Why are the motherboards connections on the front. On the rear seems like a good idea.

tnx

tnx

tnx

Associate
Joined
14 Dec 2012
Posts
1,060
Last night I was putting my new board into my main case, Obsidian 800D. I was getting the cables as neat and tidy as possible then it dawned on me.
If the motherboards connections were on the rear things would look really really neat.
What if all the power connections, fan connections, USB headrests etc were on the rear of the board.
Let's say they were all in the top right hand corner, a cut out in the case similar to the one giving access to the CPU would allow connection\disconnection.
Then I thought about the GPU.
What if the PCIe slot was a little longer and the extra connections ran to my imaginary rear connection area, where the GPU power sockets were.
No wires showing at all, how neat would that look.

A whole new bread of motherboard. Give it a few years and they are the norm.

Sounds like an idea to me.
 
Yeah, front headers are kind of terrible, but the problem is that cases more or less last forever, so its a nightmare to try change the standard, if you suddenly release a motherboard that doesn't work with 99% of all the cases out there people aren't going to buy it, and the same if you release a case that only works with one motherboard.

I also think there are engineering issues with moving stuff around on a motherboard. As I understand it a lot of stuff is where it is for reasons, can't just move the VRMs away from the CPU socket for instance.

It would take a very brave motherboard maker to come up with a new standard, and a converter that works with current cases, and then to hope that they can talk everyone into copying them. Even then Case manufacturers will likely be most of a decade behind. Look at how few cases have type c usb on the front.
 
I wonder what the percentage is of PC users who actually care about what their PC looks like on the inside. It must be fairly high, there does seem to be a good amount of after market accessories for the PC enthusiast. For one example cooling, from air to AIO to full blown water.
If one motherboard maker, say Asus stepped out of the box and totally re-thought, re-designed the motherboard to make it look as pretty as possible I recon folk would buy it. Case designers would jump on board, then the rest would follow.
These boards would then start a revolution.

Imagine 30 years ago talking to your mate on the phone without standing in a box on the corner of the street.
Go back 30 years and say, that Internet thing, nar, never catch on....

Just one forward thinker and the whole thing changes.
 
BTX was a good idea, a few of its pricipals did kind of live on in some ways, and some OEM machines did use the standard - or at least their interpretation for a few years

Not sure Ive ever seen a DTX/Mini-DTX board though!
 
First of all having any kind bigger components on both sides of PCB would make manufacturing process of motherboards more complex, even in best case. (=higher price)

Any bigger power carrying connectors need to be close to consumer of power.
Or you're going to waste power as heat and anyway need more copper traces (some material cost) to move that current around.
While motherboard design is already certainly huge challenge. (so even more added design cost)
And especially using motherboard for routing power of high power consumption part not on motherboard is idea born without brains.

For data connectors requirements for PCB trace routing are light year more demanding to maintain signal integrity. (potential for huge material and design costs)

And then having connectors in motherboard's arse would cause completely unnecessary assembly work in huge majority of PCs.


Designing just for ae/ssthetics is never good idea.


BongoHunter said:
BTX was a good idea
Click to expand...
BTX was cover up attempt for failure of NetBurst/Pentium 4.
That architecture just wasn't performance competitive against AMDs of the time causing explosion of power consumption/heat output. (just like FX-9590)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom