While we've had a chance to check out a few cases in the $200+ club and the majority of the enclosures we've tested have floated around the $99 price range, we haven't really put the screws (so to speak) to a truly budget case. That changes today, when we tackle the least expensive case we've yet tested: the BitFenix Merc Alpha. At just $39 it would be reasonable not to expect much, but as you'll see this case can hang with enclosures at twice the cost or better.
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Modern motherboards can have up to 2 onboard USB 3.0 headers, but not every mobo ships with front USB 3.0 connector cables. What do you do if your case doesn’t support enough front panel USB 3.0 connectors?
I’m facing this problem at the moment with my newest PC build where my new case only has 1 onboard header for USB 3.0 (for 2 front USB 3.0 ports). This means that the other 2 front USB 3.0 ports are wasted! What’s more is that my PC sits snugly under my desk in my cubicle at work, so it is not practical for me to always get on my hands and knees to access the USB 3.0 ports in the back I/O panel, so I want to have the maximum number of convenient front panel USB ports.
Bitfenix just sent us two solutions to this problem in the form of the BFA-U3-KU3IU3-RP Internal USB 3.0 Adapter and the BFA-U3-K435-RP USB 3.0 Front Panel. They both just passed GIGABYTE motherboard compatibility testing and we have added them to our USB 3.0 microsite. Here they are (they are hyperlinked so just click on them to have a look at the Bitfenix product web page):
I especially like the front panel connector because it has 4 USB 3.0 ports with a decent distance between them so that you can use multiple bulky USB devices at the same time.
Check out our USB 3.0 microsite for more USB 3.0 devices that have passed GIGABYTE motherboard compatibility testing.
A Chinese version of this blog article can be found here.
