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click to enlarge

This is another of those devices that looks so simple it's laughable and you wonder how useful it can really be. Sometimes though, as with the 2CoolPC and Mouse Bungee, a simple device is exactly what's needed. So it seems to be with the FrontX Multimedia Ports. Quite simply, all it does is carry ports from the back of your machine to the front, allowing you front access. Some percentage of you are probably right now saying "Hey, that's exactly what I need!!"..

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click to enlarge

click to enlarge

This is a purely mechanical device (ie, no software is required, there is no intelligence to it). Inside the package are a plastic faceplate which screws into a 5.25 drive bay, 4 mounting screws, long cables which go through the inside of your machine and connect to the back of your sound card and a rear slot cover with a segment cut out of it. How long? If you look at the below left picture, you can see they are a fair bit longer than my AOpen HX-08 fulltower case is tall - this should let them reach from the top drive bay to a soundcard mounted in the bottom slot on almost any machine. The face plate is modular as seen above centre, this one came with plugs, cables and panels for microphone, headphones, game port and line-in. FrontX say on the packaging that it will be "upgradeable with other ports: USB, serial, parallel, video etc" but I haven't seen any of these extra ports for sale yet.

long cables - click to enlarge

inside PC - click to enlarge

back of PC - click to enlarge

Above you can see the way the cables go through the inside of your machine, through the space left by the cutout in the backplate, loop around and plug into your sound card. The other end of the cables of course terminates on the faceplate in your drivebay. If FrontX ever DO make a video cable for this device, you will probably have to leave the entire backplate off to fit the thick shielded video cable through. The black rear connector is a jack for your speakers. This doubles up with the front headphone connector so that, for cards with only one output, you can have both headphones and speakers connected and turn off the speakers when you want to play using headphones only.

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click to enlarge

Installation was very simple with one niggle - the screw holes for the faceplate didn't line up with the drive bay holes in any case I tried - not the AOpen HX08 fulltower, not the Macase K10 midtower and not another generic midtower shown in the below photos. They were so far out of alignment that you simply couldn't screw them in while the side was touching the drive bay wall, I had to force them apart, thread the screw at an angle and let leverage bend the drive bay wall up. Even this only allowed 1 side to be screwed in. A minor niggle perhaps, but given this is a device LAN-day people will find useful, you want it to be securely mounted and not go falling out of the front of your case because there's no screws in it. Maybe this one was just mis-machined.

cover closed - click to enlarge

cover open - click to enlarge

The faceplate has a door that swivels up to cover the ports when you're not using them. Unfortunately the unit does take up an entire bay, I was hoping to fit a 3.5" hard drive in a mounting kit behind it, but couldn't do it. Maybe with a different mounting kit or in a case with more flexibility (ie long slots instead of screw holes for hdd's) you would have more luck.

Sound quality through the unit was not noticeably different to my untrained ears, either with my fairly cheap desktop speakers or my moderately serious Koss StudioPro headphones. Overall this product performs exactly as advertised. I don't think I'll be leaving it in my games machine because I need the drive bay back and reaching around to plug my headphones in at the beginning of a LAN day doesn't bother me too much. However, if you fit into that niche of people who require it, I imagine it would suit your needs perfectly and you'd be very happy with it. You can grab yourself one for AUD $42.00 from PCMarket.com.au.