I just got to the stage of putting together my system with this motherboard, and sure enough the SATA cables were a problem. I checked my stock of cables and the only SATA ones I had without latches were about 10cm long and of dubious quality.
Going against my usual principle of not irrevocably hacking around with hardware I've just bought, especially not before I'm even sure it works, I decided to have a go at removing the latches. It was easier than I expected and with just a few seconds' work I was able to remove them and also tidy up the little plastic, erm, protuberances that held the latch in place on the connector. The result wasn't 100% perfect but once plugged in any untidiness was all but invisible.
While mucking about with this I also discovered that the two SATA sockets on the motherboard that do take latched connectors are arranged such that you can't use right-angle connectors on both, making them less useful too. And too really cap off a great situation, the drives I was fitting didn't really like having latched connectors fitted to them either; it was possible but only if you didn't mind bending the plastic casing a little to do so. It was a good thing removing the latches was easy or I'd have been very irate by the end of it!
I still think it was a silly mistake on Asus' part, but I'm not as annoyed as I normally would be under similar circumstances. In fact I think the biggest mistake on their part was to fit sockets that couldn't accept latched cables in the first place, but again it's not the end of the world, and it would appear that Asus' motherboard designers aren't alone in failing to take these things into account.
Going against my usual principle of not irrevocably hacking around with hardware I've just bought, especially not before I'm even sure it works, I decided to have a go at removing the latches. It was easier than I expected and with just a few seconds' work I was able to remove them and also tidy up the little plastic, erm, protuberances that held the latch in place on the connector. The result wasn't 100% perfect but once plugged in any untidiness was all but invisible.
While mucking about with this I also discovered that the two SATA sockets on the motherboard that do take latched connectors are arranged such that you can't use right-angle connectors on both, making them less useful too. And too really cap off a great situation, the drives I was fitting didn't really like having latched connectors fitted to them either; it was possible but only if you didn't mind bending the plastic casing a little to do so. It was a good thing removing the latches was easy or I'd have been very irate by the end of it!
I still think it was a silly mistake on Asus' part, but I'm not as annoyed as I normally would be under similar circumstances. In fact I think the biggest mistake on their part was to fit sockets that couldn't accept latched cables in the first place, but again it's not the end of the world, and it would appear that Asus' motherboard designers aren't alone in failing to take these things into account.
