Here's a spiffy $3 gold plated and braided cable USB extension cable (sometimes used for my Blue Cube).


What's With All These Gold Keyboard Cables?


Keyboard Manufacturers sometimes make some pretty outrageous claims about these cables. Are they true?

Rosewill RK-9000
or the ABS M1
or the Steelseries 7G
At least the ever ebullient Razer Marketing department restrained themselves and just said "braided cable". Maybe they used fake gold?

So let's look at some cables. Will you type or game better on a Gold USB cable?

Left to right, Filco, Ziotek USB extender cable for my Blue Cube, Logitech G5 with a big honking toroid, Realforce 87U (not gold those cheap bastards - I paid over $300 for that keyboard!)

The most important thing to note first is that USB is a DIGITAL signal. Ones and zeros. They either get down the cable or not. If you plug in a USB device and get a connection you are good to go. So even if you had the highest quality cable in the world you'll never type faster or see any latency differences. Quality of cable WILL make a difference for electrical signal strength but at these less than 6 foot distances of a typical keyboard cable you WILL NOT SEE ANY DIFFERENCE IN LATENCY.

However gold IS a good conductor. This property allows it to often be used for ANALOG cables where it can make a difference (although not as much as your typical Best Buy or Radio Shack salesman will tell you). In fact sometimes the cables are "Gold Colored", not "Gold Plated". Big difference. Especially when the cables are marked up so heavily despite the fact that the ultrathin gold plating is a few pennies more to manufacture.

Silver beats Gold when it comes to conductivity. This is why Teflon covered silver wire is da bombe for modders (see the N52 Nostromo Mod - would have been impossible without the stuff)!


Trivia Time: Check the conductivity of Graphite!! The Nobel Prize was announced this week for Graphene - a one molecule layer of carbon that may replace semiconductors someday.

Notice that silver is a better conductor and also obviously cheaper. Why not SILVER USB cables FTW!! This is where the corrosion properties of the various metals come into play. Silver tarnishes. Gold doesn't (my molar fillings are nice and shiny). So gold MUST be better because it will make sure you don't have rusty connections? Right?

Here is where we need to look at a USB connector a bit more closely.


Here's a USB cable I tore apart to better show what the internal wiring is like. Now most of the chart should be fairly self explanatory. Pin 1 is red is a REGULATED 5V voltage. Pin 4 is Electrical Ground. So what's up with the outer shell that is gold in that one connector? It is attached to cable SHIELD, the braided wire you see. Although eventually it connects to the PC's ground it's main purpose is electrical/RF shielding for Pins 1-4. Proper shielding is important for long distances but again the signal is digital. The USB device connects or it drops completely. Nothing in between.


Here is where it gets interesting. Even the cheapest USB "thrown in the package" cable (true geeks have drawers of them) has gold connectors where it COUNTS. Pins 1 - 4.


And another piece of trivia. Good old IBM never needed any bling on the shield portion of the connector either, they put the gold where it counts. (see the USB Versus PS/2 Wiki for the other benefits of USB)


So in other words the Gold fancy outer part is pretty useless. You will undoubtedly get a good shield connection with all that surface area of the outer part of the connector.

Sure is pretty though.

Shielding on these USB cables is pretty pathetic compared to audio cables so don't think the Gold will make much difference there. The USB specification limits USB to 5 meters (16 feet, 5 inches) and so I think the emphasis the USB designers had was on making standardized cheap cables. I have found running long 25 footruns from my wiring closet upstairs to my HTPC that USB will have problems. However there you have two options. The first is a simple active repeater cable (acts like a USB hub to sync the packets) like this from one from Monoprice for $8.



Even better is the USB to Ethernet - Ethernet to USB cabling option like this one from Monoprice for $14.

The USB cabling specification says the shield should NOT be attached at one end.


Well, I can tell you nobody seems to have told keyboard manufacturers that. I see shield to ground all the time opening up keyboards.

RealForce 87U - Ground to Shield. And look at those nice thick USB cables and RF busting toroid.


The reason this matters is that you can get static electricity across the connection from your PC to USB devices. For example I put a Fluke multimeter on my Lian Li Aluminum case and I can measure continuity from the case through the USB hub and then through the cable shield. Shuffle my feet, touch the case, and ZAP goes the device on the end. However if you are a OCN overclocker and connect the USB headers wrong to the motherboard the USB specification is not to blame. ZAP!

So chalk this up Gold Mania to overenthusiastic gaming keyboard marketing departments. Similar to the "USB versus PS/2 Wiki" you have to be skeptical of keyboard marketers claims. Braiding is nice. I'm not going to do a Wiki on that though. I don't whip my keyboard around like it's a mouse. And then there's toroids on USB cables. I hope Gaming Keyboard manufacturers don't start claiming toroids "Give You The EDGE"!

So overall Gold USB connectors does little harm and looks nice. For ULTIMATE BLING ya gotta get a Deck though. A LED in the connector. Now that's pimpin.

A couple of other Gold Plated USB discussions I found.

Vbulletin forum (a bit of a surprise)
Whirlpool Australia (washing machines have USB?)
Real life testing (TexasFlood is such a joker)