What's the point of a reset button on a case?

R

Robotics Guy

Weaksauce
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Jul 8, 2009
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I've accidentally pressed the "reset button" on my 500R a couple of times instead of the case lights on/off button, and it seems like it should be called the "crash button."

Seriously, what's the point?
 
lol. I havent used one in years. back in the day i used to use it but... im not sure? lol i LOVE this thread.
 
It's so you can restart the machine if it locks up without power cycling the machine.
 
What Zepher said. I think it's a real test for case designers to make it so this button is easy to use if you want to, but not easy to hit by mistake. I like designs where the reset button is slightly recessed and small enough that my index finger can't trip it (but maybe my pinkie finger can).
 
Zepher said:
It's so you can restart the machine if it locks up without power cycling the machine.
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This. There was a while, maybe 2000 to 2006 or so, where not all ATX power supplies had a hardware kill switch on the back. This meant that, if you had a hard lockup, you either had to hit the reset switch, or hold the power switch down until the motherboard decided to shut the power supply off. It's been a while since I last saw a power supply without the switch on the back, but they were fairly common for a while, especially on lower end power supplies.

The reset switch is less useful these days, where computers generally work a lot better than they used to, but it still has its purposes, especially on systems that are used for less mainstream purposes. I have a Windows box integrated into an airborne LIDAR scanner in my office right now that I desperately wish had one. It's a giant pain in the neck to cycle the power to it during a flight.
 
Even today it's still common to find no PSU power switch on the back of OEM pre-built units such as HP's, etc. Especially in the consumer/non-enterprise market. Sure any system builder PSUs that we're likely to buy like Antec, Corsair, etc will probably have the hard switch on them, but we are the minority of users after all.

Plus, as has been mentioned above already, sometimes it's just useful to have a quick hard-reset switch, in case of a lockup or glitch. I personally prefer the cases where the reset switch is under a flip-up cover (Think like in movies where they're launching a nuke or something, and the big red button is under a glass/clear cover that needs to be lifted/flipped up out of the way).
 
DesertCat said:
What Zepher said. I think it's a real test for case designers to make it so this button is easy to use if you want to, but not easy to hit by mistake. I like designs where the reset button is slightly recessed and small enough that my index finger can't trip it (but maybe my pinkie finger can).
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my rosewill blackhawk ultra case is the first one i have had that has that feature, it sits about a 8th" down and is hard to hit by mistake.
 
brian770 said:
my rosewill blackhawk ultra case is the first one i have had that has that feature, it sits about a 8th" down and is hard to hit by mistake.
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On the 500R the reset button is circular and just below and to the right of the case lights on/off switch:

I keep trying to link to an image of the front of the case here, but the forum keeps removing the domain name. Whatever.

I hardly ever turn the case lights on/off, so I've forgotten which button it was once or twice and crashed the computer. I think I'm just going to disconnect the reset button, it really doesn't seem useful to me.
 
Machupo said:
how about a turbo button? :p
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It technically shouldn't have been called a Turbo button since the machine is usually ran at the default clock speed of the CPU. You'd turn Turbo off to drop the clock to 8Mhz or something so apps and games that were coded to operate off of a set CPU clock speed would run properly.
the really old Wheel of Fortune game was this way, running on a Dell 386/33mhz machine, the games 30 second timer for you to input your answer would fly by in about a second or two, rendering the game unplayable, and there was no Turbo button on that machine.
 
Skillz said:
Uh... just unplug it off the motherboard header.
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lol, I kept waiting to read that from some one or I was going to feel AWESOME!
I just don't plug it in, no LED. If it hard locks I know I can hold the power button or use the PSU one.
 
I got the led unplugged on my htpc, it bright ass fking blue.. real distraction when watching movies or TV at night, so I just unplugged it.
 
I've hit it by error while cleaning the front of my server, always a DOH! moment. Really I should disable all power related buttons on my servers, as simple as unplugging the header. A server should not be something that is easy to physically shut down.

They should bring the turbo button back though. No, seriously, imagine if you could set a normal clock profile, and a higher performance overclock profile, then you make that one turbo. So when you're just doing basic tasks, you leave it off, if you go to game or render or something, you turn it on. This should be a standard bios feature on all motherboards. You could save power this way, as the non turbo profile could actually be an underclocked setting. You don't need all 8 cores running at 3.2Ghz when you're just browsing the internet. :D
 
Uh.. The Turbo button isnt needed. Its all automatic based on load.
 
ya its easy enough to hold down the power button for a few seconds, or just hit the reset in like what....a half a second. i guess i dont see the problem with it being there and hooked up.
 
One legit reason to use it is when the OS locks up, the power button wont work unless you hold it down for 10 seconds. Reset is instant. Though I guess you could still easily get away without it.
 
Robotics Guy said:
I've accidentally pressed the "reset button" on my 500R a couple of times instead of the case lights on/off button, and it seems like it should be called the "crash button."

Seriously, what's the point?
Click to expand...

You're questioning the use of a reset button, but find use for a case lights button?! Ummm, ok...

Oh, and turbo was for slowing it down, as stated.
 
Meeho said:
You're questioning the use of a reset button, but find use for a case lights button?! Ummm, ok...
Click to expand...

Hey, the case lights button is actually useful. I like having the lights on because they look cool, but when I'm watching a movie on my PC I want the lights off so it's dark in the room.
 
Looks cool vs quickly resets the computer...there's your answer :)

Properly designed cases make it harder to press it accidentaly.
 
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