USB Hub Question

You have the right idea by using a hub for simple things like a mouse and the e licencors. 
The thing that you need the most is your audio interface port to be on it's own. 
I also found I could not share a port using a hub for my Keyboard controller and Digital drums, That upset Sonars system of looking for MIDI input devices. I have lots of ports but they are a little far away from those two pieces of equipment so I have this extension cable, I'll have to go buy a couple more.
I just installed this PCIe USB 3 card but it's in the back so kinda hard to get at for my portable drives without an extension cable. 
Which will bring up a question of the whole USB 3 thing, are the cables the same? 

The passive hubs are fine if the devices using it do not require USB buss power. 
And I have a feeling that if this is on USB 3 that it might no longer be true. I have not  found much info about it and I am curious if someone here knows about USB 3. All I know is it has a lot more juice available than USB 2 did. The USB 3.0 PCIe card I just installed had to be hooked up with a cable to my power supply. 
 
So for USB 2.0 a powered hub will take the strain off your motherboards limited amount of juice but won't change the transfer speed. It might be overkill if just a bunch of passive things like mice and dongles are in it. 
An external hard drive, some have wall warts and some use buss power. A powered hub is not  really needed for the drive with the wall wart, but will help with juice to the buss powered drive. 
 
Things like mice use very little juice but a hard drive uses a lot. So will be interesting to see what USB 3 can do if power was an issue in the past. 

Yeah Cactus, the reason for using the powered hub is just to ensure that none of your PC's resources are being used.
I agree that most of the devices moved to the hub are not essential to your recording equipment nor do they draw power from the USB port but for the extra $5 it's worth it just for peace of mind IMO.
Hubs for a DAW are in general, not a good idea but with new laptops only shipping with 3 USB ports, those of us that don't have the extra 2 to 3k to invest in a proper recording lappy have to do what we have to do.
 
I finally got away from laptops to the rig in my sig below.
But for mobile recording I have a laptop with nothing but Sonar on it and my FastTrack pro just to capture the occasional idea that pops up while screwing around with the band.  
 
Mike

I've got three USB dongles on an inexpensive hub.
Works perfectly fine...

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
 
I think we need to pay attention to USB 3.0 as a must have for audio interfaces and USB bus powered controllers. The above article has many very interesting point about things that apply to our needs. Most is way down the page when they start talking about USB 3
 
 
 
USB signals are transmitted on a twisted-pair data cable with 90Ω ±15% characteristic impedance,[99] labeled D+ and D−. Prior to USB 3.0, these collectively use half-duplex differential signaling to reduce the effects of electromagnetic noise on longer lines. Transmitted signal levels are 0.0 to 0.3 volts for low and 2.8 to 3.6 volts for high in full-bandwidth and low-bandwidth modes, and −10 to 10 mV for low and 360 to 440 mV for high in hi-bandwidth mode. In FS mode, the cable wires are not terminated, but the HS mode has termination of 45 Ω to ground, or 90 Ω differential to match the data cable impedance, reducing interference due to signal reflections. USB 3.0 introduces two additional pairs of shielded twisted wire and new, mostly interoperable contacts in USB 3.0 cables, for them. They permit the higher data rate, and full duplex operation.

It may be helpful to keep in mind that ports and connectors are different things.
 
As has been suggested, I used my extra headers on my Motherboard to maximize the number of ports I have available to use. I got one of the back plates with wire leads as shown in the previous post. I also got the same Amazon hub for my dongles, as you have, on the advice of Jim R :-).
 
I have the various USB items spread out across all the available ports in the hope that the motherboard will manage the interrupts more efficiently than if I had everything stacked up on connectors sharing fewer ports.  

I would use caution connecting the mouse and keyboard to a USB hub.  Some BIOS will not recognize a hub and thus you will not have access to the BIOS in that situation. 
 
I have two PCIe USB port cards (5 ports on each card) installed in my PC to get enough USB ports.  One USB card is used just for my 5 USB connected CD burner drives.

Well just plugged it in and so far so good... Granted I've barely tried anything but at the very least mouse and keyboard are working and everything else that's plugged in is lit up :-) I was able to leave my 2 USB3.0 ports open for my 2 external USB3.0 harddrives, and now I can fit everything else in the back, leaving my 2 front USB2.0 ports open, which was my goal. Hopefully everything is good.