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
