USB 3.0 ports in front panel I/O not working

[Koldov]

Recently I was gifted an 'old' PC from a friend of my OH who is emigrating.

 

On first glance it seemed OK, spec consists of, i7, 16GB ram, GTX.

 

So, I got it up and running and managed to work out the following:

 

The case is a Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-DELTA, but the internals appear to come from an HP ENVY 700-230ea.

 

The friend was a big WoW player and obviously upgraded the case to the Corsair and the GFX to a GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER™ VENTUS XS OC.

 

There were a few things I found that weren't wired into the motherboard correctly (power switch, and reset buttons & LED) and there's no fan controller, but other than putting in an SSD (and using the 2TB drive for storage), giving it a good clean as everything was covered in an inch of dust inside and changing the BIOS battery... it seems OK.

 

The motherboard from the Envy appears to be a MS-7826 (Kaili) and as it's an OEM board I can't find a massive amount of information on it (just the basics).

 

However, the front I/O in the Corsair case has 2 x USB 3.0 ports and these are plugged in (correctly) to the header on the motherboard, but do not recognise anything plugged into them.

 

One port does absolutely nothing and the other just produced a USB not recognised/security descriptor error. I have messed about with drivers and plugging into each of the 2 USB headers on the motherboard, but nothing makes any difference.

 

So, I think my options are motherboard headers not working properly or case front panel I/O cable issue (but I don't have a handy USB 3.0 motherboard cable around to test).

 

To make matters worse I found reports of front USB ports not working for both the original HP Envy and the Corsair case... so it still could be either. The case is pretty much EOL as far as Corsair are concerned (and obviously I can't do an RMA or warranty exchange)

 

I've had no luck looking for the whole front panel I/O part, so I've stripped out the cable itself from the front panel. I could buy a standard cable (or anything similar on Ebay/Amazon) and try to cut it to shape and stick it in, but I'd really rather not...

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Koldov

[Oaktech]

Definitely enabled in BIOS?

[Koldov]

As it's an OEM board there seems to be limited options in the BIOS, but the only thing I could find (in Security) that was related was on yes.

 

There's a UEFI diagnostic on the HP boards and the component test for USB failed, but this included me plugging something in to the port, so still doesn't tell me whether it's board or cable...

 

EDIT: Rear USB 3.0 ports work fine.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Koldov

[Koldov]

Just to add a bit of further research, I managed to unscrew the cable from the from I/O board and tried it in another computer.

 

Plugged a USB 3.0 memory stick in and the results are:

 

One port still dead and the other port started giving warnings of power surge!

 

I'd say it's the cable then...

 

Getting an aftermarket cable with the same screw hole configuration looks to be impossible, unless anyone knows different?

 

Can't seem to find out if the I/O board can be purchased anywhere or the cable sent out separately?

 

It must be in some other models too, but it seems a lot of other cases have the USB slots in vertical alignment, these push through the case across the top horizontally.

[LeMarchand]

Could you bodge it with something like: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305090126770 ? Possibly with 90 degree adapters on the end?

[Koldov]

Just to bring this to its ultimate conclusion (and for anyone else that searches for answers and never finds them)...

 

https://xkcd.com/979/

 

To answer this I'll share a couple of other posts and whilst not a definitive answer (I gave up searching after I saw them and realised it was very likely true), they seem to suggest that this motherboard from HP (ms 7826 ver 1.0 - KAILI) uses a 'unique' pinout for the USB 3.0 headers and only the cable that came with its original case will work, any aftermarket cable or case using the standardised pinout for its front USB 3.0 ports cable probably won't.

 

Unfortunately I only found these posts after I'd purchased the replacement cable (thinking the one supplied with my Corsair case was faulty) and found it didn't work either, giving exactly the same symptoms!

 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktops-Archive-Read-Only/KAILI-MS-7826-USB-3-0-ports/td-p/6074682

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Koldov

[Koldov]

Just to add (as it's too late to edit my previous post).

 

The original 'faulty' (but now apparently not faulty) Corsair case cable came this close >< to going in my WEEE collection pile, but I saved it at the last moment (because, you never know)!

 

Good thing too as the collection driver chanced his arm on an earlier collection time (08:00) than we were originally given (09:00) as he was on 'job and finish' and we were his only collection for the day. I wasn't at work yet and the site agent let him in... shame really as I wanted one last pick over the bones! Couple of things I'd decided to actually keep and a couple of things that really should have gone in, but didn't. Ah well, time to start hoarding for next time!