Have I got my wires crossed?

[nonoitall]

I recently upgraded my CPU/mobo/RAM. I'm really happy with the upgrade and everything is working perfectly... except the LED's on the front of my case. On my mobo, I have the PWR_LED (System Power LED header), SPEAK (Speaker connector), PW (Power switch), RES (Reset switch) and HD (Hard disk active LED) headers all hooked up to the respective wires on the case. The internal speaker, power switch and reset switch all work just fine, but the power LED and the hard drive activity LED never turn on.

All the wires are oriented so that their labels face the front of the case. Is it possible that they're all just oriented backwards, and that the three working components simply don't "care" whether the polarity is backwards or not? Or is my mobo a little funky, having inconsistent orientation between the different headers? (I'm just asking because I want to try and minimize the amount of trial and error I have to go through to get them arranged properly.)

 

[stoner133]

They should be oriented positive to positive and ground to ground. You would have to look at the motherboard manual to see the correct pinout and match them to the wires from the case. You can't simply go by the lables on the wires.

 

[fluxcage]

The LED's, being diodes, do "care" how they are connected.

There are only two ways to connect the LED's. You have already tried one way and it didn't work. The other way will surely work (unless the LED's are defective).

There is no reason to change the three working connectors.

 

[nonoitall]

Okie dokie. Thanks. I was pretty sure that was the case. (I mean, switches just close a circuit, though I wasn't sure about the speaker.)

They should be oriented positive to positive and ground to ground. You would have to look at the motherboard manual to see the correct pinout and match them to the wires from the case. You can't simply go by the lables on the wires.

I know how the pins are arranged on the motherboard, but don't know about the case's wires. Where its manual ever got buried I don't know, and it seems like it wasn't that helpful when I put my first mobo in this case either. Blast those companies slacking off on the manuals.