Eumax Transfer Panel

Reviews: Cases

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
Iocombo
Jul. 31, 2003

Introduction

Something you may be wondering by now is "who is Eumax?' If you don't know who they are, don't worry, I didn't either. Eumax is a relatively new company, which was started in 1998. They now produce a wide variety of products, from CPU coolers to transfer panels and cold cathodes to cases and keyboards. After testing this transfer panel, I am eager to test some of their other products.

Another thing you might be wondering is "who is iocombo?' Well, iocombo is a new online reseller, established less than a year ago in November of 2002 in Silicon Valley. To get a large customer base iocombo has been practically giving away products through amazing sale prices. If you are thinking about buying something online soon, I would most definitely check to see if iocombo carries the product you are looking for. Chances are you will be able to purchase what you wanted for a fraction of the price you would expect. The people at iocombo are also very friendly and their service is great. Anyways, enough about them, let's talk about the product.

The Package

Eumax did a pretty good job designing the transfer panel package. They made it so that you could see the front face of the panel through the top, clear, part of the package. They were also smart enough to include pictures of some of their other products on the front of the package. Being a new company, this is a good way to let the consumer know that they make other products. I was, however, a little let down by the back of the package, which poorly explains the installation process. The pictures used to help for installation show the panel being installed in a Shuttle case, which may lead the consumer to think that the cables are not long enough for a normal case. They also failed to realize that by installing this panel in a Shuttle case, you would not be able to have a CD drive, which would make it pretty hard to install software or play games that require a CD.

When you open the package, you will find the following items inside:

USB connection cables
Firewire connection cables
Audio connection cables
Three (3) temperature probes
Fan monitoring cable
Screws
PCI bracket

Installation

The installation process for this panel is quite simple. The first thing you will want to do is to plug in the cables into the appropriate places. If you aren't sure which cables plug in where, the pins for the connections are directly behind the corresponding connection. The USB pins, for example, can be found directly behind the 2 USB connections. Simply plug in the USB cable into the USB connection pins (either way because each side is mirrored). Installing the audio cable is easy as well except it has to be plugged in a certain way. To make sure which way to plug it in, just look at the wires on the connection. The side that needs to be facing up when you plug it in is the side that has a wire going into every hole. The bottom side of the connector will have one hole with no wire in it. The audio cables are color coded, so that should help.

I didn't use the Firewire port because my motherboard doesn't support it, so I have no Firewire port to transfer. The thermal probes are already plugged in, and their order is as follows: Black (1), Red (2), Green (3). The numbers refer to their position on the temp display switch. I used Black to monitor the CPU, Red to monitor my HDD, and Green to monitor my Case temp. Once you have all the cables plugged in, you will want to mount the transfer panel. Mounting the panel is easy, and the screws are even included. Just install it into a 5.25" bay (I recommend the lowest one so that all cables reach) and then plug all the connecting ends of the cables into the corresponding connections. I found it to be a pain to use the PCI bracket to organize the cables, and easier to just leave a large hole where a PCI bracket was removed. The last thing you will need to do is plug in the power connector into a 4-pin molex. If you want to use the CPU monitoring function, you will have to plug in your CPU Fan's 3-pin female connector into the 3-pin male connection from the panel, and then the 3-pin female connection from the panel into the motherboard. Now you are ready to play with your new toy.

Testing

To test the panel I set it up and plugged in the USB and Audio, and placed the thermal probes as described above. I found everything to work perfectly, as expected. I found that the temp monitoring LCD is very readable and easy to switch between probes. The LCD even has LEDs under it to indicate which probe you are monitoring. I have seen some reviews that claim the probes did not work, but I did not have this problem myself, and I suspect those reviewers may have done a poor job of testing.

With the CPU monitoring cables plugged in, the LCD screen does a small animation every 5 seconds which gets annoying quickly. If you unplug the CPU, the alarm will beep loudly for approximately 30 seconds, and then it will stop. However, in case you are not around if and when the CPU Fan malfunctions, the screen keeps flashing with brackets like this: [ ]. I don't personally care much about the alarm feature, so I decided to unplug the CPU monitoring cables after testing. Despite my enormous case size, I was still able to plug in all the USB connections and sound connections, though it was quite close with the USB connections.

Quality

The first thing I checked in my quality test was the overall durability of the device. A lot of similar products I have seen, such as hard drive coolers, are poorly constructed and can be bent and broken easily. This transfer panel is made out of strong steel and would be very unlikely to break unless you tried to break it. A lot of products such as fan controllers have low quality components, and you can hear a barely audible high-pitched whine coming from them. This panel uses high quality components and no whine can be heard. This means that the product is likely to last a longer time than a device with low quality components.

Another thing I considered was the ease of use. As I explained in the Installation section, this device is extremely easy to get up and running. It Is also very easy to operate the device because the panel has the symbols under each corresponding connection. This is especially helpful on the audio connections, where you might not be sure which is for what. The LCD display is also high quality and extremely easy to read. Under the LCD display there are also 3 LEDs to let you see which thermal probe you are monitoring. When you move the switch to switch the LCD between probes, the LEDs turn off and on accordingly. Even the device color is of high quality. Rather than painting the device beige or black, Eumax decided to dye the plastic which means the color will never scratch off.

Conclusion

At first I was skeptical; I have never been a huge fan of transfer panels. I don't really love the fact that you have to plug transfer panels into pre-existing connections rather than plugging them directly into the motherboard. But in the end I was so satisfied with the Eumax panel that I decided to keep using it. The fact that you can plug in your USB / Firewire / Audio devices in the front of your computer combined with the triple temp monitoring LCD makes this product a winner. So if you find yourself reaching behind your computer to plug in your USB devices and headphones more often than you would like to and would like to easily monitor your CPU / HDD / Case temps with one device, I would very highly recommend the Eumax Transfer Panel to you.

Pros

Easy to install / use
Convenient
Monitor up to 3 temps on LCD
Quality construction
Available in beige or black
Bright LCD / LEDs
CPU fan failure alarm

Cons

Uses existing connections
CPU fan monitoring cables may be too short for large cases
No labels on thermal probes

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7 User Comments

1 - Posted by nark on July 31, 2003 - 3:57 am

lol. I got one thats very similar.

http://gallery.xtremods.com/data//501/372DSC02849-...

2 - Posted by Rich on July 31, 2003 - 8:06 am

I JUST installed a temp monitor not two weeks ago. http://www.directron.com/t4lcd.html The one I am using just has 2 simple temp readouts. The additional USB/audio ports looks nice though, but I didn't need them since my case already had a panel on front. The multiple temp sensors are a great idea, and you can't beat that price!. :shock: . Question, how were the thermal probes in length? Were they long enough? Also, was the end of the probe flat such that it could be inserted in between a GPU and heatsink?

3 - Posted by Kurtis on July 31, 2003 - 10:16 am

yes, they are plenty long, and the end is flat. you could place it under a heatsink if u wanted

4 - Posted by Rich on July 31, 2003 - 10:56 am

Can you unplug the temp probes??

5 - Posted by Kurtis on July 31, 2003 - 11:28 am

unplug them? why would you want to do that...? yes, they could be unplugged but i see no reason to...

6 - Posted by Rich on July 31, 2003 - 12:38 pm

Mount a probe between the GPU and heatsink, mount the front panel in the case, now try to remove your video card to put in that nice new one you want to test. :D

7 - Posted by Kurtis on July 31, 2003 - 12:42 pm

there is room to do that... you just have to take the heatsink back off the GPU first and remove it. i suggest not putting the probes under heatsinks, just really close the the cpu or the gpu depending on what you want temps of.

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