Re-Using a Proprietary Case

[thechronic]

I've been tinkering with computers for over ten years now and like all of you guys here i've picked up different tips along the way. Some things i discovered by making mistakes, sometimes from other people or from making educated guesses. 

This is a fairly straight forward tip i'm sharing, that i should have worked out a good while ago but it only occurred to me today that such a thing is possible. 

I bought an Intel Server second hand because i wanted to make use of the Extended-ATX case. I'd established that the motherboard would mount correctly, but completely forgot that Intel (and some OEMS) have their own Pin Layout for the Front Panel connectors (Power Switch, Reset Button and Lights on the front of the case), in this case grouping all of them together in one block, which meant they connected to the board together in the correct way or not at all. 

Anyway queue panic. My bargain of a case was suddenly useless to me as i couldn't connect the case wires to my new motherboard. My first thought was, i could remove the wires from the 'solid block' and refit the wires into some spare connectors i had, or cut and strip the wires and solder/twist them to the wires on the new connectors. This i knew would most likely work but i wasn't happy about the idea of 'altering' the case incase i chose to sell it on or repurpose it.  

After some intense, frantic googling i stumbled across a Front Panel Extension on ebay, which will fit into the existing connectors and allow me to match the new motherboard's pin layout. For you guys over in America, apparently a site called FrozenCPU offer a similar product. 

 

Edited October 6, 2015 by thechronic