I had NO Faith in This

[James]

Motherboards with all the connectors on the back- and cases that support them. They're coming, despite a ton of challenges that I honestly didn't think the industry would overcome. Corsair, Maingear, Gigabyte, ASUS- they're all in the game, and the results are pretty cool.

 

 

 

[8tg]

Combine it with these things

though the real solution to pc cable management is an opaque side panel 

[Alex Atkin UK]

35 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Combine it with these things

though the real solution to pc cable management is an opaque side panel 

That seems unnecessary given the PSU cables are usually hidden behind a shroud anyway.

 

As for the latter, indeed.  Nothing frustrates me more than every device going for form over function.  There are too many caveats to this idea, not least that when I upgrade my GPU I often repurpose it in older hardware.  If the GPU has a bespoke motherboard power connector, then it becomes e-waste.

 

Then again, the issues with 12VHPWR connectors could lead to more e-waste too.

[ReidOnly]

Honestly, I was a major advocate for this motherboard lineup when it was initially showcased a few years ago. I've always believed that over time, they might further enhance the design, potentially setting a new standard in the industry. What excites me the most is the potential for continuous improvement, especially with innovations like the ASUS GPU prototypes fully powered by the motherboard. It's a promising step forward, offering a seamless transition without the hassle of dealing with those clunky 12-Pin / 8-Pin / 6-Pin cables. Looking forward to witnessing the evolution!

[Godwhitelight]

bro wtf is going on with this wicked cushions sponser

[SeanH]

Gigabyte's Stealth kit was actually made available in North America (at least in Canada) in late 2022.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, ReidOnly said:

without the hassle of dealing with those clunky 12-Pin / 8-Pin / 6-Pin cables. Looking forward to witnessing the evolution!

No denying its convenient but there's a lot of caveats to that idea.

 

If anything goes wrong with that connector you fry the GPU AND motherboard, rather than a GPU power socket that can (in theory) be cheaply replaced and a cable which also can be cheaply replaced.  I suck at soldering and could probably replace a 12VHWPR connector if I absolutely needed to, but a burnt trace on a PCB (such as the PCIe connector) is practically impossible to fix.  The actual socket on the motherboard, yeah I wouldn't fancy that either.

 

It takes up precious space on the motherboard that can be better utilised for other things.

 

GPU manufacturers margins are already paper thin and making a PCB longer costs more, plus putting the PSU power connector in the most convenient place for routing on the PCB is far cheaper than having to run longer power planes and having restrictions on where the VRMs and traces can go due to the power coming in from a pre-defined location.  Carrying high currents across a PCB is no easy task and does have losses, compared to a cable.

 

Quite a few modern GPUs draw barely any power from the PCIe socket due to it being far more practical to bring in all the power from a more suitable location.  Remember you also want to keep the 12v well away from the really low voltage traces while also keeping all power traces as short as possible to avoid losing power to heat.  Overall it can be done, but it makes manufacturing the GPUs more expensive, which is the last thing we want right now with prices already so high.

Same with motherboards, the reason the CPU power is usually in the top corner is this is right in the middle of the usually two banks of VRM mosfets.  It means you need less motherboard traces for 12v power.  The cheapest and safest solution is to bring in the power as close to where you need it as possible, not have it travel needlessly across PCB traces.

[IanSzot]

That patent is stupid as fuck, it's not even like Maingear are the ones making the motherboards lol

[SaperPL]

The implementation brings more issues than solves in the first place. First of all, just making a standard of boards that have all case connectors on the one edge and facing sideways could be enough with cases having some kind of surface hiding the connected cables from the front, but the whole point seem to be make it proprietary for each vendor, so if you'll want to upgrade, you'll stick to the vendor you previously got.

 

Especially with the GPU power connector from ASUS - isn't/wasn't the motherboard type-E header for type-C front panel like proprietary connector of ASUS? We still get lower end boards without this connector, so a mainstream case still has to support the terrible 20 pin USB 3.0 header. Those should be already long gone and replaced by two type-E connectors in place of one 20-pin header. If the standard for GPU power connector will not open up quickly, we'll end up with those GPUs that only fit specific boards from ASUS, and these probably will not even fit other type of motherboard unless that's an ITX + some adapter onto this power connector sticking outside of the motherboard PCB.

 

And all it could have been would be to place the 8-pin or 12-pin connector in a stealth cavity on the inner side in a way that you connect the cable before plugging in the GPU into slot. And potentially this could've been made in a way this card also has the same power connector on the outside covered with some plastic plug and a dip switch selecting where does it take power from.

 

Whole thing will just bring more pre-builts that will end up being more like HP/DELL/Lenovo systems that have proprietary standards and have limitations in how you can fix or upgrade them.

 

[Relic143]

Does anyone know what aio is used in the video it looks rad but i couldn't find it anywhere...

[Alex Atkin UK]

7 hours ago, SaperPL said:

Those should be already long gone and replaced by two type-E connectors in place of one 20-pin header.

Especially given I'm in the unfortunate situation of having a couple of cases with one type C and one 3.0, but the motherboard in one of them only has the 20 pin.  There doesn't seem to be any adapters to convert a single 20pin into two (wiring half to wires to each) nor a cable to do specifically what I need.  For some bizarre reason the only adapters that split a 20pin into two connections have normal USB 3.0 ports on them.

 

Having two USB ports in a single motherboard connector seemed a good idea at the time, but the stupidity of case manufacturers not ALWAYS breaking that out to two ports on the case made a real mess of it.  The infuriating thing is we had the same issue with USB 2.0 and its particularly problematic on ITX boards and cases where motherboard headers are at a premium.

[SaperPL]

22 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Having two USB ports in a single motherboard connector seemed a good idea at the time, but the stupidity of case manufacturers not ALWAYS breaking that out to two ports on the case made a real mess of it.

There were cases having just a single Type-A port connected to this 20-pin header and nothing else? I think a lot of cases had a single 3.0 port and some various things connected to the other like a hub that had multiple 2.0 connectors and a card reader or something like that.

 

22 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The infuriating thing is we had the same issue with USB 2.0 and its particularly problematic on ITX boards and cases where motherboard headers are at a premium.

The 2.0 header was really nice. USB is still a BUS so it made sense to connect two ports to a single header by default.

 

Also I kind of don't get the requirement of having type-C on the front of the case, except for if we were to drop support for type-A altogether. If you need the bandwidth really often, the motherboard should have a type-C at the back and you'd use that. for anything else, Type-A to Type-C cable seems reasonable. Yes, the type-A has the downside of having to plug it in in correct orientation, but still a lot of devices use it.

[Flavius Heraclius]

As clean as the resulting system looks, I don't see myself using anything based on this standard. I like having all of the cables connecting to the front of the motherboard because it's convenient for swapping parts out. Pre-run any cables you think you'll need during the initial build, and then you can just open one side panel and lay the machine flat on the ground/table. I think that the ease of maintenance trumps looks for me on this one.

 

It is cool to see more options on the market, though! I hope that eventually all the major manufacturers settle onto some semblance of a standard, though.

[darwin006]

Seeing cables and wires is not a problem that needs to be solved, and if you dont want to see them inside your case dont get a case with a window.

 

This seems like a nightmare of compatibility problems that will end up driving up the cost of motherboards further. Motherboard manufactures will have to deal with more SKUs, that result in different packaging to denote this dumb config. People will inevitably buy motherboards that dont work with the case they bought resulting in more returns and open box products with increased confusion for new builders. And motherboard manufactures will likely increase the cost of all their motherboards to off set their cost of adding these SKUs and their increase costs that will result from it.

 

Meanwhile, motherboards are already ridiculously priced because of the stupid garbage "features" that manufactures insist on putting on almost every motherboard especially if the motherboard has a high end chipset. Want to get a motherboard without a silly useless metal cover on your PCIE slot? Impossible, and your MB cost more because that useless bit of metal is there. Want to get a MB without RGB? without the needless plastic covers? without a built in IO shield? without a LCD screen? without WIFI? or without a remote button to release the GPU from the PICE slot? Your only options left if you dont want that stuff are the lowest end chipsets. And all that stuff little by little drives up the cost motherboards to the point where we now have $700+ consumer motherboards that have been bedazzled so manufactures can get higher margins while not actually adding value to the end user. And now buying a high end or even just a mid level chipset without these useless "features" needlessly driving up the price is impossible.

 

And Wifi might be a "nice to have if you need to troubleshoot something" but at this point its kind of hard to buy a motherboard without it and motherboards with it cost at least $20+ more with it. And because manufactures insistence on adding all these "features" so they have more to print on the box you end with dumb configs where motherboards have 2.5GB LAN, 10GB LAN and WIFI. Is there even 1 person that will ever actually have a legitimate use case for both of those LAN ports and WIFI in the life of that PC?

[SaperPL]

11 hours ago, darwin006 said:

And Wifi might be a "nice to have if you need to troubleshoot something" but at this point its kind of hard to buy a motherboard without it and motherboards with it cost at least $20+ more with it. And because manufactures insistence on adding all these "features" so they have more to print on the box you end with dumb configs where motherboards have 2.5GB LAN, 10GB LAN and WIFI. Is there even 1 person that will ever actually have a legitimate use case for both of those LAN ports and WIFI in the life of that PC?

I agree with most of your comment - yes, it's wasteful, but wifi support is a bit tricky. On ITX it should be a standard feature because add-in card for ITX gets tricky. There was a time where you could purchase the card later for a lot of itx boards, but for some reason it didn't make much sense to add a slot for someone who wasn't going to use it anyway. And now I'd say that a lot of people will use WIFI and not care about running cables for ethernet around the house, so it's a mainstream feature.

 

Two different types of ethernet though - you're 100% right here - that's a premium feature for specific users and we're forced to pay for that even if we just want the top tier chipset. This reminds me of the issue with not being able to get a reasonably priced entry-level laptop with the best APU and without the dedicated GPU for a long time, because vendors did match those as expensive SKUs together with laptops fully spec'ed out to the max, so there wouldn't be an affordable entry level laptop with APU for online gaming.