that machine...

[jbasemoine]

after removing the NZXT hub (just after 5 weeks of use :S) i noticed my pc is ALOT more stable, no games have crased since i removed it (pre bios 3008 :P).
so after a week without it i tried to reinstall it and again random freezes started to occure specialy during gaming, my PSU has more then enough power to supply my system, and all could find out was the NZXT hub was causing the freezes!
even tried different PSU cables etc.. but nothing solved it!