SilverStone Rolls Out FP56 Front-Panel

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Silverstone will soon be rolling out a new front panel utility, the FP56.

SilverStone Rolls Out FP56 Front-Panel : Read more

 

[nukemaster]

I like some of the useful little things SilverStone has been releasing these days.

 

[Micrology]

It'd be great if they stacked the 2.5s and made it fit in a external 3.5" bay.

 

[xcaninox]

Good. I liked it, it actually contains everything i would expect it to have.

 

[Shadz]

This is a great idea! We all need front panels, and by putting the SSDs there instead of elsewhere, we can improve the airflow through the case (if you only have <= 2 SSDs anyway).
Plus, I have the original HAF922, so it doesn't come w/ USB3s, making this quite handy. I only wish it had a fan controller too... 😛

 

[RedJaron]

Only connects over USB 3.0? Cool, that means the card readers use the speedier interface. Been looking for a reasonably priced front panel card reader, but most the card slots go over USB 2.0 while the 3.0 is only used for the USB ports. Here's hoping Silverstone doesn't jack up the price on this.

 

[C12Friedman]

This is a nice panel addition IMO. I'll likely be putting one in my Challenger (pre USB 3.0) case provided it's priced reasonably

 

[dalethepcman]

Now if only something made use of high power usb 3. I wonder if the red port would blow up a mouse...

 

[osamabinrobot]

man its cool to see some actually useful stuff on here

 

[TeraMedia]

They could have done differently.
That same bay could have housed a slim BR/DVD burner (they have a slot loading one! I didn't know that...), the same set of memory card slots, and either a smaller number of USB ports or else stacked ports to reduce space. And even the SSD mounts could have been kept.
Or, make the face basically be the front of a hot-swap tray for a 2.5" SSD or 3.5" HDD. The whole thing slides out and you can remove the drive if you need to without going into your case. There are 2.5" hot-swap drive accessories that can fit 6 devices into a 5" bay, so they should have been able to fit just two of those plus the ports.
In the end, I suppose it all depends on the purpose. I wouldn't want hot-swap bays in my living room, and I wouldn't want a mixup of bays and USB ports / card readers if I had empty bays in a mid-tower. So multi-purpose bay accessories are only useful if you have a limited number of bays available.

 

[ubercake]

This is great and should be considered and utilized in new case designs where the unused drive 5.25" drive bays just take up space in the case. You just pop these in and mount your SSDs.
Also, imagine not having fixed HDD/SDD (if you could mount 3.5" drives to something like this) bays in the bottom of your case and more open space for better airflow?

 

[velosteraptor]

I Would love one of these things. I have an nxzt phantom that i modded to fit a radiator on the bottom by removing both the hard drive slots and mounting the smaller one upside down by screwing it into the bottom of the optical drive bays. This would allow me to get rid of that hard drive cage all together and leave more room for airflow. At a reasonable price i will be buying one of these for sure!

 

[popatim]

put me in for 2

 

[Fulgurant]

Looks pretty good. Will probably pick up one or two of these.