Severe Input Lag / Performance Issues on M1 Mac Mini (2020)
Hello!
I recently purchased a Mac Mini and have been loving it with absolutely zero problems until this week when I've been suffering severe input lag and performance issues. Hoping someone can help troubleshoot this!
I decided to buy a webcam (Victure SC30) and external microphone (Amazon Basics Mini Condenser Mic) for video calls/gaming, both of which are USB 2.0 outputs. Since I use a Logitech K750 wireless keyboard + a Logitech G203 wireless mouse and those two occupy the 2 USB ports on my Mac Mini, I bought a USB 3.0 hub from Anker so I can plug everything in.
Everything seemed to work fine initially, but I noticed that I was getting some input lag from my keyboard and mouse when they were plugged into the USB 2.0 Hub. I also noticed that there's weird "tin-can" digitalization of voices on the microphone when I plug it into the Anker hub, rather than the Mac Mini port.
It really peaked when I started gaming — my computer started chugging, really lagging and struggling to load World of Warcraft + Discord and/or Slack. I've never had any problems loading any of those programs before. While playing the game, I started getting the spinning beachball when minimizing the window, and I'd have sudden spurts of input lag and complete loss of input functionality where my keyboard/mouse just weren't working. In those moments, my game also froze for 2-3 minutes before my computer caught back up.
There seems to be two separate problems: 1) Something is causing my computer to slow way down and really impacting performance; 2) Input lag/loss of connectivity using the Anker USB Hub.
It seems obvious to me that the Anker Hub isn't working for me, but I'm curious if it's just this one product or if any USB Hub will cause this bad of input delay/loss of connection? I'm considering switching to a magic keyboard that I can plug into a lightning port, and then buying a USB-Lightning dongle for my microphone, but I'm unsure if that will really solve the problem.
I'm also curious as to what could cause the performance slow down. It seems strange that a USB Hub and Microphone could cause such a massive performance drop.
Anyone have thoughts/suggestions? Or dealt with similar issues with multiple USB devices and two ports?
