Motherboards with hidden connectors are shaping up to be one of few fun concepts that make it mainstream

pcgamer.com:

Someone's always trying to change how we build gaming PCs—bold new concepts are commonplace at CES—but very few ideas actually succeed in changing anything at all. Yet it really looks like one trend could stick around this year, and that's motherboards with all the connectors and cables hidden around the back.

Now, feel free to dredge this article back up in a year's time when motherboards with the connectors on the rear are nothing but a distant memory, but during my time seeing what's on offer at CES 2024, it seriously looks like these motherboards could make it mainstream.

If you're not familiar with the concept, there are two main families of motherboard mullet (party in the front, business in the back): MSI's Back-connect and Asus' BTF (Back-To-The-Future). One of which is a snappy name that might stand a chance of mainstream adoption. The other, uh…

Neither MSI or Asus concept is particularly new—both companies showed off these concepts back at Computex 2023. However, over at CES 2024 I started seeing a lot more of these motherboard concepts from PC builders, case manufacturers, and PC component companies.

Let's start with MSI. MSI has Back-connect boards and builds all over its CES 2024 booth. The three boards available out the gate are:

As for PC builds, MSI has a row of PCs all built with Back-connect boards. Two are of its own design, the Project Zero ATX Showcase, but it also has a couple builds from Maingear. Maingear is stuffing Project Zero boards with either an MSI or Phanteks compatible case.

Asus also had BTF products over at its booth, though unlike MSI it also offers a solution for hiding GPU power cables entirely. Paired with a BTF motherboard, a BTF GPU, like the Strix one at the booth, can make for