The future of gaming PCs is... hiding all the mess | Great Scott! Asus' Back to the Future cable-hiding system is no gimmick, it's the future of gaming and enthusiast PCs | Building a rig with MSI's Project Zero is a glimpse into the (almost) cable-less future of PC gaming
Created for ignoble.experiment@arconati.us | Web Version
There's a new trend in the gaming PC market that feels like it's been a long time coming, especially since everyone switched over to Perspex and glass side panels on their pretty gaming rigs an absolute age ago. All those unsightly cables, which have been the bane of every DIY PC builder since time immemorial are soon to be a thing of the past. Well, at least tucked out of sight on some of the more premium machines you might build.
First Gigabyte launched its Project Stealth kit with Maingear, to a rather limited response, then MSI released Project Zero, and now Asus has got its Back to the Future gear which goes further than either of those in ridding us of wires. The other two still need big fat GPU power cables, while Asus is burying that in the motherboard... so long as you buy a particular Asus graphics card, that is.
But sticking the rest of the motherboard ports on the rear of the board does take care of pretty much every other unsightly cable, allowing you to tuck them out of sight. The process results in some gorgeous, clean builds, and a terrifying Cthulu-tentacled mass behind the motherboard away from adoring eyes.
If you've ever built a gaming PC or just looked inside one, you won't have missed the fact that everywhere you look there are cables. Wires to supply power, data, or both; wires to switch things on and off; wires to change the colour of lights; wires to attach chassis ports to the motherboard. At the very least, they're fiddly to fit and route, but if you're serious about your PC's looks, then they're a major pain to manage. Enter stage left Asus and its BTF ('Back to the Future') range of motherboards, graphics cards, and cases where cables are very much not the centre attraction.
A few weeks ago, our hardware overlord Dave asked me if I fancied building a PC and then reporting back on what the whole experience was like. At first, I was a bit bemused, given that we all do this kind of thing on a regular basis in the office. Then he mentioned that it was a couple of things from Asus, all hallmarked with three letters: B, T, and F.
In the case of the motherboard, that means shifting all bar one of the cable sockets to the back of the circuit board. They're all in the usual locations, just on the other side.
But for the graphics card, Asus had a much harder task—how exactly does one hide the power cables? Every GPU needs at least one and it's not like there's one side of a graphics card that's both hidden but still accessible. The solution comes in the form of a proprietary connector, looking very similar to the PCI Express one all cards have.
Where that connector supplies data, instructions, and up to 75 W of power, this new one is equivalent to the much-maligned 12VHPWR socket—up to 600 W of power, via 12 wires, and status information through another four. At the moment, Asus' system can't be used alongside a traditional power socket, so BTF graphics cards will only work on a BTF motherboard. You can use any GPU with the latter, but the former is very restricted.
I honestly don't know how well the Asus BTF platform will catch on or whether other vendors will follow a similar route. MSI has, of course, but its Project Zero system isn't entirely cable-hidden as you still need to use a normal power cable for the graphics card. Asus' is the first one to shove it all out of view. And I think it's absolutely brilliant.
Except for one thing—cable management around the back is now worse than ever.
All issues aside, I'm really encouraged by what Asus has done and I hope it expands the range to include cheaper parts and AMD motherboards and graphics cards, to give BTF the chance it deserves to be accepted by the PC community. Back to the Future is an expensive gamble for Asus, but it's certainly the shape of things to come.
Cables. You can't live with them and you can't yet live without them. Or can you? If you can't see them, do they really exist? Enter MSI's Project Zero. Its claim to fame is that it relocates all of those unsightly headers and cables to the rear of the motherboard, giving you a much cleaner looking build. A secondary benefit is that it helps to improve case airflow by removing the turbulence imposed by cables all over the place. That big ol' relic of a 24-pin power connector typically sits right in the path of the front to back airflow.... begone!
Cable management is not my forte, but when I'm close to completing a gaming PC build there's nothing that bugs me more than a stray cable that I have to find some way to hide, be that around my liquid cooler, running across the VRM or looped under the motherboard 24-pin. I simply don't bother for my test bench—I stare at a mess of cables erupting from it for the better part of every work day. Though I shouldn't have to, and I might not for much longer.
This Team Group boasts some mighty specs and for the amount of storage you're getting, it's really good value. The sequential read/write speeds are extremely high but it can only sustain them over short bursts. At this price, it's well worth putting up with that limitation.
The latest Legion machines have been some of my favorite gaming laptops of the past year or so, and this Legion 5 Slim is a great price for a real quality piece of notebook engineering. The RTX 4060 is a good GPU for a sub-$1,000 machine, and a great fit for a 1200p 16-inch display. While it's not really slim when compared to something like an ultrabook, the Lenovo is still pretty svelte by budget gaming laptop standards, and the Legions have some of the best keyboards you'll find on any mobile machine.
Gaming PCs don't have to be mega expensive, you know. This Yeiyan Yumi has all the right ingredients to get you started—a speedy six core, 12 thread CPU, an RTX 4060, plenty of RAM, and a decent amount of storage.
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