xjack:

Thanks for your concern and interest. I realize that the target device will only take in the current it requires and the supply will have plenty of overhead. My concern is on the quality of the power regulation components on the USB hub PCB. If it is a 7 port design, it should require 3.5A to the ports + 0.2A to drive the hub chip + other SMD devices present on the PCB.  If the hub of interest is a decent design, there should be no issue as the current blocking diodes on board the PCB should protect the hub in an over current situation if a device that was plugged in was out of spec.

If the quality of the components on the hub PCB was of lower quality, then there may be a potential of premature failure due to the components being pushed continually to the maximum. Since the power supply is robust, it will have no issue supplying the required current; rather, it is the ability of the hub to be operated reliably at continuous maximum load.

Perhaps I should have stated it as the supply will keep pushing the required current; however, the hub may prematurely fail due to continuous stress.

I am very interested in the results of this experiment and I am looking for reliable USB hubs for continuous operation and I am in the process of designing a similar USB hub "farm" to plug in a large quantity of USB mining devices.

Howdy. This is some excellent engineering and testing. I was looking at that exact power supply to power two 7-port hubs. My only concern was how well the USB hub would be able to cope with the extra current push from the 26A supply. I've seen a few other threads where someone tried to remove the current limiting diodes from the USB Hub PCB, but I'm not sure if that is a good idea.

It seems the vast majority of the USB problems with these USB based miners is insufficient power going to each respective port from the under rated supplies included with the hubs. The other issue seems to be with USB 3.0 compatibility with USB 2.0 systems. This appears to be the case with those embedded platforms like the Raspberry Pi where it doesn't work with USB 3.0 at all.

Will you be connecting your hubs to a full fledged x86 PC or a some sort of embedded platform like the Raspberry Pi?

Looking forward to your test results...

Many times... it is indeed a crazy place. You can get so caught up in the moment and have quite a bit of fun.

Howdy! I'm a newbie myself and I'm reading up on this material as quickly as I can absorb it! The mining technology is very interesting nonetheless.

Howdy. I'm new to forum and I've been doing alot of reading in the last several days. From the posts I've read so far, it looks like a good time to buy a small batch and see where things go. 

I realize the mining aspect of Bitcoin is increasing in difficulty; however, it shouldn't discourage new people to learn about the fundamentals of mining and managing Bitcoin. I'm trying to learn as much as I can and I'm planning to buy a few Bitcoins to explore new opportunities.