Expanding additional USB 3.0 ports - USB Hub vs PCI-E card questions!

[Acps87]

Ok, my PC came with 4 USB 3.0 ports. However several brownouts and surges later, I have only 2 left. USB 3.0 speed is very important for me. I have 5 external hard drives all USB 3.0 willing

Sp my questions begins with how should I go about expanding my USB 3.0 ports?

Option (A) would be a 4 port USB 3.0 Hub :
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A few concerns I have with the HUB though, is what actually speeds will I get simultaneously? I am sure with one device connected it would soar to 3.0 speeds without any issues. What I would like to know is what happens when you have 3 or 4 devices running at the same time each requiring a lot of bandwidth? Does it bottleneck since it is just ONE 3.0 USB plugged into my 3.0 motherboard port? Also what about power being pushed through the USB, is that even possible with a hub?

Option (B) would be a 4 port PCI-E Express card :
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Few concerns with this one is, slightly more work to install. Need to make sure I have a compatible PSU with cable available to power unit. Also takes up a precious PCI-E slow!!!! I am assuming too that all my concerns from Option (A) are solved by Option (B), if not please correct me.

Anyways, that is the issues I have at the moment, I would love to get some feedback from you guys on this setup or possible something else too!!!!

Thanks in advance!

Acps

 

[RPK12]

You're correct in your assessment, the problems you encounter in Option A are accurate and option B will solve them.
If you're actually using the full USB 3.0 bandwidth of each drive individually then you will lose performance with a USB hub. However unless you're actually reading and writing from these drives simultaneously it shouldn't matter. Usually you're copying from one drive to your internal HDD and or writing to another drive from your internal HDD. In this case you won't lose much performance. I hope you understand my drift.

If you are indeed doing simultaneous read writes with multiple external drives then the PCI-E option would be a better bet.