[SOLVED] Advice on SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless

[SparkyTech934]

Hi all,

So I had a quick question regarding my SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless mouse. This mouse is new, and it is the first wireless mouse that I've owned and I've really enjoyed using it so far.

I recently noticed that when using the mouse is wireless mode, occasionally both in and out of game (most cases are in-game though) the mouse movements will suddenly become choppy. As in, if i move the mouse in a circle, it will jump to a few points along the path of the movement, but it wont at all be smooth. If I unplug the USB dongle and plug it back in, it would fix the issue for a few seconds and then return. My only fix would be to use it in wired mode and try again later. When this happened, the mouse battery was always charged (75%+), so its not like the mouse was dying or anything. I also tried switching the USB port the wireless dongle was in, and that seemed to help for the moment (haven't noticed the issue again yet).

I am using the mouse on a gaming laptop (a high-end one, albeit a bit old), and I also have two other USB ports populated with a SteelSeries XL RGB mouse mat, and a external 2.5" HDD. That brings my total USB usage to 3/6 ports.

So anyways, I'm just looking for opinions on whether the wireless issues I was having could be related to either the laptop, the USB ports sharing bandwidth, or if it sounds like an issue with the mouse. Thanks in advance for your thoughts, as I'm new to using wireless mice and troubleshooting them.

 

[SparkyTech934]

I also tried switching the USB port the wireless dongle was in, and that seemed to help for the moment (haven't noticed the issue again yet).

Hey all,

Just wanted to follow up on this post. Since my original post, I haven't encountered the issue any further. The only "fix" was trying a different USB port. I was hesitant to use a different port since the only other 2 ports were on the right side of the laptop, and I didn't want to be bumping into the adapter all the time. Regardless, I guess that time has answered the question.

The solution seems kinda dumb, but I wanted to put it out there in case anyone else had a similar question. I'm guessing that USB bandwidth was the problem, and that the mouse wasn't getting enough bandwidth from the USB controller when my other devices were plugged in to the same set of ports. I did quite a bit of research to try and figure out which ports on my laptop were tied together by a common controller, but never really found anything.

TLDR; If your wireless mouse isn't working correctly when you have multiple USB devices plugged in, try plugging the adapter into a different USB port, preferably one on a different USB controller such as a USB 2.0 port 🤷‍♂️