Corsair Headset help + BD Drive

Stupidly I have bought a Corsair gaming headset before checking, it comes with a 3.5mm jack and a splitter for the mic jack and headphone jack. However my laptop doesnt have the microphone jack. Is there a converter to usb I can purchase?

Secondly I purchased the following:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asu...-dvd-rw-with-bdxl-read-upto-128gb-per-disc-du

Do i need to plug in both USB's as it requires to ports or is one fine as I'm using USB 3.0?

 

For audio, look for something along the description / search term of "3.5mm 4 pole splitter". We are dealing with straight electrical connections, so it doesn't matter if the cable calls itself a splitter or merger, or both. They all do exactly the same thing.

For the external optical drive... Yes, you need both USB plugs. There are two USB plugs so the drive can draw power, not so the drive can send/receive data (optical drives are so slow, they don't even saturate a USB 2.0 connection (~30MBps max), let alone a USB 3.0 connection (~300MBps max).

If it bothers you, look for an external drive that only use one USB plug. It's possible that the Asus optical drive works with just one USB plug, and only included the 2-plug cable in case you had some unusual USB config usually seen in older machines. But it's also possible that their drive design actually needs >2.5W of power, and truly needs both USB cables. You can either do research to see if that's the case, or you could look for another drive that uses only 1 USB plug.

If you do look for another drive, look for one that uses micro-USB or USB Type C, and not one that uses mini-USB. The reason is becsuse micro-USB cables are everywhere as the defacto standard for charging all non-apple smartphones and smartphone accessories, and USB Type C is quickly taking it's place as the new standard. That means you probably already have (or will have) some of these cables in your travel carry bag. And if you ever need to buy a replacement cable while you're on the road, micro/C USB cables can be found everywhere, including supermarkets, Walmart, hardware stores, etc. It's a lot harder to reliably find a replacement mini-USB cable unless you specifically go to an electronics or photography store, because nobody uses mini-USB anymore.

 

Newer BD-RW drives are usually like mine, it needs two USB 2.0 (.5A) or one USB 3.0(.9A), but it's an LG, not an ASUS. You'd just have to test it to find out whether it will work.

 

You can also use something like this https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00IRVQ0F8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1