USB 3/USB 2 question

As soon as you put in any USB 2.0 hardware, it acts as a bottleneck for everything 'downstream' of it. For mice/keyboards/tablets/printers you won't see any performance issues since they don't approach the max throughput of USB 2.0, but USB 3.0 devices will definitely perform slower.

In theory using a USB 2.0 device in a USB 3.0 port shouldn't give it any speed boost, but anecdotally I have seen faster transfer rates.

With all that said though, you might decide it's worth getting a USB 3.0 hub since clearly you are interested in extracting maximum performance from your setup - especially since, unlike thunderbolt peripherals, they aren't particularly bank-breaking.

 

I had not had seen a performance hit when I had my USB 3 drive in one and a USB 2 in the other. They should be on a separate bus and not cause a conflict. However you may see a hit if you were to say plug in a USB 2 device on the USB 3 hub. All the USB 3 devices may slow down, but I am currently unable to test this.