My motherboard's USB ports stop working sometimes.

[Joemez]

Hello all, thank you for reading and any help offered.

I recently built my first pc - a week ago as I'm typing - and in the last few days I've started having odd issues with my USB peripherals. First off, my motherboard (MSI z87 G41 PC Mate, if that helps) has six USB ports on the rear of my pc - there are two USB 3.0, and four USB 2.0. I initially had it so that my keyboard and headset, as well as my mouse's wireless receiver and it's cord (for charging/minorly quicker connection) were using each of the four USB 2.0 ports. I also had my keyboard's separate USB pass-though port cable connected to one of the USB 3.0 ports, but nothing connects to it on the keyboard.

My mouse is a Logitech G700, my headset is a Logitech G930, and my keyboard is a Logitech G710+. (I like Logitech (:)

 

Now to describe my issues: The first (possible) instance was how, on one occasion, my headset took much longer to connect to its wireless transmitter than normal. It's usually a few seconds, but this occasion took it a full three minutes. This could, admittedly, be coincidental.

The second instance was when I joined a game of Titanfall. Just as the match started, I noticed my mouse's battery lights were flashing (needed to be charged). I plugged in my mouse to the motherboard's USB port (using the mouse's official cable)... and my headset gave a burst of static before losing connection to the wireless transmitter. Then my keyboard's back-lighting died. Both were not working, and neither was my mouse (the lights did show that it was charging, however), either plugged in or via wireless. I had to just shut down my pc, and I left the mouse connected via cable when I turned it back on and everything worked, and stayed working as I played for several hours.

The third occasion was when, due to a minor steam error, a game would not start properly. As I stared at a black screen, listening to a friend on skype, I plugged in my mouse... and then all I could hear was static. I unplugged my mouse, but the static stayed, and I had to shut down my pc again.

 

Does anyone have an insight as to the cause of this? I'll admit, I'm pretty scared about this... I just built this pc, I don't want there to be damage already. I told a friend about this, and he suggested the cause could be having several "high useage" (i.e gaming periperals) connected to a few ports on the motherboard. I've since unplugged the unused keyboard pass-through, moved my keyboard and mouse's cables to the USB 3.0 ports, and moved my mouse's wireless transmitter to one of the front USB 3.0 ports on my case, which connects to the motherboard at using a standard (I think) USB 3.0 pass-though cable onto another slot on the motherboard. I've also gone and re-installed the drivers I could find for my motherboard from MSI, and used slimdrivers as well to check that everything seems up-to-date (I did this before the third occasion).

 

I don't want to wait until something actually breaks to be sure that there might be some issue, which is why I'm posting this now. My friend recommended that I get a pci-e USB hub (or something, he wasn't sure as to what he was talking about) and plug some or all of my peripherals into it, instead of the motherboard's built-in ports.

 

Sorry for the rather long post. Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I'm really nervous about this development. Should I look into my friend's suggestion? Or might things be better now that I've moved some of the cords around? I'll edit this post, or add a new one to this topic, should anything else happen.

 

Thank you to anyone who posts.

 

~Joemez

[Reasoner512]

Have you tried disabling USB selective suspend setting?