Asus Wants to Spark a 'Revolution' to Hide All PC Cables - ExtremeTech:
Recently there have been a few "stealth" projects for PC builders, most notably from Gigabyte. The concept is pretty simple: Put all the connectors on the back of the motherboard. This allows the typical rat's nest of cables to remain hidden from sight. The only problem is this requires a custom motherboard and a compatible chassis. So far Gigabyte has offered its own solution, but you have to buy all the parts at once. There's no way to just DIY it using different vendors.
Asus is attempting to solve that problem with a new project it calls APE Revolution. The project is similar to Gigabyte's Stealth PC, but differs in that Asus is trying to get a lot of companies onboard. This could give PC builders a few options when building a system. The project was revealed in a video uploaded to Bilibili along with a Twitter post via Videocardz. The companies involved include Lian Li, Cooler Master, Phanteks, and several others.
Another major difference from Gigabyte's project is it includes both AMD and Intel motherboards. Gigabyte only offered it with a Z690 board and an Nvidia GPU. Asus seems to be making it for its less expensive boards, though, namely the B and H class boards for 600 and 700 series chipsets. For AMD it might release a B650 version for AM5 builds.
As you can see [from the photo], all the connectors have been moved to the back of the board. They slide into cutouts in compatible cases, letting you connect everything from the back. It introduces a curious problem though: how to connect the CPU fan cable. The same goes for an AIO pump as well. The motherboard does have 4-pin connectors at the top of the board where they usually go, but you'd still see a cable there. There's also no way to hide AIO tubing, either. A notable inclusion is all the connectors for the front-mounted I/O.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:13AM (15 children)
Re-inventing the 90's ATX cutout, and getting rid of slots is now 'revolutionary'
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:06AM (14 children)
Is it even re-inventing if ATX is still a thing?
Putting ALL the connectors on the back isn't even a great thing. Having frequently replaced connectors on the front is useful. Nobody wants to plug their usb flash drive in the back.
(Score: 5, Informative) by EJ on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:15AM (13 children)
They mean the back of the motherboard's PCB. Look at the picture. They aren't talking about the front/back of the chassis. They're literally talking about having the connectors underneath the motherboard, which is completely stupid.
I don't understand the obsession of looking at the innards of your PC. It's placing form over function, which is ALWAYS idiotic.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @06:41AM (9 children)
Why do you want to see the inside of your PC? It's a weird gamer obsession (and I'm a gamer).
Here I was hoping they had a magical idea for all the cables outside the PC? Monitor cables, power cables, network cables, USB cables - those seem to always be a mess, and you don't have a lot of choice about looking at them...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:29AM
I'm a gamer too, and I want my PC out of the way. I'm building a special soundproof cabinet for my next PC (Raptor Lake, 4090, etc.) with custom connector plates and power button mounted to the outside with cooling ports routed through an air baffle system so I don't have to hear anything in operation. A lot of new parts have coil whine, fan noise, ticking, etc., and I hate wearing a headset. I have a Marantz 7.1 sound setup for my gaming PC. I also despise LED-lit RGB nonsense too.
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:07AM
Yeah, me too. How many customers are they going to sell on this idea vs. what will it cost them to implement?
Even if it was cables outside the case, people usually tuck them behind the deck or into a cable tray if they're really worried about it rather than buy a completely new rig. So this story quacks more like "Asus Wants you to Throw Away all your Existing Gear and Buy New Gear that's Exactly the Same only Different".
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 05 2022, @11:55AM (6 children)
All the open cases and LEDs stuff goes back to overclockers working around overheating issues and putting up sensors and led indicators to cue when the heat is rising. Nowadays it's still a cheap & easy quick fix considering how modern x86s obfuscate build's heat dissipation issues since they automatically down regulate power and frequencies to a 10th of their normal operating levels* based on the temperature. In fact, since all modern CPU fans use silent & sealed ball bearings and there's no spinning rust, there's really no disadvantage in keeping the case open if you keep headphones on which is something gamers do anyhow.
Anyhow, the biggest problem with modern cases is that there's no good place to put the PSU. Put it at the bottom and it's hard to dissipate its heat from reaching the CPU. Put it at the top and it's hard to dissipate the CPU and GPU heat from reaching the PSU. So, maybe moving the cables to the back will open up the option to design flatter PSUs like the ones used in LED lighting and place the PSU at the side. The box will end up shorter, wider and probably total with a bit more volume... But people who care about all that just buy NUCs or laptops anyhow I guess.
* e.g. i5-12600K base is 125w, turbo @ 150w, idle @ 6w and averages desktop idle @ 10-15w. So, if you have a shitty fan or loose socketing, the system will simply refuse to go into turbo and you'll only notice the performance problems at peak loads like games.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:10PM (5 children)
>there's really no disadvantage in keeping the case open if you keep headphones on which is something gamers do anyhow.
1) I'm a long-term gamer and I hate headphones under most conditions, as do many of my gamer friends. Just because I'm immersing myself in a game, doesn't mean I want to be cut off from the world around me. I imagine that's especially true of parents.
2) Leaving the case open, or even putting in a big window, likely means that you're operating an illegal radio transmitter. Components are typically designed to keep radio noise below legal thresholds when operated within the expected metal Farady cage that dampens the signal. Open the cage, and there's a very good chance the transmissions exceed legal limits. If you're lucky it doesn't cause any problems except maybe some nearby electronics being a bit less stable. If you're unlucky and somebody notices the illegal transmission? Then it kind of depends on how much of an asshole the judge wants to be about it.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 06 2022, @12:03AM (4 children)
I'll give no.1 but no.2 is just drivel. There's not a single component in PCs that radiated anything remotely dangerous that calls for any sort of EMF shielding from the casing and there's absolutely no regulations calling for it. You can find plenty of open frame cases from major brands on the market if you simply google for it and whatever amount of EMF they're leaking dwarfs in comparison to anything bluetooth keyboards and mice radiate let alone what your smartphones is pushing out.
Seriously, I could sorta understand you making an electrical hazard argument if you spilled liquids or whatever... But EMF off open PC cases? That's 5g-causes-covid19 grade level tin foil hat bonkers right there. Like, the forward drive bays are 5.25″ = 13.34cm = anything over 2.25GHz goes through the front so you're not even shielding from 2.4GHz WiFi with ATX cases or just the normal operating frequencies of your CPU...
Exceed legal limits... WTF man.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 06 2022, @01:21AM (1 child)
It's not about physical danger, it's about legally allowable transmission power to avoid interference with other devices.
Your bluetooth mouse is a legally licensed radio transmitter operating in compliance with tightly controlled power and frequency restrictions. Your video card is not - it's legal limits are simply to keep radio noise power levels below certain thresholds so that they don't interfere with your mouse, radio, pacemaker, etc. - even when the noise is combined with that from all devices and your neighbors. In the US that's the sticker about "cannot cause interference with other devices, and must accept interference from other devices without posing a hazard" or something like that.
But it is assumed that video card will be operating within a Faraday cage (aka metal case), so they can get sloppy if it shaves a few cents off of the manufacturing costs to plump up someone's quarterly bonus. Even just as components degrade over time things can drift out of spec and increase radio noise levels.
Plunk such a video card in a front of a great big case window, and it can easily emit illegally strong radio noise. Which may well go completely undetected and harmless, but if it happens to interfere with anything, or even just get noticed incidentally, then you could be on the hook for operating an illegal transmitter. Since it wasn't intentional a reasonable judge may let you get away with just confiscating the transmitter (aka your computer). I think there was even a story posted here a year or two ago about somebody losing their... TV(?) because every time they turned it on half the village lost their internet connection.
As for the premanufactured "Window PCs", it's probably safe to assume they have had their components selected to operate within legal radio noise limits despite the hole. That's not necessarily true of an off-the-shelf component, or just leaving any random PC's case open.
been subjected to and passed the relevant emissions tests.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 06 2022, @04:12AM
Where are you getting this stuff? Motherboards are tested with open cases:
( https://apps.fcc.gov/kdb/GetAttachment.html?id=vcigJ2hBt%2BPRXEHRt46ZHQ%3D%3D&desc=657217%20D01%20Personal%20Computer%20v03 [fcc.gov] )
While GPUs aren't even tested and only need to come from certified suppliers that declare they confirm to the same emission levels the motherboards are tested for:
( https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/15.101 [cornell.edu] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/15.5 [cornell.edu] )
You can even see for yourself nVidia hasn't submitted anything new to the FCC in years despite making their own cards: https://fcc.report/company/Nvidia-Corp [fcc.report]
And it doesn't go under their clients seeing how Asus too doesn't have any GPUs listed despite manufacturing both nVidia and AMD cards: https://fccid.io/MSQ [fccid.io] https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Graphics-Cards/All-series/ [asus.com]
Did you tell Thermaltake? https://www.thermaltake.com/products/chassis.html [thermaltake.com]
Old cathode-ray tubes can real noisy when they go out of alignment but it has nothing to do with modern electronics unless you're still sporting a CRT for some reason. And even then, it has nothing to do with the case being open or not.
Look, obviously all electronics can fault and produce noise. However, when it comes to computing equipment, disregarding the PSU, it's highly unlikely the CPU/GPU would be able to keep working normally if they show these sorts of faults. I mean, if it was a simple engine or something... Sure. But if CPUs/GPUs start producing high/low frequency harmonies where they shouldn't, assuming they won't just go up the smoke right then and there, they'll start mixing their 1s & 0s and crush under a second for sure.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday October 06 2022, @03:36AM (1 child)
It's not bonkers at all. I've been involved with regulatory-type testing for things like CE compliance, and getting a custom/whitebox PC to pass things like emissions can be pretty challenging. Computers are incredibly noisy RF-wise - you have lots of components running at a bunch of different frequencies in the MHz and into the GHz range, and some of them using quite a bit of power. If you slap a random motherboard, power supply, video card, etc. into a random case, the chances of it legally being in compliance just by chance is already pretty low, and if the case has a window or other big holes, even less. Essentially, if you want it to be within the legal limits, it has to be engineered that way. The easiest way to get that is to just buy a Dell/Lenovo/HP/whatever. And even then, if you do something like install an expansion card, all bets are off.
That's not to say it'll cause you problems. Generally, it won't. Electronics also have to legally be able to accept a certain level of interference and still function, or at least not fail in a way that's dangerous, to be certified. So your cobbled together DIY PC is very unlikely to cause you any problems unless perhaps you like to listen to AM radio while at your computer. Even if you have a case with a window or just leave the side open.
With that said, it is kind of annoying that most cases now have a window, and I have to hunt around to find ones that don't have one. Though that might reflect that the ones left in the DIY crowd now tends to be the gamers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 07 2022, @04:19AM
Honestly, I don't even know a lot of gamers that like them. Why would I want a bunch of bright strobing lights distracting me from the screen? And without them, why would I want a window in my computer?
I think it's more of a "hot-rodding" subculture that emerged... probably mostly among gamers, but only as a subset.
They do seem to be the most prominently positioned case designs - but if I were to guess I'd say that's a combination of trying to upsell to the presumably easily captivated blinkenlights crowd, and the fact that a sheet of plastic is even cheaper than a sheet of steel, while letting you actually raise the price of the case. Plus the fact that an opaque case rarely shows off any of its features on the shelf, or in a single listing photo. I mean - it's a box, what's to see? I would be interested to see the actual sales rates for windowed versus "normal" cases though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:30PM (1 child)
Might make for better airflow at least for the upper side of the motherboard. Also easier to clean out the dust on the upper side if all the cables are at the underside...
But the last I checked many graphics cards require extra power cables to be plugged to them, so those cables will be on the upper side of the motherboard...
Also if you have a number of SATA drives are they going to be at the underside of the motherboard too? If not you'd still have cables running around at the front of the motherboard so the gains in terms of airflow and dust won't be as much for this scenario. But not a problem for those people with just NVME drives.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 07 2022, @04:32AM
From the photos it certainly looks like the SATA ports, case connections, etc. are all on the underside. Looks like they're aiming for cards and drives above the MB, with all cables routed behind it.
Auxiliary power connectors for video cards would certainly spoil the wire-free aesthetic without gratuitous cable channels, but should be easy enough to keep out of the airflow at least.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:56PM
Not *entirely* form over function, nor entirely new. I've got an old "silent" PC case (Antec P180 I think) from around 2000 which has now survived a few innards transplants. And among the features is a raised motherboard plate that makes it easy to take off the other case panel to route cables behind it.
Why? Because keeping a powerful CPU and GPU cool requires a lot of air flow - you can easily be talking as much power as a ceramic heater on low or medium, coming out of something that you want to keep touchably cool even in a hot room. And every obstacle to free air flow within the case means you need more powerful, and thus noisier, fans to provide the same amount of cooling.
Power cables in particular tend to be a big messy bundle of airflow obstruction worse than anything except IDE cables. And if you have a lot of drives, even SATA cables add up quickly. If you can easily route a bunch of probably-too-long cables completely outside the main airspace, you just significantly improved airflow without having to do a whole lot of cumbersome-to-adjust cord management (I'm glaring at you, zip ties).
Also, it's nice to have the cables I rarely mess with just... gone. Power especially - I've got short little power cables just popping out from the case itself where needed, and I can easily change where that is in moments. No cluttered mess nor zip-tied hell. Makes it a lot easier to route and trace the few more frequently adjusted cables I leave out.
Putting the connectors on the back of the motherboard rather than just near the edge seems... overkill though. But honestly, mostly because of the added step of mounting connectors to the back of the board, and breaking compatibility with existing cases for minimal benefit.
For actual cable routing though - once you've fed the cables into a separate cable chamber for routing to the motherboard, not having to feed them back into the main chamber to plug them in does seem convenient.
(Score: 4, Funny) by MostCynical on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:23AM
nothing like lock-in to a single supplier.
next,. they will be soldering RAM to the board.. (oh, wait...)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Funny) by inertnet on Wednesday October 05 2022, @06:49AM
I'm married, I don't need Asus to hide my stuff.