Front panel connectors.. grrr

[kalniel]

(there is a genuine question at the end of this rant..)

Why is it that you spend £70 on a case, which is exquisitely engineered, with careful attention to detail and the most ingenious touches, and yet they decide to forget any semblance of quality when it comes to front panel connectors or instructions?

Case in point (excuse the pun), the HAF912Plus. Excellent case (more info later in a system build thread). But absolutely rubbish instructions - and that's for the other aspects of the case. When it comes to front panel connectors they handily talk about things like the audio and USB connectors, but come to the *minor* details like say, the power switch and they're just ignored completely almost as if they're hoping you won't notice them.

Then you look at the cables and you see why. Most motherboard sockets are labelled up with + and - pins. But are the connectors? Of course not. You get a S and G, which I'm guessing is signal and ground, and makes more sense if not exactly consistent with the motherboards. So signal should be -ve, and ground neutral, or perhaps +ve on the m/board connector. Next clue is the colour of the cables. White cables are -ve usually, and other (non-black) colours are neutral or +ve.

Okay, so you think you can just about work it out from all of that. Then the HAF912 does something really stupid:

Provides a connector where the white cable goes to the ground pin, while the coloured goes to signal.

How the diddly am I supposed to interpret this? Other cables (in the same case) have the white going to the signal. Do I follow the cable colours, or the pin labels?

[Attila the Bun]

I know your pain Kalniel, I really do. I had much the same problem with my Lancool.

In the end I googled for every review I could find and found a picture that had the connector shown.

Do the wiring in computers have an International Standard? If not they should.

[GheeTsar]

I still haven't bothered to connect up the front panel mic and headphones sockets for this very reason. Not that I would use them if I did.

[scaryjim]

ASUS. Q-connector. Job done

I've normally found that the coloured wire is the signal and the white is the return, and I've always gine purely by wire colour and motherboard header. Don't think I've blown anything up yet

tbh though: with the power and reset switches (AFAIK, at least) the polarity doesn't matter, and with the LEDs if you connect it one way and it doesn't come on just power down and swap it round? I don't think an LED will blow if connected the wrong way, will it?

[Funkstar]

I still don't know why there isn't a proper standard for front panel connectors in this day and age.

[kalniel]

ASUS. Q-connector. Job done

I've normally found that the coloured wire is the signal and the white is the return, and I've always gine purely by wire colour and motherboard header. Don't think I've blown anything up yet

tbh though: with the power and reset switches (AFAIK, at least) the polarity doesn't matter, and with the LEDs if you connect it one way and it doesn't come on just power down and swap it round? I don't think an LED will blow if connected the wrong way, will it?

Hopefully not. Will just try trial and error I guess - it's the inconsistancy that's puzzling - most of the time white is connected to S, and on one cable it's connected to a marked -ve. But on another cable it's connected to G!

Presumably a Q-connector would have exactly the same problem.

Just wish the manual would even dain to mention such things.

[scaryjim]

Presumably a Q-connector would have exactly the same problem.

I guess it would - just easier to put the connections on *doh* Absence of brain error on my part!

[this_is_gav]

tbh though: with the power and reset switches (AFAIK, at least) the polarity doesn't matter, and with the LEDs if you connect it one way and it doesn't come on just power down and swap it round? I don't think an LED will blow if connected the wrong way, will it?

About 90% of the PCs I've built I've put at least one cable on the wrong way around (including the LEDs and speaker) and to no ill-effect.

At least with USB and audio you can only put them in one way... well you could once they established the standard block rather than giving you the individual pins as they did a few years back.

And there is one standard which was set (might be Intel) where there was a block like the USB block (might be 2 pins shorter), though there aren't many cases which use them as most motherboard manufacturers simply ignore it. I built a system using an ASUS case and an AMD-based ASRock motherboard which both used it, so it's not exclusive to Intel, but all the other ASUS (of course ASRock is ASUS's budget brand) boards I've seen don't use it and I don't recall another case using it... seen a few budget Intel-based motherboards which utilise it, though I don't think I've seen a retail motherboard with the block layout.

[barker967]

Coolermaster must have different factories building different cases becasue my HAF922 had the front panel connectors labelled up properly and were simple to figure out.

[kalniel]

Coolermaster must have different factories building different cases becasue my HAF922 had the front panel connectors labelled up properly and were simple to figure out.

What were the labels and colours for yours then?

[barker967]

Just took the side off to have a look:

pwr led -
pwr led +

HDD LED

Power SW

Reset SW

Speaker SW

Audio and usb connectors were the large blocks that plug directly into the motherboard no hassle.

[kalniel]

Just took the side off to have a look:

pwr led -
pwr led +

HDD LED

Power SW

Reset SW

Speaker SW

Audio and usb connectors were the large blocks that plug directly into the motherboard no hassle.

And you say that's labelled up properly? I know what the connectors are, it's the mislabelling on the connector ends w.r.t the colour of the wires and the motherboard sockets that's annoying

Turns out that the colour of the wire is the consistant factor - white = -ve = signal. Dispite the one connector saying white was ground and coloured was signal - it was wrong - white was still signal.

[barker967]

Tell you the truth I never really pay much attention to the colour of the wires, just what is witten on them and figuring out where to put them! Those silly little black connectors are the bane of computer builders everywhere.

[Terbinator]

The fact we still have to use these shoddy connectors is an insult on its own.

O/T: Likewise, another thing that irks me is shat fan control in BIOS - Asus being the worst I've used.