USB passthrus no like me!

[antok]

Gotta admit, I'm a V4L junkie and have been for a while, but I never seem to get that WOW factor that many people talk about with the passthru. I thought maybe it was a fluke or something, but I'm on my 3rd one now (4th counting a different vendor last year) and they've all been very weak performers for me. I've tried them with a powered usb hub, my laptop, both my regular pc's, and even plugged right into the AC with an adapter with both CoolCarts and Wow carts.

With a fresh battery and a properly filled cart, I get about a second of silence and then that friendly crackling sound with loads of vapor, TH and taste. With the passthru's, I get a long (3-5 second) silence and then a weak little crackle with almost no TH and about a third of the vapor I'd get from a battery. Is this normal or am I simply PT-cursed? I spend 10-12 hours a day in front of my PC for school most days, and I'm on a 6 battery rotation. Any thoughts on what I can do to improve the performance?

On the plus side, I accidentally ordered an auto XL battery instead of my usual manuals and the draw and power seem much improved over the ones I got a year or two ago!

 

[Morandir835]

Antok (sir or Ms.?) are you sure it's getting the full 2 amps it needs to power it? Depending on the mobo maker the ports can be rated for as little as 500ma....

 

[antok]

Heh, I'm a dude. I'll have to hack up a usb cable to test the amps, but I know that they have enough juice to power a 250 gig hard drive w/o external power so I doubt that they're on the low end of the scale. I just tried it on my phone's fast charger that's rated at 2.5 amps as well as my add-in USB 3.0 port and have the same result.

Too bad very few manufacturers publish that info. EVGA support doesn't say squat, nor does Macally's site for my powered hub. Grrr....

 

[hairball]

I never power my PT's through my computer and I have a brand new computer with plenty of power. I only use wall adapters rated at 2amp. I don't know if V4L has them but wal-mart does. About $10. I get full power this way and these babies blow the proprietary batteries away. Only complaint, I vape more fluid with them. I have 8 PT's with 3 more on the way. I always make sure I have backups....LOL.

 

[antok]

I'll have to try that route then. Just checked the white papers on usb and the standard for mobos is 0.5 amps for usb 2.0 and 900ma for usb 3.0. I'll go dig on the Wal-mart site, but if you had a name or model number I could sure use it!!!!

 

[timrichard]

have all of your PT's been auto's? not that this would cure the power issue, but would definitely cure the delay

 

[Morandir835]

Antok sir which evga motherboard are you using? The ftw's and classifieds do put out 1a on the hard wired ports in the back, but only will put out 2a on the ones used for connecting a front side usb panel.

 

[incantius]

for most good PC hardware i look at Tom's Hardware he gives good info, etc. and sometimes gives more info on hardware components than the manufacturer in some cases. as far as mobo specs you can check the vendor's site. if you can't find the info there if the mobo, vid card, etc. is based on a specific chip set you can search on the chip set itself and find more info (albeit in some cases "generic" since the actual hardware manufacturer can "butcher" the stuff as much as they want to). one of my pet peeves is PC vendor who butcher the mobo BIOS! most assembly line vendors do this (ever see the Dell logo, etc. when booting? that's just one part of the BIOS hack they do). point is that if they've hacked the BIOS they tend to modify the base BIOS code just enough that BIOS patches from the mobo manufacturer will not work. you have to get the latest version from the PC vendor...and after so long they stop altering/maintaining BIOS updates for that mobo...sucks if there's a major fix for the mobo and you can't use it! (trust me i've had this happen...

sorry for the rant. the first sentence or 2 might actually be helpful lol

 

[SMILIN]

V4L Fam will have the best made ac plug in unit in about 2 weeks, your passthru will give that WOW facter you are looking for.

Much more coming soon, as well

Vape-On

Steve

 

[AG51]

Thank you Steve !!!

 

[bghouse10]

V4L Fam will have the best made ac plug in unit in about 2 weeks, your passthru will give that WOW facter you are looking for.

Much more coming soon, as well

Vape-On

Steve

Nice! I'm on my 2nd PT & I get the same results as antok...

 

[antok]

@Morandir835: My mobo's a P55LE. According to the support guy I talked to last night (true 24hr tech support. That gets them props anyway!!!) and he claims that all the ports are 500ma, but I did notice slightly better performance with it than with the powered hub, go figure. This mobo runs my little i5 at just over 4Ghz rock solid, so I won't be changing it until my next major upgrade.

@incantius: Gee, you mean disabling useful little features like voltage and frequency controls? Oh yeah. BTW, I wouldn't try replacing your PSU on a Dell. I was a field tech for them for years and at the time I quit, the PSU's were using the same connectors but were wired differently. Could be changed over the last few years though.

I'll go chop up a cable and break out the multimeter and get some measurements later today. I don't mind picking up a 2a wall plug, if I can just find one somewhere. 1a x2 ports is the closest I've found around here. Hmm... wonder if I made a Y adapter to span 2 ports to bump up the amps. Might be worth playing with. Anyone tried that?

 

[incantius]

@incantius: Gee, you mean disabling useful little features like voltage and frequency controls? Oh yeah. BTW, I wouldn't try replacing your PSU on a Dell. I was a field tech for them for years and at the time I quit, the PSU's were using the same connectors but were wired differently. Could be changed over the last few years though.

if my employer didn't force Dell on me i'd never use one. personally i prefer a custom build...no bios hacks, no "tweaked" drivers, etc. just plain jane vanilla out of the box goodness. assembly line PC vendors are like e-cig suppliers that setup their batteries to fail after 5 charges...

 

[antok]

@SMILIN: Shoot me one of those adapters when you get them in and I'll be delighted to field-test and review it for you!!!

 

[Morandir835]

Smilin sir looking foward to it.

Antok sir you can't go wrong with EVGA. Wonder which tech you talked to. Just know that the ones on the back of the P55 ftw 200 two of them are capable of doing 1a, but the others do 500ma. The ones on the front of my case that's connected to the usb expansion pins on the board can put out 2a, as long as it's only one device connected (in other words on port 1 and 2 if both have something connected to it, they split the amps, but if there's only something in port 1 it can get the full 2 amps of power)....

 

[antok]

@timrichard: Mine have all been manual. The delay has been from the time it takes to heat up with the lower power

 

[kittypie]

V4L Fam will have the best made ac plug in unit in about 2 weeks, your passthru will give that WOW facter you are looking for.

Much more coming soon, as well

Vape-On

Steve

MUST. SELL. EXTRA. JUICE and save money for this!

 

[Bogey]

Wow, lots of announcements lately! Thanks Smilin!

 

[EleanorR]

V4L Fam will have the best made ac plug in unit in about 2 weeks, your passthru will give that WOW facter you are looking for.

Much more coming soon, as well

Vape-On

Steve

[doing backflips]

YAAAY STEVE!!


Ahem. [Cough.] Now about those MANUAL V2 Diamonds . . .

 

[Iowa Gal]

Sure... now ya tell me...just spent too much money for two units...oh well...