Dell XPS 435 mt mini tower in Thermaltake Armor case?

I have a Dell XPS 435 mt mini tower and just bought a Thermaltake Armor case because the cooling in the dell case sucks. I have almost everything together but am stuck at one part. On the front case power button and led connections in the dell it has its own 9 pin connector. Well on the Thermal take case it has 4 individual connectors. I need to know if anyone knows what is what pin? I have Power LED, Power SW, HDD LED, and Reset SW on the thermaltake armor case. Any help would be appreciated. Also the Power LED is a 3 pin connector instead of a 2 pin connector so I need to know where that would go. I have contacted dell and they are useless as usual.

Unfortunately Dell wont be of much use in this situation, in fact my telling them that you are doing this swap you basically voided your warranty because Dell will not cover this sort of thing.

The service manual for this model doesn't detail the pinouts, but if you look at the connection yourself and the cable that plugs into it, you should be able to track down which one goes to the power button, which goes to the reset button, and so on. That 9-pin connection will simply lead back to individual buttons at some point, so look at the cable once you figure out which goes where, compare that to the head. But really the only one you need to identify is the power header because the system will function fine without the others..though you may want a reset switch. The wires should be color coded to make it easier for you to track them down, only problem is these are not set in stone. In some cases the power switch would be green+white, in others its orange+white, reset might be blue+white or orange+white.

I haven't really seen any high resolution photos of the front panel header online so I cant really help you out beyond that, but this is a pretty simple task once you apply yourself a bit. The motherboard is an OEM design and doesn't seem to match any of the mATX retail boards, so I don't think you'll find any documentation to label these...so really its guess and check, only a matter of how much you can figure out before you start plugging things in.

Unless you are really lucky and can see

Stang, I actually done that after I wrote this message. I appreciate your response on it though. I was able to find the power pins and am stoping there for the night or morning, haha. Weird thing though when everything was plugged in and I knew the power was right it wouldn't work. When I unplugged everything but the power button though it worked. So right now I have no reset, front power led, hdd led, or any USB sata or speakes plugs working on the front. I guess I will have to hook them up one by one to see what is what but I have a pretty good idea.

make sure you have the polarity correct, if you plug in one of the cables upside down (a relative term, on my board, they're all upside down and that's correct) then you'll have positive and negative backwards, which won't effect the power switch (has no polarity) but will effect things like the reset switch.

Hi would you mind if you could give me a picture of what you did to connect the front panel connector? just the power SW will do

lol i've been dying to figure it out but i'm scared i might ruin my motherboard

oh and to just make it clear i have the same studio xps 435 MT i need a bigger case for it

Well I tried to post a link to where I uploaded them at but it says new users are not allowed to post links. You can pm me your email and I can send them to you.

Well I was going to pm you the link but it will not let me do that either... So I guess you can give me your email over the forum if you feel comfortable do that.

yeah np thanks

Hello! I too would like to know the break down of the front panel pin connectors, as I have a xps 435 that I would like to put into my asus case.

Mainly, I'm trying to figure out where the POWER SWITCH connector goes...my cables for that one are orange/white...I thought they went on the top right...but nothing happened.

Appreciate any assistance!!! THANKS!!!

oooh

can e-mail me too if you like:

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