NZXT IU01 USB Header Expander Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
760 words · ~3 min read
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okay so today i'm going to be having a quick look at a product that i think is probably the neatest most useful thing
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that nobody has ever thought of for a computer under like 25 bucks so this is
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the nzxt iu01
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and you can have a look at it here you can see that this has a bunch of usb
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looking ports on it so let's get this out of the box and i'll tell you exactly
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what this thing does so first of all we have a power adapter so that's a molex
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connector right there you gotta pass through and everything and then there's a little power connector that plugs into
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the custom pcb that goes with this so i got that okay
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the next thing i have is a usb extension cable
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so this is uh well not an extension cable pardon me but a usb cable so this
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plugs into the header on your motherboard you can see it is usb 2.0
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okay yeah you can't see that that's okay usb 2.0 and then the other end is
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exactly the same thing okay and then you
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have an instruction manual which seems to be in a bunch of different languages
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and i'm just gonna get it open here and see if i can
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okay it's really simple actually each one of these photos is exactly the same
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photo just with a different language under it connect the usb connector to a spare
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internet spare internet usb connector on the motherboard wow those are terrible
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instructions well it shouldn't take you long to figure out how to use this thing
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it's really straightforward so then the last thing we find inside is the little
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module the little pcb itself so get this out of here
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all right so i'll explain what this does first of all you can see on the back you've got a double-sided velcro
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attacher thingamajiggy so you just use that to attach it somewhere
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inconspicuous in your case okay so you need to provide power to this little pcb
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right there okay and then you need to plug in
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this cable right here like this so
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ah there you go once you got it hooked up you plug this into your motherboard to
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an available usb header and it expands that usb header to three
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headers and two internal usb ports so
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what you can use this for is for hooking up anything that is not
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bare bones for functionality for your computer so for example my case has four
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front usb ports now most motherboards only have two on-board headers so that
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means if i wanted to have say for example a card reader or an m-cubed
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t-balancer fan controller which i do have i would need an additional usb
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header somewhere and so many of those of those header devices don't seem to be
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able to use an adapter to plug into one of these and even then i mean what do
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you want to do run it around to the back of your case run a wire in through the case like it like it's nasty it's not
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it's not it's not elegant okay so basically what you can do is you can
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take one port you turn it into two you don't have to worry about any additional
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power consumption of those devices because the pcb is powered so these are
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powered ports now i wouldn't go using a bunch of bandwidth sensitive devices and
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then trying to use them all at once because you are still going to be limited by that one header worth of
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bandwidth but that's not a huge concern the biggest problem that you usually run
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into is hey you want to plug in your bluetooth usb adapter your wi-fi adapter
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which you can just hide internally now you don't even have to use an expansion
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slot and you can just mount one internally very easily and then you want
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to have like your fan controller with the you know the readout on it or
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whatever it has and then you want to have like a card reader and then you use
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your two ports for your forefront usb ports then you win this is a very cool
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product anyway i thought it was definitely worth an unboxing and a quick
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first look