u/Liambp

I recently noticed that my Logitech G915 wireless keyboard and G502X mouse were behaving erratically with dropouts and mouse skipping. On investigation I found that moving the dongles fixed the problem but it took a few goes to get a stable situation. This behaviour is relatively recent so I wonder if others have similar issues or if it is indicative of something else being awry in my PC.

For information it is a floor standing desktop in a metal case. 9800x3D/RTX5800/Windows 11. There is also an Xbox controller dongle and I have bluetooth enabled. Wifi isn't enabled but there is a strong wifi signal in the room so there are a lot of different signals bouncing around.

Originally both dongles were plugged directly into motherboard USB 3 ports on the back panel when I noticed that both keyboard and mouse were cutting out intermittently. I am pretty sure this is a recent phenomenon because they have been working fine in that position for more than a year.

I tried moving the dongles to USB ports on my monitor and they work better but this isn't ideal however because those ports lose power when the monitor goes to sleep. That prevents me from waking the PC with mouse or keyboard.

I tried plugging them into a 4 port USB 3 expansion hub on my desk but that was even more erratic even though other things plugged into that hub work fine.

I then plugged them into USB ports on the front panel of my PC and they appear to work reliably now.

It makes sense that hiding them behind the metal case of my PC could interfere with the signal but how come I got away with it for so long. The only recent changes I have made are a replacement monitor (OLED if that makes a difference) and a new Logitech Brio 4k webcam which are both plugged into my motherboard USB ports. The 4k webcam is particularly fussy about its USB connection so perhaps that is something to do with this strange new behaviour.

I am talking about the sort of annoying issue that isn't serious enough to stop you using the machine but that still niggles because it shouldn't be there. The device that only works when it is plugged into a certain port. The curious rattle that only happens when your fans run at a certain speed. Any intermittent problem that only happens randomly when you aren't specifically looking for it.

Thinking back over my decades of building and using PCs I think these sort of gremlins are very common. Often they are easy to work around or not worth the trouble to sort out. That doesn't stop them from being annoying though and it is a rare and wonderful day when you eventually track one of them down and fix it for good.

Current example my Logitech Brio webcam doesn't work properly if I plug directly into the motherboard back panel. It works great if I put a USB hub in between. This doesn't make sense beause the motherboard ports work with everything but it solves the problem so I just put up with it.

The well known UFO test can only show the default Windows frame rate and binary divisions of that (so for example on a 180 Hz desktop you can show 180, 90, 45 etc). I would like to find a tool that allows finer control of refresh rates (100, 110, 120 etc). I feel like that should be possible with an adaptive refresh rate monitor but I cannot find such a tool. Do they exist?

Old codger here who almost never goes into town. Last night we went to a show and went looking for a pub afterwards. Wandered around Drury street / William street and the whole area was mobbed. Hundreds of people sitting and standing around chatting and enjoying their beers outside. Real happy vibe about the place to be honest . Felt very safe and almost like being on holidays. Ended up in Grogan's on William street. Nice pub.