What Features would you like to see on a Motherboard?

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Ravennoir

Weaksauce
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Apr 29, 2007
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What Features would you like to see on a Motherboard?

(Apart from the normal IDE/SATA ports)

This was a question in a Survey I did and thought it was quite interesting

Thoughts ?

-Raven
 
Thats almost as good as the suggestion one of my friends gave me.

Quote :

"How about a finite-improbability generator so that every 6 months I can plug in some hot tea and have my motherboard not be out of date (at a probability of 2^345,490,183:1 against)?"
 
Features I want? Complete removal of legacy crap that I haven't used in several years. Get rid of:

Floppy
PATA
Serial Port
Parallel Port

That stuff is all worthless these days, fux it.
 
i would want a motherboard with:

integrated physx
AMD/Intel Support
completely fanless
accurate self diagnosing, tired of RMA'ing mobos because of ambiguous beep codes.

all less than $100, making me food would be cool too.........:D
 
SLI and corssfire would on same motherboard.
For an MATX motherboard i would like to see SLI or Crossfire.
 
a mATXboard based on the nForce 650i Ultra chipset without integrated sound nor graphics.
a Self diagnostic device on a PCI bracklet or that fits in a floppy of DVD slot. Something like MSI or ASUS striker. ( mainly for ATC as mATX cant afford to lose another pci slot. )
Get rid of the legacy stuff and CD audio connector. A cool chipset, for a change.
Anf if you HAVE to add legacystuff and a audiochip, plant them on a separated detachable PCB like DFI did.
 
I'd like to see:

Full-sized ATX motherboard
A mature bios with all the bugs fixed, such as the restart bug, FSB holes, etc...
Support for high FSBs and voltages
high FSB support off a 975X-like timing chipset (but that's more of a chipset bottleneck)
3 PATA connectors
8 SATA//SATA2 connectors
LGA 775 with a VRM that's a generation ahead, lol
3 x PCI slots
2 x PCIe 16x slots
Good power regulation from the VRM
Minimal vDroop
Good northbridge and south bridge cooling. I don't care if it's fanned or fanless, heatpipes or pipeless, it's just gotta work incredibly well
4 x DDR2 slots
easily accessible CMOS battery location or a CMOS reset button in the back panel
ALC882M or higher sound chip
on-motherboard button to turn computer on without using a case button
 
2 usable* 16x PCIe
2 usable 16x PCIe
2 usable 1x PCIe
2 usable PCI
backpanel eSATA jacks instead of PS2 mouse/keyboard








*by usable I mean, at the same time as having dual wide video cards (e.g. 8800) and usable PCI slots. At least usable PCI that do not require external connections or exaust.
 
A BIOS that automatically and dynamically adjusts CPU and memory voltage, frequency, multipliers, ratios, and timings to deliver the BEST possible performance based on the running application.

Onboard graphical display readout.
 
StealthyFish said:
Good northbridge and south bridge cooling. I don't care if it's fanned or fanless, heatpipes or pipeless, it's just gotta work incredibly well
Click to expand...

+1. Though I prefer fanless ;)

Easy to access CMOS clear is nice.
Onboard power switch and reset is sexy.
ALL black color scheme.
Onboard X FI, X Meridian, or similar.
I just want a grip of USB and SATA ports. :)
 
Choice of AMD or Intel Just by Switching CPUs (Anyone remember the Socket 7 Days:D )
 
How about ZERO IDE ports? :cool:

And, and, put all port connectors on the back of the motherboard! Instead of motherboard trays with just screw holes, have holes for connectors too! Then you'll have no excuse if you have a bunch of visible wires.

Oh, ideal world.
 
I would like to see a desktop (single 775 socket) board with FB-DIMM support. I might even upgrade to Vista 64 to use the 16 gigs of quad channel RAM that it would support.
 
Not necessarly for motherboard itself but.

Holes precut in the motherboard tray under and or around the motherboards edges for wire hiding.

A single large hole or panel added in the motherboard tray under the cpu socket area so motherboards wouldn't have to be removed to add in aftermarket heatsinks.

Universal adoption of a single connector for the power, reset, led's and speaker connections. (both for board and case)

For motherboard itself.

Elimination of all legacy ports, including, paralell, ide, serial, ps2, irda, floppy, cd rom (who the hell bothers pluggin in the cd port these days anyway).

Eliminate the PCI bus completely in favor of PCI Express slots. to force the card manufacturers to finally use the damned spec.

Updated bios features like software loadable SATA/RAID drivers that can be loaded onto the board itself so you can access NTFS and other partition types without having to resort to a disk. Or at the very least an automatic redirect of A: drive to a thumb drive to load SATA/RAID drivers or the like.

More secure style of bios flashing, one that won't screwup the board if the bios flash goes badly.

Matter conversion unit so I can whip up a new heatsink just as quickly as a cup of coffee.
 
GJSNeptune said:
How about ZERO IDE ports? :cool:

And, and, put all port connectors on the back of the motherboard!

Oh, ideal world.
Click to expand...

all connectors at the back, and them all mounted at right angles - so effectively mirroring the external sockets.. if that became the standard then we would get some very tidy cases... you could effectively have a slide in mb tray that hooked right into the power and disk systems.. take it a stage further & have a slide in power supply (like a hot swap unit - just not hot swap). the wiring loom to connect everything (or indeed just another circuit board) would ship with the case..

really not a great deal of effort for mATX3 is it? :rolleyes:
 
Make everything smaller is the only thing that I have to say. Matx for the future!
 
Put good quality audio on mid range boards so you don't need a sound card. Don't even bother putting integrated audio on high end boards.
 
You people on the "zero ide ports." I think youre getting a little too far into the future. You know how many people still have IDE drives and such still. I have 2 dvd burners which are fairly new which are ide. I dont plan on rebuying new sata drives to replace them. Theres alot of people in the same situation. Almost are my hard drives are SATA now, except for one but....I think a large majority still even have IDE HD's.

You pretty much got your wish already anyways, seeing as how the latest C2D boards intel did cut off IDE support. Its only the mobo manufacturers who were smart enough to include 1 port for people.
 
Single socket 771 board(for the cheap quad core xeons) with some overclocking options, 6-8 memory slots supporting at least 12-16 gigs of ram total. I'd give up IDE for some esata ports but really a single ide port would be nice. No floppy port. Have usb for this. On the back have like 6 to 8 usb ports. 2 esata ports, 2 firewire(1 400/1 800), and a serial port(they still have use). Header ports for rear audio(have it on a bracket so if you don't use it the ports are not there), 4 to 6 usb ports etc. Expansion via pci express. Have 2 max pci slots and the rest pci express. 2 16x slots and 2 4 or 8x slots.
 
In no particular order of importance, and with some sense of realism:

1.) Eliminate legacy ports such as Parallel, Serial, and PS/2 from the rear panel I/O. Ideally, the rear panel would sport all supported USB, Firewire, and NIC ports provided by the chipset in organized stacks (All the USB ports in one place on the backplane?! Whodathunkit?). eSATA optional, but should be on a separate controller until the spec becomes more popular.

2.) Enthusiast boards should be sans integrated audio except for a single headphone jack for diagnosis purposes (see Reason 9). There's no point including a full set of audio jacks on anything more than a mainstream motherboard because enthusiasts have their own audio solution they like using. 2a.) No more proprietary slots for audio solutions (See abit AW9D-Max, Asus P5N32 series). It's just a waste of a slot...

3.) Built-in Wi-Fi. If every Apple desktop comes with wireless, why the hell doesn't any Windows PC desktop?

4.) Digital PWM, solid capacitors, and ATX 24-pin and 4/8-pin connectors that are located within close proximity of each other at the front edge of the motherboard. That way the PWM runs cooler, capacitors don't explode, and a power supply located above or below the motherboard can reach both connectors without causing airflow issues. 4a.) Removal of Molex power connectors from the motherboard. I understood the purpose of this two years ago, but now they don't make sense...

5.) A chipset cooling solution that isn't: A) Ridiculously loud; B) A ridiculously huge heatpipe maze.

6.) Slot layout in the following order: PCI-E x1 slot, PCI-E x16 slot, PCI Slot, PCI Slot, PCI-E x16 Slot, PCI slot, PCI-E x1 slot. For mainstream users who only use one graphics card and drag their upgrades over the course of months and years, this leaves open 2 PCI card slots and 2 PCI-E x1 slots. Should said mainstream user upgrade with a second graphics card, they wouldn't lose much by way of expansion. For the gaming enthusiast, you can install a Crossfire or SLI setup and a sound card with room to breathe between components.

7.) Serial ATA only, all placed along the front edge of the motherboard. No Parallel ATA, no floppy. There's just no purpose to these any longer. 7a). Going along with Reason 1, there should be 1 USB header and 1 Firewire header at the most on the motherboard for front-panel case connectors.

8.) LED's built into the motherboard that can be turned on while the PC is off for servicing and diagnosing purposes.

9.) Vocal P.O.S.T. report. Forget digital read-outs, hexi-decimal LEDs, or Morse-code beeping. If a vocal message says "CPU temperature exceeded safety limits" or "Overclocking failure; BIOS reset to last know good conditions," you know what happened when your PC shut off, restarted, or didn't fully boot.

10.) (Probably the most pie-in-the-sky feature I want because it would take a few years to achieve) Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). Looking to Apple for the cue again here: If they can make a BIOS screen look user friendly with icons and a mouse cursor, imagine what other companies can do for the enthusiast...
 
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