Since the acceptance of USB and Firewire, consumers have found themselves with a plethora of new gadgets and gizmos to clutter their desktop, furthering the tangle of cords behind their PCs. Vendors have started supplying front panel connectors to their cases, adding functionality and convenience to their products. Companies have started adding more features into these panels to compete with each other. Some consolidate fan buses and temperature monitors into their panels. Today we are looking one of Enermax’s entries into the market, the UC-A07FATR2. We are reviewing the black model, but they are available in black, white, and silver.
The Enermax comes packaged in a clear fold-out plastic blister-pack, and is easily opened. Some blister packs are completely sealed, and require forceful destruction with a myriad of sharp objects to open. Inside one will find the product itself, a Firewire extension cable, a USB 2.0 extension cable, Audio extension cables, 2 cable ties, adhesive strips, and a small manual. The necessary power connections, fan connectors, and thermal probes are already fitted into place.
The Enermax encorporates a cage that initially seems larger than necessary. Enermax has designed raised points within the cage to accept a hard drive, or 2 80mm fans. The addition of fans make this panel an effective hard drive bay cooler. The panel and cage is completely aluminum, and is coated with a thick glossy lacquer finish. It is very light, but sturdy. All of the connections were also sturdy.
Initial Impressions
The tiny user manual did not cover all of the basics, and they left out a lot of stuff on installation (they completely omitted details on how to connect the front IO panels). They just tell you to connect it up, and leave it to the user to match the correct plugs. Luckily, the plugs are wired so that one cannot mis-match them, but it still takes some thinking to match up. All the plugs are intended to basically “extend” from the back panel, and they even give you a card slot cover for you to route the hideous barrage of extra wiring you now have in your case. I would like to have seen a more “OEM” style of cables included, in which the front panel connects directly to the motherboard.
Installation is pretty straight forward. Basically just insert into a drive bay and route the cables through a large hole within the enclosed bracket. I found it is best to bunch up the cables in the drive cage when inserting to avoid tangles, and then pull the cables through the chasis. Once your plugs are routed to the back, just plug in to their respective ports.
Once installed, the user will now have several ports now within convenient reach: two USB 2.0 connectors, one Firewire connector, one audio in (microphone or line in) and one audio out (headphones). The plugs themselves are well constructed, and respond to any inserted cable with a satisfying ‘click’.
The glossy finish of the panel will match perfectly with the shiny high-end Enermax cases, but will stick out in most people’s machines. You can buy different colors, but the product would be more competitive if it included changeable face plates, as the average modder has more than one computer, usually in different non-standard colors.
The fan control knobs are rather small, and difficult to turn. This can be seen as a boon by some who do not want to unintentionally change their settings. Two case fans can have their noise reduced significantly utilizing this fan bus. The display is enhanced by a blue backlight. The blue LEDs are around the display’s left and right sides, and does not light the display uniformly, as in other backlit LCD products.
The included cables are very well shielded, and have a professional feel to them. The small thermal probes can be easily attached anywhere with the included adhesive strips. The thermal sensors can be set to chime an alarm at a particular temperature. The alarm sounds like a wristwatch timer, which you can sample here. The default setting is rather low (around 115o), and therefore would be set off frequently. The alarm is user defined, and can be changed, although not intuitively.
Conclusion
The panel is a good idea and a good product, but could have been further customized to appeal to the intended audience. Although it is a decent product, the usability aspects are horrible (the manual and the ease of setting the alarm). I would definately recommend this product to someone who is a hardware geek and doesn’t need any assistance, as it has many useful features. For everyone else, it has too many shortcomings that keep it from being an excellent product. I am giving the Enermax UC-A07FATR2 a respectable 7 out of 10 rating.
Pros
- Good quality cables
- Independent fan buses
- Good looks (blue back light and quality finish)
- Lots of connections.
- Doubles as a hard drive cooler
Cons
- OEM look ruined for most users (mismatched face plate & extra cables)
- Manual is useless and confusing
- Alarm not intuitive
- Too much extra wiring
The manual deserves some extreme criticism. It completely omits details on how to connect the extension cables to the front panel, simply telling the user “connect to the front panel”. Not only is some of the information completely wrong, but was obviously translated into “Engrish”. The author tried to get very wordy to explain how to connect something or change a jumper. Instead, an illustration would have helped to clarify the idea without confusion. Here’s a snip from the manual’s wisdom:
Jumper cap setting (Jumper pins “J1” on PCB): LCD can display in either oC or oF scale. Open: Centigrade (oC); Short: Fahrenheit (oF) When J1 has no jumper cap on, temperature shall display is in oC scale. Otherwise, display in oF scale when J1 has jumper cap on. (Push “Reset” to display new temp scale after J1 setting is done)
Basically what I translated this to mean “on for F, off for C”. After looking at the back of the panel to check my settings, I realized that the manual is just plain WRONG! J1 is the audio connector, and JP1 is the jumper bank that changes the temperature readout. Now that I had found the correct jumper bank, I see a 3-pin jumper bank, and the manual explained a 2-pin jumper bank! Fortunately, the settings are silk-screened on the PCB. Basically, jump pins 1-2 for Celcius, and 2-3 for Fahrenheit. This section of the manual is completely useless to anyone who wants to change this setting. Fortunately, the jumpers were set to Fahrenheit by default. In one of the pictures below I have circled jumpers J1 and JP1 for easy identification.
Upon analysis, you really cannot mess up the front panel cable connection. The connectors will only fit one way, and the pin grouping obviously match up to the correct ports. The cable ends have “UP” labeled on them, obviously intending the user to face them upwards. This is not obvious to the user at first glance, and requires a bit of thought. There was no mention of these connections in the manual, not even an illustration.