Date: |
May 25, 2005 7:28 PM |
Price: |
$82.99 |
Sponsors: |
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Author: |
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Editor: |
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Score: |
8/10 |
Sunbeam Trio Mid-Tower ATX Case Front Panel Connectors 
Front Panel Connectors   
With all those gauges and ports, you'd think that there would be a wiring nightmare of catastrophic proportion waiting for you, right? Not this time! Sunbeam did a pretty good job of keeping the wiring clutter down. I wish they would have opted for a single wiring block for the USB 2.0 ports, like they did for the FireWire port, but I also understand that they want to keep confusion down to an absolute minimum. This way, no one will accidentally hook their USB ports up to their FireWire header on their motherboard! The other set of individual wires is for the front audio ports. Since there aren't any instructions on how to connect these wires, it's mostly a matter of guesswork to get it right. I happened to guess right on my first try! :-D There is only one Mic wire, which I connected to the Mic2 IN_L (Pin 1 of the Front Audio header). The Audio_G wire (black wire) I connected to the Ground (pin 2), which seemed to make sense. The Audio_R and Audio_L wires I connected to LINE2 OUT_R (pin 5) and LINE2 OUT_L (pin 9). I was very pleasantly surprised to get sound out of my headphones the first time I fired up the PC I installed into the Trio! I don't know if the front audio header is part of the ATX standard, but I think it is, which is why I would really like it if all case manufacturers that include audio ports on the exteriors of their cases to just use a single wiring block to make using the audio ports easier!  
Here we have the usual collection of additional motherboard stand-offs, screws, fiber washers, a little speaker (I really like not having a speaker stuck into the case somewhere!), a single replacement PCI slot cover and a sheet that calls itself a User Manual, but isn't anything of the sort. In fact, it's pretty much useless. I've asked Sunbeam to post some useable instructions on their website. We'll have to wait and see how long they take to materialize.
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