| | |  | 2.5" / Notebook Enclosures | Home » » » Coolerguys Front Bay Panel IDE / Molex Power Extension | | | | | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
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Average Customer Review:
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3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Fantastic idea, horrible implementationMay 06, 2007
By dalepres
"dalepres"
This item appeared to be exactly what I needed for my PC. As a full time web developer, I end up doing a lot of work on my own several PCs and those of family and close friends. I don't do PC hardware work full time so I don't have a permanent shop or bench set up. I thought the front panel connectors for hard drives would be much easier than my current method of plugging drives into external USB cases for testing or data recovery.
I was very disappointed in this item, also known as OK306 from OKGear. The front face of the panel does not fit a standard 3.5 inch drive slot. It is too large by about 3/32 of an inch all around. The mounting screw holes on the side do not fit as well. The hole pattern matches the rear two holes (out of three) on a standard 3.5 inch drive slot. Using those screws would leave the front of the panel about 3 inches inside your case rather than even with the front of the case. The only other option is to use the rear screw hole only on the OK306 to the second from the rear hole on the 3.5 inch drive slot. This has two problems. First, by only using one screw hole on each side, the panel rocks up and down significantly. Second, the front of the panel is now about 1/2 inch inside the case rather than lined up with the front of the case. This is better than being sunken into the case by 3 inches but it is still very unsatisfactory. I purchased OK306 and OK307 (Molex and SATA) panels. This mounting problem applies to both and appears to apply to all of the similar series of panels from OKGear.
The final problem with this item is that the IDE connector is on a small circuit board that is immediately behind the front of the panel. This means that the IDE cable you attach to this panel can not be used for any other drive. Most currently manufactured mother boards now only have a single IDE interface so you cannot use this with an IDE CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. The only option would be to use an SATA optical drive or add an additional IDE controller that is dedicated to just this panel.
It is really too bad that the product does not work for its intended purpose. I could really use a front panel IDE and Molex power connector solution.
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