Cambrionix 49-port USB hub for professional nerds

It's designed for professional test labs or even businesses where host-rigs must be protected against faulty USB devices. But there's nothing stopping you from decorating a living-room wall with this second-generation 49-port USB 2.0 hub from Cambrionix. Unless you consider the cost -- £399 / $657 (plus tax) -- or the fact that it requires an ATX-2 power supply to push 500mA across all 49-ports significant deterrents.

Cambrionix 49-port USB hub for professional nerds

[Thanks, dontcrossthestreams]

[a dark day Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:35AM]

yikes

[Steve2000 Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:39AM]

Lol. That's exactly what I said when I saw that.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:06AM]

thats still not enough for a macbook Air owner...

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:36AM]

Wow. Imagine that full of humping dogs and other Bando USB gadgets.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:54AM]

49 dogs, all humping at once!

[stridermt2k Posted Jul 23rd 2009 8:17AM]

MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

[keyser Posted Jul 23rd 2009 1:59PM]

That, my friend, is what as known as "fine art".

[barCODE Posted Jul 24th 2009 2:35PM]

*bRando

[TheWalrus Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:37AM]

Alright, but what about us real nerds?

[stridermt2k Posted Jul 23rd 2009 8:17AM]

They sell them in a two-pack. ;)

[r34p3r Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:39AM]

This just in: Engadget inducts this peripheral into their Crapgadget test lab; Can be seen testing 49 different Crapgadgets at once.

[NotZura Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:43AM]

Ha! WIN!

[mocax Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:48AM]

they should make a 64 port hub, so we can play chess with usb pieces that animate when you plug them in...

[TheWalrus Posted Jul 23rd 2009 6:37AM]

This

[shishcone Posted Jul 23rd 2009 6:50AM]

I would probably buy that for my nerd-friend.

[noneofyourbusinessbub Posted Jul 23rd 2009 6:58AM]

i would buy that without hesitation. :)

[mitchsw Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:48AM]

Talking serious for a second. WTF why ATX-2. Why wouldn't they just give it a power brick, having an ATX PSU sitting next to it would be so awkward.

[dumbo Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:10AM]

As if the price tag alone just couldn't keep all the customers away. I was surprised that it's available in vomiting green, what were they thinking?

[simbr Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:14AM]

@guy
What the heck kind of diet do you have if you vomit in that colour?

[Khav Posted Jul 23rd 2009 9:38AM]

Lots of green veggies and St. Patty's Day beer.

[APV Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:51AM]

WTF!!!!! They didn't add 1 more! wow! 49 is such a dumb number!

[Juaquin Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:58AM]

7 rows
7 columns
7*7=49

I take it you didn't pass 3rd grade.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:09AM]

Hello, I am from the international number 49 advocacy group and would like to express dismay at your comment.

[stridermt2k Posted Jul 23rd 2009 8:19AM]

The 50th or "Hawaii" port would de-stabilize the system, though tourism would increase marginally.

[CityZen Posted Jul 23rd 2009 11:28AM]

Your typical USB hub chip gives you 4 ports.
Your typical USB 7-port hub uses 2 chips daisy-chained.
(You only get 7 ports since the second chip uses up a port from the first.)
This device is obviously 7 7-port hubs plugged into a 7-port hub.
It will appear on your PC as 16 additional hubs.

Note that you can never hit the 128-device USB limit without using about 32 hubs (thus the real maximum is actually 96 devices).

In fact, if you plug in 2 of these 49-port hubs into a single USB controller, you won't be able to use 2 of the available ports.

[Bad Beaver Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:01AM]

Oh my God—it's full of stars!
Seriously, that thing is completely nuts... the good nuts. Not that I could imagine a "good use" for this though.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:02AM]

NO WAY!!!! 49 IS TOO MANY LOL!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:08AM]

Can you put 49 more of these boards into the 49 ports LOL because if so that = 2401 ports.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:27AM]

yeah but then you'll need 50 atx2 power supplies as well. fail.

[jgpuff Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:51AM]

Also, a USB host can't handle more than 127 devices.

[compboss17 Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:15AM]

Imagine the bandwidth bottleneck and CPU usage if all of them were being used at the same time...geez

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:32AM]

Is it available in USB 3? Then we can do a 49 x Kingston 256Gb Raid Setup.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:24AM]

Its for copying stuff onto other USB-Sticks. Plug one USB-Stick into Port 1 on your Computer, and on Port 2 you plug this board. Then you just copy the content of Stick 1 on the 49 other sticks. Great for companys giving away these free USB-Sticks preloaded with crappy software. Unless you want some Windings-speaking person (aka chinese kids) copy-pasting that stuff for 2ct an hour, you buy one of these and you are way faster and cheaper.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:32AM]

you will still need software to access all sticks as one device...

[Groggle Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:31AM]

all it needs are some LEDs!!

[Nemo4 Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:46AM]

Wow, 24.5 Amps and 122.5 Watts total of USB power!

[barCODE Posted Jul 24th 2009 2:29PM]

An even bigger wow factor is the price, $13.41 per port, Yikes!

[Renal Posted Jul 23rd 2009 5:54AM]

Doesn't Win7 support some kinda performance booster when you plug an usb-stick into the computer? Wouldn't 49 usb-sticks plugged into your computer be über then?

[TheRealBanana Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:58AM]

"an" usb?
an you ess be?

*A usb

yey \o/

[Oli D Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:59AM]

In an ideal world, but test show that ready boost needs a really fast drive to make any difference.
Also, the amount of work the CPU has to do to crunch all the USB connections would make things really jerky.

[Oli D Posted Jul 23rd 2009 8:02AM]

I think an USB should be correct.

Also "An Yellow hat" is weirdly also acceptable.

Y is a pseudo vowel.

It sounds better A USB device, but grammatically An comes before vowels.

[CityZen Posted Jul 23rd 2009 11:36AM]

He's Norwegian, so "u" is pronounced "ooh", not "you".

[Renal Posted Jul 23rd 2009 4:25PM]

Thanks folks for the spell error! I really appreciate that, doesn't we just love off-topic comments ? (!)

for faen

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 6:22AM]

The next macbook air will look like that on the underside.

[theswiss Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:26AM]

finally, now I can connect my 49 external 1tb harddrives simultaniously to my pc ... and for our fellow engadget reader juaquin I'll use a usb split so I even can use 50 1tb harddrives :) who will help to pay the electricitiy bill ??

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:31AM]

just what i needed for my usb poll dancer names sally and my usb rechargeable rc heli...darn..not compatible with the usb missile launcher :(

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:55AM]

Finally my dream of a full plate of USB sushi can be realized.

[bdav Posted Jul 23rd 2009 7:47AM]

I can't think of a use for this where the bottleneck caused by 49 devices off 1 host wouldn't be an issue.

What would have been clever would have been for them to make some kind of express-/PCI- card controller to make each port full bandwidth.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2009 8:16AM]

I'm thinking 49 cheap 2GB flash drives and RAID 0. USB 2 gets what, 480 Mb/s? That's plenty fast, and 98 gigs is enough to hold all of your non-media-library files.

[Khav Posted Jul 23rd 2009 9:41AM]

In practice it doesn't get nearly that speed. And besides, for the price of all that you could get one of those new SSD's and drop it into an enclosure. This gives the added bonus of not requiring an extra power supply to run.