Modular I/O on motherboards?

[Askew]

I was watching this live stream archive that ASUS JJ did with Logan and Wendell from Teksyndicate for the Z97 launch, and one of the questions they asked JJ was what feature that currently isn't on motherboards would he like to see.

 

He replied that he'd like modular I/O on boards, so that you could remove blocks that you don't want and replace them with blocks that you do such as more USB stacks/additional NICs in place of things you aren't going to use.

 

I think that's a pretty cool thought, and I hope maybe one day through his wanting this to come to fruition ASUS will pioneer such a thing.

 

What do you guys think about the idea of modular I/O? Is it something you'd lay down extra money to have on your motherboard?

Imagine if boards came with a blank I/O and you just selected the blocks you wanted to come with it at checkout, you'd always get the perfect I/O to suit your needs on the board you wanted.

 

 

 

Here is the video, it's actually an interesting watch and quite fun in places, it's not all spiel about Z97 they answer some general questions from the Teksyndicate forums and also have some casual discussion among themselves, it only has 12K views so I don't think many people from here have seen it, maybe some of you will enjoy watching it as I have.

[MegaDave91]

As long as it has the basics, I'm good. No, I would not lay down extra money for modular I/O.

[darkspeedy26]

i like the idea, but im worried that it would cost more to make it modular than to leave the things on forever

[Hirad123]

Depends on how much extra it costs. It is a great idea though. I remember when I first got my maximus V gene and realised it didn't have a PS2 port I cried a little cause I could no longer  use my model m :'(. 

[Rorgash]

i would love that, i would get rid of a bunch of useless stuff and add a bunch of extra usb 3.0 slots

[Askew]

Depends on how much extra it costs. It is a great idea though. I remember when I first got my maximus V gene and realised it didn't have a PS2 port I cried a little cause I could no longer  use my model m :'(. 

 

This is exactly what I'm talking about, the vast majority of people don't use PS/2 boards, but I do and so do you by the sound of it so we could maybe swap a USB stack out for legacy input support and still have the snazzy board rather than one tiny issue get in the way.

[Hirad123]

This is exactly what I'm talking about, the vast majority of people don't use PS/2 boards, but I do and so do you by the sound of it so we could maybe swap a USB stack out for legacy input support and still have the snazzy board rather than one tiny issue get in the way.

Yeah I totally agree.

[FeuerToifel]

nice idea, but first we need a single chip for all those possible i/o ports or better, all that integrated in the motherboard-chipset. f.a. the NIC is wired to a different chip than a usb-port. so even if both would have the same amount of wires, it wouldn't work.

 

i would pay the extra money, i would remove the vga/dvi/hdmi/displayport-outputs and replace them with usb. and once i have an external soundcard i would also replace the audiooutputs.

 

i definitly see a market for a modular i/o interface.

[Askew]

nice idea, but first we need a single chip for all those possible i/o ports or better, all that integrated in the motherboard-chipset. f.a. the NIC is wired to a different chip than a usb-port. so even if both would have the same amount of wires, it wouldn't work.

 

i would pay the extra money, i would remove the vga/dvi/hdmi/displayport-outputs and replace them with usb. and once i have an external soundcard i would also replace the audiooutputs.

 

i definitly see a market for a modular i/o interface.

 

If ASUS can fit Z chips onto ITX boards I'm sure they can put the necessary I/O chip onto an ATX size plaform.

[piggykid1]

I've seen this remember and yea I was interested when they started talking about it but it depends how much money we would have to put down and what we get for it I do really enjoy discussing and thinking about this idea

[FeuerToifel]

one point to "extra money:"

if all the funktions, that are now single chips, are integrated into the chipset, the board will presumeably cheaper, if you leave the modularity beside.
so in return they can ask the same money for a modular board, but the extra modules will cost extra.