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A question for Antec Nine Hundred owners

S

ShotgunSteven

Lifer
I am building a new system and was hooking up the HDD LED and other leads, and the manual for the case mentions the lead for the Power LED. One small problem. My case apparently doesn't have one.

Did earlier models not have one perhaps, and I wound up with an older version of the case but with a newer manual?
 
Ì noticed that when I was building a pc for a friend. Does it even have a power LED? You can see that your pc is turned on by the ten million LED fans in there anyways =I
 
Originally posted by: Oerekum
Ì noticed that when I was building a pc for a friend. Does it even have a power LED? You can see that your pc is turned on by the ten million LED fans in there anyways =I
Click to expand...

Joking aside, yes I think that's the general consensus as to why the system does not have a power LED.

Shotgun, I think maybe that's a typo in the manual; AFAIK the 900 only has an HD LED, but not a power one.
 
OK, just thought I would ask. 😛 I take it the white wires on the leads are the positive, and the dark blue, purple, or black ones they are paired with are the negative?
 
No, the ground wires should be consistent, either white or black, and the colored lead (anything other than white or black) should be Positive. But with front panel wiring, it really doesn't make any difference. If you get LED leads backwards, they won't work but won't harm anything - just reverse the ones that don't work. Sometimes the LEDs are even wired wrong so they end up backwards anyway. And the switch leads (power, reset, etc.) work the same either way anyhoo.

.bh.
 
there is a power LED.. it's your HD. I have the 900 and from what I remember, when I wired the HD to the thing, it'd stay a constant blue if nothing was happening. Otherwise, it'd blink if it was seeking. Again this is from what I remember.. too lazy to open the case and look.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
No, the ground wires should be consistent, either white or black, and the colored lead (anything other than white or black) should be Positive. But with front panel wiring, it really doesn't make any difference. If you get LED leads backwards, they won't work but won't harm anything - just reverse the ones that don't work. Sometimes the LEDs are even wired wrong so they end up backwards anyway. And the switch leads (power, reset, etc.) work the same either way anyhoo.

.bh.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Well, I think they must have run out of one color of wiring at the factory then, as all of the leads have a light and a dark wire, but the dark ones seem to range from dark blue to purple to black. Weird. 😛
 
Well, give Antec a rap across the knuckles with a ruler! Getting too big to stick with wiring conventions... 😀 With the relatively low level of criticality of front panel wiring and the rising cost of copper wire, perhaps they decided to use whatever color wire they had on hand rather than buy new stock now just to maintain conventions... I've even heard of PSUs that have non-standard wire colors - now that's going too far!

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: hsfnewbie
there is a power LED.. it's your HD. I have the 900 and from what I remember, when I wired the HD to the thing, it'd stay a constant blue if nothing was happening. Otherwise, it'd blink if it was seeking. Again this is from what I remember.. too lazy to open the case and look.
Click to expand...

Power LED = LED fans

 
Tates is right. When I recently bought my 900 and had the problem I contacted Antec and was told that the fan led lights are the power indicators. There supposedly was a misprint in the manual. I guess you are SOL if you want to replace the Antec fans with better ones.

Eeyore
 
What ticks me off is that cases are now coming without speakers or piezo buzzers. I've been doing PCs so long, It really unnerves me to have my confuser boot up without those little noises to tell me everything's OK... Damn those Noise Nazis!

.bh.
 
I feel the same as you about boot-up noises. It worries me when I don't get the beep telling me that nothing is wrong. My latest system is like that (Antec 900 and Gigabyte DS3R motherboard) with neither the case nor the motherboard having a noise maker. My last system (Antec P-180 and DFI motherboard) at least had a piezo on the motherboard.

I remember years ago I had the problem and I simply took a junk 2" speaker stripped from an old radio, contact cemented the rear of the speaker magnet to the bottom of the case. But I don't have any spare speakers now. Any idea as to the voltage the motherboards put out for speakers? I might need that info when I visit my local Radio Shit store for a speaker or piezo.

Thanks for any help,

Eeyore
 
I dealt with no PC speaker in my old case for quite a while, so I was used to my PC being silent on bootup. Then I got a new case (Gigabyte 3D aurora 570) and it has a speaker and it took me by surprise when my PC beeped when I first turned it on lol.

BTW, my case doesn't have a power LED mobo connection, but rather it uses a pass-through molex plug 😕
 
I just went googling about internal speakers for BIOS troubleshooting. As is normal, everyone had their own opinion but what worried me most were the 3 or 4 people that hooked their case speaker to the motherboard speaker header and had the wires melt down. I also checked with Radio Shack and the piezos come in different voltages, frequencies and sound levels. The sound freqency is not important to me (although some can be irritating), the sound level is more important (I wouldn't want a loud shrill sound) but the voltage could be important; although a few of them work in a range of voltages rather than a specific voltage. I then sent a support request to Gigabyte asking them about the speaker header on their motherboard and what it was designed to support. I'll leave another message once I hear back from Gigabyte. Their support is pretty good and usually emails are answering in 1-2 days.

SparkyJJO,

You say that your case doesn't have a power LED connection to the motherboard
but it has a pass-through molex connector. What does the molex do? How does it connect so that you get a power indication?

Eeyore
 
When the PC is on the power LED lights up. Now my case uses dual power LEDs to light the power button up so maybe the mobo header can't supply enough current? I dunno.

BTW, I agree gigabyte is pretty good on support. When I got my case it came with a scratched up window panel. I was using the mesh panel so I didn't do anything about it, but I went to use the acrylic window later and remembered it was scratched. I sent them an email and all I had to do was email a screenshot of my newegg invoice and only a couple days later I had a brand new window at my doorstep.
 
The voltage for the speaker is the same +5V. The chip that drives the speaker just switches the voltage on and off to create the frequency and can't supply much current - no way it should be able to melt wires. So the guy must have seriously miswired the speaker to cause that - remember the speaker pins are usually the end ones of a set of four pins - one will be ground and the other +5. I don't think I'd want less than a 16 Ohm unit and more like 32 Ohm. I think I still have a speaker in the old Enlight case upstairs - guess I'll have to salvage it.

I found a couple on Directron, but I'd likely head to my local Mom & Pop before doing that. And the one they say is specific to an Inwin case would work with any. Its the little plastic clip on the piezo driver that is specific to the Inwin case - the speaker itself will work with any mobo.

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
What ticks me off is that cases are now coming without speakers or piezo buzzers. I've been doing PCs so long, It really unnerves me to have my confuser boot up without those little noises to tell me everything's OK... Damn those Noise Nazis!

.bh.
Click to expand...

I was unhappy with my Antec P180B not having a speaker so I bought the Lian Li replacement speaker from performance PCs (when I was buying some spiral wrap). I want to hear the startup beeps (even if it cost me $3).
http://www.performance-pcs.com...=210&products_id=20500
 
Zepper and all,

I wish that I had a mom and pop store. Growing up (I am 60+ now) in SoCal we had many independent electronic stores that sold components (along with fixing most electronic items). They were the place of choice when buying my components for my budding interest in electronics; those components they didn't have I had to order by mail from Allied or Burstein which took an inordinately long time to get. But now, in our much more progressive age, I am stuck with my local electronics dealer being Radio Shack! And I am not located in an out of the way area; I live in Oceanside CA which is about 30 miles north of San Diego. And,even then, I only know of one dealer in San Diego that sells electronic components. So I am stuck with ordering online and paying, at least, a $10 shipping charge for the $.35 led that I need.

The problem with the melting wires was not a single incident when I looked. That is what concerned me. If it was one person having the problem then I would have thought that he had made a mistake in hooking up the connection. But there were 3-4 hits in my brief search that had the same problem. That caught my attention. Especially in our current times when speed of getting a product to market is much more important than getting things right; at least for the manufacturer but not necessarily for the consumer.

Thanks for the info and listening to my ranting about the days gone by,

Eeyore
 
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