Virtual-Hideout.Net | Reviews | Enermax Multi-Function Panel Review

When the fist BayBus shipped out of the FanBus labs in 1999, the requests for external USB and various other items naturally came along soon after. In the struggle to be the king of the hill of front mounted multi-function panels, the Enermax UC-9FATR2 bulldozes its way to the top. It features a multipurpose card reader, front panel USB, front panel SATA ports, IEEE-1394 and a a two channel fan controller with alarms for temperature and fan speed. Whew! That's a laundry list of items. Follow along as I install it and give it a shakedown.

The Enermax unit comes as a complete kit. Included in the bundle is all the cabling you should need to utilize the various features. To elaborate on the features listed above, the Enermax has a memory card reader (ported to a motherboard USB 2.0 header) that has jacks for the following standards:

As stated above, the bandwidth limitations are helped by being hooked to an existing USB 2.0 header on the mainboard. This means that the various cards should be able to transfer at speeds near the maximum of the various media types. Different media types have inherent transfer limitations, but the USB 2.0 interface should not be a bottleneck to most (if not all) of them. Note that the unit will not add USB 2.0 functionality to a mainboard that does not support it natively. That would require an actual PCI card, which is not an option on this model (but should be for those trying to get some mileage out of an aging system). A savvy modder could probably use an existing add-in card to accomplish this.

Not a bad roundup of the competing standards (do we really need that many different varieties floating around?). So as a card reader, the unit stacks up pretty well. But the Enermax has more to offer. I can always use a couple more front-panel USB connectors, and it has two, although they are really just pass-through connectors to existing ports. If you do a lot of digital video, then you'll be ecstatic over the inclusion of a front mounted IEEE-1394 Firewire port. You will need to bring your own 1394 interface card to the table, however, since this is again basically just a pass-through to an existing port. To round out the I/O extravaganza, Enermax has also included two SATA pass-through ports, although I have not yet seen an external drive that utilizes this type of connector. The last hard disk enclosure I looked at had a USB 2.0 interface and it never got strapped for bandwidth. Dedicated SATA would not share USB traffic, however, so I concede that it may be of some use to folks looking for this function. Completing the package is an integrated two-channel fan controller and two thermal probes. The variable speed knobs allow you to adjust the fan speed for noise or cooling concerns. The blue backlit LCD display shows fan speed and temperature for your choice of channels. An alarm is preset at the factory for one of three temperature thresholds (45, 55, or 65 degrees C) and a jumper controls the low fan speed alarm threshold at either 1000 RPM or 2000 RPM.

Additionally, the unit comes with a well-made 12 page (each language is 12 pages, 6 languages) instruction booklet that details the installation and setup of the unit. Enermax has done an above-average job with the documentation, but it still suffers from occasional poor grammar (then again, so does me). The unit can be had in either black or brushed aluminum faceplate styles. What little real estate on the front panel that isn't covered with jacks is covered with a thick transparent bezel that adds to the looks of the unit. The fit and finish of the faceplate is top-notch, with no obvious manufacturing defects.

Installation

Installing the Enermax unit should probably be done when the system is first built, but can be accomplished in an existing box if you have a little patience. As you can see, the Enermax trails a healthy bunch of cords behind it. Depending on your needs, you may not require every one of them. The process starts with determining where all the wires go, and how you plan to route them to the various places. Where possible, I like to at least twist the cords to make a neat package, and I attempt to hide the various leads by running them underneath or alongside the mainboard. Make sure you don't twist the leads so much that they become too short to reach! I picked two fans from my case to control, one 120mm back exhaust fan and one 70mm video card cooler fan. For this review I did not attempt to daisy chain more than one fan to each channel, in order to preserve the fan speed monitoring function.

The card reader function is controlled by a USB 2.0 mainboard header, and serves as an interconnect for all the various card slots. The USB ports themselves are fed by two pass-through cables that wrap around to the rear ports on your mainboard (or add-in card). Since I didn't want these two bulky cables inside the main cavity, I chose to wrap them around the backplane side of the case, and a small modification to the case side was all I needed to ensure a clean install. Yes, I prefer my mouse and keyboard to connect to dedicated PS/2 ports. I don't play enough first person shooters to notice the difference in sampling rate. In any case, I have to wonder why Enermax didn't just have the two USB ports included with the card reader jacks to preserve the use of the rear panel ports. Hmmm.

There is enough space left behind the multi-function panel to house the remaining wire clutter without it being obvious. It looks messy up close, but all those bundles are zip-tied and neat. Really. When all the wiring was complete, the inside of the case was not noticeably messier than before.

The fan controller hooked up to the 70mm video card fan gave an RPM swing from 1200 Minimum to 3400 Maximum, a nice 2200 RPM spread. The second controller gave the 120mm lighted fan a range of 500 RPM Minimum to 1100 RPM Maximum for a 600 RPM swing. This reading was about 500 RPM lower than what my BIOS and SiSoft Sandra reported, however. One problem I identified is that the low speed fan alarm is preset to go off at either 1000 or 2000 RPM (adjustable by a jumper). So the larger fan will set off the audio alarm at anything but full turn. Thankfully, the alarm goes off after 30 seconds, but the display continues to flash until the problem is solved. A user-adjustable threshold would be a nice feature. The lighted dials are very bright, so if you plan to sleep in the same room, turning them full down is probably your best bet.

The temperature probes seem to work fine, although calibration is always an inexact science. One of these days I'm going to invest in a good calibration tool to test these things. I placed one probe right next to my CPU, and one outside the case. I always prefer to think in terms of temperature differential rather than absolutes, so this way I can get an idea of how hot the box is over ambient conditions. My case temps climbed about 4 degrees Celsius (from 28.2 to 32.1) when the two fans were turned all the way down, a decent trade-off for the reduced noise. Your mileage will vary depending on which fans you decide to control. The temperature alarms will go off at one of three settings: 45, 55, or 65 degrees Celsius, selected by a slide switch on the front panel. I simulated the overheat test with some hot water, and they both worked.

The USB and SATA ports on the front of the unit are basically extension cords, so my testing of them involved making sure they worked, and they did. I do not have any Firewire components, so that component was not tested.

When you have the card reader correctly installed (read: USB header installed on mainboard) Windows XP will identify the card reader as multiple separate drives and assign a letter to each one of the slots. Once you actually install a card, Windows will come up with the familiar "What the heck do you want to do with this stuff?" dialog box. From there, it acts just like any other fixed disk on your system. One problem I did identify is that you can't remove the cards and put them back in without a reboot. It will allow you to plug it in once, but if you take it out, it loses the ability to recognize it when you put it back in. This a pain. I tested using two types of media: Kingston 128MB Compact Flash Card and a Kingston 256MB Secure Digital card. I used HD Tach for both tests. The output is below. About 6 MB/s is pretty decent for these types of media, far better than the USB 1 performance when using them through my digital camera. This speed bump for downloading images from my camera is worth the cost of the unit. The other two media types (memory stick and smart media) were not tested, as I do not own any devices that utilize them.

In all, I've found the Enermax unit to be a pretty good Jack-of-all-trades. The benefits of relocating the USB ports, faster throughput of my Compact Flash, temperature monitoring of my case and increased fan control are a great bundle. And to top it off, the unit looks really good on the Bling Box. Even though I did not need them, the inclusion of the Firewire and SATA ports are a nice feature, possibly the single selling point for some. The unit did not require any software setup for Windows XP, but Enermax has included a driver disk should your OS of choice be different.