First time builder; $1600 Budget

[VirtualLarry]

No, you don't have to plug in the front-panel audio. The front panel USB is completely independent. That being said, I've never heard of a situation where simply having the FP_AUDIO header plugged in causes the rear panel connectors to be unusable.

This used to be true with the older boards. The rear audio jacks were actually connected to the FP_AUDIO header internally, and there were two jumpers at appropriate positions on the FP_AUDIO connector. When you connected the front-panel audio cable, you would remove those two jumpers from the FP_AUDIO connector, and then it was up to your front-panel jacks. Some of them were such that plugging in headphones disconnected the rear jacks. Other cases were that if you plugged in the front-panel audio cable into the FP_AUDIO header, the rear jacks were disabled completely, regardless of if you had headphones plugged in.

Thankfully, with the advent of 5.1/7.1 modern audio chipsets, this is no longer true, although some of those chips have jack sensing, and modern OSes (Windows 7) will mute the rear jacks when you plug headphones into the front jacks. That is a software limitation, not a hardware limitation like in the old days. But it behaves the same.

My realtek ALC889A audio on GA-P35-DS3R v1.0, support configuring the front-panel audio jacks as a completely seperate audio input/output stream, such that you can use them for mic chat, and still listen to music on the rear jacks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Stick a finger in one.

But seriously, usually you can lightly press on the hub to stock the fan.

Use a plastic ball-point pen end. Don't use your finger. I found this out the hard way, on a thermaltake P4 fan. It had a lot of torque, and it simply sliced my finger, before it finally stopped. Those Asus Glaciator coolers on video cards are the same way. Watch out!