I've always been under the impression that the speed of USB ports (both front and back ports on a case) is dependent on 2 things. The motherboard and the case itself (for front ports). On cheap cases, the front ports usually showed up as USB1 while the back are USB2. Now I'm not so sure anymore, as someone told me it depends only on the motherboard and is not dependent on the hardware installed in the front ports. Can someone please confirm?