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Fractal Design Front USB Wiring Repair Video for NCIX Customers Linus Tech Tips

2010-04-27
this is going to be a quick instructional video for anyone who bought a fractal design define r2 case and is affected by a problem with the wiring in the front USB port we've got a forum thread going on in our forum about how the wires are crossed which means that if you plug any USB peripheral into the front USB port it won't work for one thing and there's a chance that it will be damaged so what we recommend you do is actually just wait fractal design is addressing the problem they're sending us for placement cables which we will be able to send out to every customer who bought one or who buys one in the next little while here but if you want to MacGyver yourself a solution there is a way to do it all you have to do is take your side panel off okay so taking the side panel off and then you will have to pop off the front bezel so that means that you just kind of get under you here pry it up from the bottom there's a little grip at the bottom that you can hold on to I should probably show you that you see that gap right there so I'm just gonna grab onto that and then pry it up if I have straight there we go okay so once you pry it up you just need to carefully remove the front bezel from the case just like this there's a little gap here you'll need to pull these connectors through and then you need to locate the USB cable so this cable right here is the one that fractal design is going to be replacing with ones that are wired correctly the problem is that this USB plug that goes into your motherboard is wired wrong the red cable here and the green cable are not carrying the correct voltage and the correct signal and they are actually carrying what is supposed to be the other so even though the coloring should be red white green black that is not correct in this case so we are we are telling users that while it's not the best solution the best thing is to wait for fractal design to address the issue what they can do is simply swap the two cables so you need a little tiny flat-head screwdriver or a needle or a pin what you need to do is get it under the little tab I'm gonna sort of sorry I know cameraman can really see it okay so you get that under the little tab you pull out the red cable then you go along to the green cable you get under the little tab here you need to be very careful not to lift these up too high because they're just little plastic tabs and you can damage them once you've removed the green and red cable from the one side you can plug it in make sure you push the tab back down and then check to make sure that it's locked into place so I've put the green cable where the red one was and then I'm putting the red wire in where the green one was just like that once you've made this swap the case front panel USB will work and there's no need to get a replacement cable if you're totally comfortable with this what you've effectively done is made sure that the right cables are carrying the right signal so I want you to compare the side that I have corrected it goes green white red black to the side that I have not corrected which goes red white green black or actually so that you can see them from the same from the same angle here's what it looks like so the top one is the corrected one that I have that I have done with this case and the bottom one is the incorrect one even though that is the official wiring coloring for USB so that was just a quick guide on how to how to MacGyver yourself a solution to this problem if you don't want to wait for a new cable thank you for checking out my video blog
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