ROG Front Base Problems

[MattL21]

Dear Asus,
First off I want to say how disappointed I am with your ROG Front Base and your customer support. I have been a customer of Asus for years and have purchased many item in the past (These item include motherboards, video cards, Laptop’s, etc.). I have had two major problem with the ROG Front Base since I purchased it from Newegg on June 12th. The first problem was that the AAFP cable (Audio Cable) was too short, I guess they did not think people that buy a front base would be using a full tower. No big deal I will call Asus and get them to send me a longer cable. So on June 27th at 9:29am (Eastern Time) I called Asus’s hardware support line and talked to a guy name Jonathan, he setup a case number and entered in all my information but unfortunately I was at work and did not have access to the serial number. Jonathan told me just to call back when I got home and give them the case number and the product serial number. I was thinking to myself that was easy, I left work around 12pm and called Asus at around 12:38pm. I give them the case number and told them that I had the serial number now, the guy tells me that the first guy (Jonathan) does not know what he was doing and that this is not a support problem and that I needed to call the Asus E-Store. So now I’m hot and I call the E-Shore which say they don’t carry the longer AAFP cable and that I need to call the retailer. So I tell her that I have already contacted Newegg and that they don’t carry this cable. She then tells me to contact the support line again, this time when I call I get disconnected. At this time I have had enough of this BS and I’m about to call Newegg and send both my Asus ROG Maxius vii Hero and ROG Front back for a refund. Then I get a call and its Jonathan (The first rep I talked too), he apologizes for the problem and enters in the serial number and gets the cable sent out (Now that was easy).

About a week and a half later the longer AAFP cable arrives and I install it and boot the computer and as before installing the cable the only thing that works is the fan RPM read out and CPU/MB Temp read out. The audio volume and EQ does not show anything and does not work, also the fan controller is not show and does not work ether. At this time I also start having problem with the Asus AI Suite 3, preset Turbo shuts down all my fan and the only setting that works is full speed. I then rebooted my computer and go into the bio and set the fan speed and uninstall the Asus AI Suite 3 and everything seems to be working except the Front Base. I then start looking around online and find out that the bios needs to be updated on the motherboard and I also found the software update instructions. So I update the bio to the latest bio update (I think it was 904, I since updated to 1002). Then I uninstall the audio drivers and installed the audio drive from the Front Base driver page, I also ran the uninstaller/cleaner for the Asus AI Suite 3 and then reinstalled the AI Suite that was listed on the Front Base driver page. I then turn off and unplugged my computer and attached the USB Q-Connector to the ROG Front Base cable and plugged it into one of the USB 2.0 connectors. Then boot the computer up and installed the ROG Front Base Driver V1.01.06 (With ASUS ROG Connect Plus V1.00.24) for Windows. At this point everything on the front base was working including the volume\EQ and Fan Controller. I then shut down the computer and removed the USB Q-Connector and plugged the ROG Front Base cable into the ROG_EXT, then I rebooted the computer. Once I was in Windows (Windows 8.1 Pro) I started testing again but if I turned up the volume on the Front base nothing would happen, this also happens with the fan controller.

At this point I am highly disappointed:mad: with this product and I will not pay $17 to ship it back to you guys. I have included my system specs below:
• Intel Core i7-4790K
• ASUS MAXIMUS VII HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z97
• CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
• CORSAIR AXi series AX860i 860W
• EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Classified w/ EVGA ACX Cooler
• Corsair Obsidian 750D Black ATX Full Tower
• CORSAIR Hydro Series H105
• 2x Corsair Air Series SP120 High Performance Edition (For H105)
• 3x Corsair Air Series AF140 Quiet Edition (Front and Back Fan)
• 2x Corsair Air Series AF120 Performance Edition (Bottom Fans)
• Silverstone CPF01 3.94" PWM Fan Splitter Cable (Bottom Fans) – I removed this and I’m still having the same problem.

Any help would be great.
Matt

[f1schu]

Just watched a vid on youtube with JJ from Asus talking about the front base and he also says that the front base is compatible with soundcards that have a front panel HD Audio connection. All the AAFP cable does is pass through the mic/audio signals to the front panel so as long as the front base is connected to the Rog Ext header it should work as normal. If using the front base means you have to use onboard sound then that is absolutely stupid and makes the front base a complete waste of money.
At first I didn't bother with a separate soundcard when I built my rig because of all the hype about the Rampage's onboard supreme fx being as good as a discrete soundcard and being 'hifi' quality, low emi etc....
I booted up my new machine got everything installed and working correctly, front base looked great and everything worked as expected (apart from the stupidly short Audio cable supplied with the front base) but then......
I plugged in my headphones and put on some music and wow, how disappointed I was with what came out. The emi was ridiculous for all the claims from Asus and the sound quality was to be very blunt...crap!
Tried all sorts of things to try and make it bearable but even turning all the effects off didn't make it sound any better.
I then tried to play some Arma 3 and the results were the same.
Sod this I thought and went and bought a SoundBlaster z. Installed the new soundcard and left the front base plugged into the Rog ext and just swapped the AAFP cable from the board to the new soundcard.
Then I did the same as before even using the exact same music track and the difference blew me away. No emi what so ever and the sound quality was in a different league, no way the supreme fx 2014 is anywhere near the quality of a discrete soundcard, not by a country mile, despite the claim from Asus.
Anyways now the front base works but the volume doesn't work and neither does the front base mic connection or the time display.

[f1schu]

Right.
I can confirm that that the ROG Front base IS compatible with Discrete Soundcards.
When I installed my new SoundBlaster z I first removed the realtek/supreme fx audio driver and disabled the onboard audio in the bios.
This time I removed the SoundBlaster z and its drivers. I then reconnected the AAFP cable to the motherboard, enabled the onboard audio in the bios and reinstalled the realtek audio drivers for the front base. I then rebooted to see if everything worked and it did.
I then shutdown and disconnected the AAFP cable from the motherboard to see what would happen if it wasn't connected.
I booted up my pc and everything still worked, except obviously now the preset sound modes didn't work. This confirmed to me that the AAFP cable only needs to be connected to the motherboard if you want to use the sound presets
and apart from that it is just a normal hd audio connection and so should work when connected to any soundcard that has a HD Audio connector.
Anyways I then reinstalled my SoundBlaster z and its drivers leaving the realtek onboard audio enabled, I connected the AAFP to the soundblaster and rebooted and now everything works fine 🙂
Thank god I don't have to use the rampage v extreme supreme FX, I really don't think my ears could stand such awfulness xD