Just wanted to share something I found out:
After updating to the latest PiTool in late December 2019, I had all sort of problems, my 5k Plus headset would black out, refuse to change refresh rate and show weird double vision when using Smart Smoothing.
All these problems went away after I unplugged my USB harddisk.
Seems the headset needs more power from the USB port after the firmware update, so my laptop wasn’t able to supply enough power both to the harddisk and headset.
If you have any of the above problems, it might be worth checking if your headset is getting enough power from the USB port.
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That’s strange; I wouldn’t have expected the power requirement to change.
Thanks for the tip!
It would be strange if the headset would depend on USB power, when it has a standalone PSU. The problem could be also there was a contention on USB because your harddisk did something, which loaded the USB hub to the point it corrupted the communication with the headset.
USB 3.0 ports are rated to 0.9 A (at 5V), there was a way to check the requested power in Windows Management Console (on each USB Hub device), but now I cannot find it on my install, so I guess, you might not be able to find either.
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Maybe with Powercfg.exe ?
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/PowerCfgTheHiddenEnergyAndBatteryToolForWindowsYoureNotUsing.aspx
I remember using something a bit pack looking for a latency issue … but can’t remember exactly . Especially since I got a dongle to plug 
this
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That could be the reason too. I was just guessing that it had something to do with power consumption.
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USB3 ports are rated at 0.9A 
I stand corrected 
thanks @IG88
no you are wrong, 500mA is usb 2.0
900mA is correct
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usbdeview
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can you check how much power its using with
this ?
Actually, I have tried both usbdeview and device manager, but for some reason, it does not show any info (power in usbdeview is blank). I am not sure if it is due to my hardware or Windows drivers.
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So just to follow up, I have now connected the USB harddisk to a powered USB hub so that it doesn’t draw any power from the USB ports on my computer. After this the headset runs just fine together with the USB harddisk. Maybe my situation is a bit special though, I am using a laptop, and I imagine it has some extra restrictions on the USB power output.
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I have had luck running my pimax into a 4 port amazon basics usb 2 hub
Without it, I was having lots of glitches and crashes. Other hubs don’t seem to work as well.
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