Up front and convenient

CHIP shows you how to add front USB and FireWire ports to older cabinets at almost no cost.

You might have recently upgraded your old computer after saving up for months and months. You might have even saved a bit by recycling your old cabinet and some other non-critical components. While the new motherboard, processor and RAM will certainly give you a performance boost, your lowly old cabinet has no front USB, audio or FireWire ports, which is a huge inconvenience when you frequently swap peripherals.

Front ports are handy for plugging in headphones, portable storage media such as pen drives, and many other peripherals. Almost any peripheral today uses the USB interface. Constantly pulling out the cabinet and reaching around the back is far too inconvenient. So what do you do?

It is not really necessary to spend more money on a new cabinet just to add ports on the front panel. All you need are some parts rescued from your motherboard's package contents and an unused blanking plate from the cabinet’s front panel. It doesn't even cost Rs 100. 

Putting those ports to good use

Once you have finished making the external connector plate, all you have to do is snap it into place in the empty drive bay and connect the wires to their respective unused headers on the motherboard.

Even those who have newer cabinets with front USB ports and audio jacks can add as many more USB and FireWire ports to the front panel as they need. Other ports can also be added or mounted to the bezel of the computer case in this manner. You can use the same technique to add eSATA ports, audio jacks, a USB card reader, infrared port, and so on. And don't forget that if you don't have enough available USB ports, there might be unused motherboard headers which can be used to connect other peripherals such as a WLAN antenna, Bluetooth adapter or other type of dongle that can be left inside the cabinet.