Area 51 r2 - swap to a new motherboard, is it possible?

Hello all. I'm Andrew, AKA AlienAndy, AKA AlienALX. Any way, that blue and black rig in the pics is mine. I had the 5820k for over two years and wanted something new. So I got a 14c 28t Broadwell E Xeon. I did not even try it in the Alienware board because Amazon were doing the X99 SLi Plus for cheap so I decided to get a new board.

Any way, I can tell you now that all of my case lights work. What you need to do first is make sure the USB connector on the right side of the board (about half way up) is connected. I bought extensions (two of these..)

http://i.imgur.com/E4ZkxWd.jpg>

I used one "as is" to extend the USB header down to the bottom of the new board, then took the other one apart. I looked at the board with a magnifying glass. You have basically "LED" which I assume is the power LED, then you have HDD LED (self explanatory) and then you have the power switch. There are three other wires, but they are not marked. DO NOT extend the front panel header as it is to a motherboard. It *will* be wired incorrectly. Any way, you only need to extend out the HDD LED, LED and PW SW. I used the same cable above with some mods and sent them to the right headers on the MSI. All of my lighting works. Side panels and all. They may be shorting on you guys because you have wires going to the wrong place.

http://i.imgur.com/qEY0kJt.jpg?1>

You can also see (as mentioned by Cass) that you can indeed fit a standard PSU in. When my machine arrived I got the 800? 850w? PSU and I fitted two Titan Blacks to the rig. Within about half an hour the PSU started whining, so Tom @ OC3D gave me the AX1200 with the blue cables. The only thing you need to remember is the power connector at the bottom. I made a custom cable for that (it's either EPS or PCIE 8 pin, I can't remember which I'm not using it now).

Update. I have had the lights running now since I posted last. All sorts of colours, configs etc. However, today I installed EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip CDs to wavs. As soon as it downloaded some old .net files it needed my side panel went out. Nothing I tried could get it working again, until I removed the AWCC and reinstalled it. Bingo, lights are back on.

nkay. 

isn't the Button connected with the same USB Connector as the Card Reader? atleast it's what i thought till now.

hope you can dig something out.

Standby here.

Hi AlienwareAndy.

thanks for the Info. i might need it in the near Future since my current Board has some Fan Control Issues.

i have a Question. did you get the DVD Drive Eject Button to work with your new Motherboard?

It's funny you ask me that because I just found out because of ripping CDs. No, it does not work. I had to eject it in Windows by right clicking on the drive and ejecting that way. Sod's law it took ages because it was not reading the CD properly. I get that sometimes, so I have an external DVDRW I use for ripping if my internal drive does not like it

It's weird it doesn't work though, because I could have sworn I looked at the wiring when I switched the PSU and it had nothing to do with the motherboard, other than the SATA connection. So it may be a driver. I've just got this feeling that when I installed 10 I installed the driver for it.

Lemme go have a poke on AW's site and see

It is possible. I installed the Dell Eject Driver and front panel driver yesterday, didn't change much. Still won't manually eject. Lights are still working fine though..

you are right. working Lights are the most important Thing. i am actually waiting for Area 51 R4 to be released and then maybe i'll try to upgrade my A51. the Case looks to be the same so Dells x299 Motherboard should work with no Issues. well thats what i hope for atleast. we will see.