This New Motherboard Characteristic Makes Constructing Your Personal Gaming PC Easy

Have you heard about back-to-front motherboards? They transfer the entire fiddly cable connectors to the rear facet of the board, eliminating the toughest a part of PC constructing and providing you with a clear look in addition to. The idea took off a couple of years in the past, and it is now doable to search out comparatively reasonably priced motherboards from MSI (“Project Zero”), Asus (“BTF”) and Gigabyte (“Stealth”). I used to be conscious of the idea, but it surely wasn’t till I inbuilt one lately that I realised what a game-changer it’s – particularly for first-time PC builders.

I obtained the thought to do that after I acquired the H3 Flow Micro ATX case from NZXT; it is one among an growing variety of circumstances that comes with the mandatory cutouts. I picked up a used MSI Project Zero B850M motherboard on Ebay for £160 (one among my favorite methods to construct PCs on a price range), then plugged in a selection of parts from the white gaming PC I built for Eurogamer in 2025 with an NZXT Kraken 240 Plus AiO.

It’s frequent to listen to that constructing a pc is rather like grownup Lego, and with a back-to-front motherboard, that really feels form of true. After you’ve got put in the CPU into the motherboard, which stays a bit nervy, there is no actual potential to mess something up – it is only a case of popping in your RAM and SSD, mounting the motherboard, then including the cooler, GPU and energy provide. If you should use a screwdriver and push a factor into one other factor, you are just about there.

For me, a traditional a part of the construct course of is working cables as you go, and inevitably discovering that what you’ve got carried out is not fairly proper – so issues should be disconnected, reconfigured and plugged again in once more. Here, because of the entire motherboard cable connectors being accessible on the rear facet, you may depart the plugging in cables bit till the final step. If you’ve any elements within the entrance a part of the case which have their very own cables, like case followers, AiOs or graphics playing cards, then you definitely simply poke the wires by way of to the again facet by way of the closest out there aperture – easy.

And that closing connecting step for me was genuinely joyful. There are so many occasions the place I’ve sweat and swore whereas prepared my fingers to turn out to be smaller and extra sleek in order that I can lastly plug within the obnoxiously-placed connector that has me flummoxed. One of my clearest recollections from circa 2005 is having my arms jammed right into a tiny HP workplace PC I used to be changing to play video games, struggling to plug within the tiny particular person front-panel connectors over 30 hellish minutes, my hand rising bruised and bloodied. Here it was the precise reverse expertise – fast, straightforward, by no means unsure.

Running even cumbersome motherboard energy cables is useless straightforward, as you are going from the again facet of the board to energy provide tray on the identical facet, whereas fan headers are all simply seen and even the dainty front-panel connectors may be one-shot. This was the primary time I’ve ever not needed to check with a motherboard handbook to see the place an inner connector was, as a result of you may really see the labels for the darn issues with out having to fastidiously angle torchlight round a CPU cooler or a graphics card, such as you’re Lara Croft making an attempt to resolve a light-weight puzzle in a Mayan tomb.

All instructed, it took actually 5 minutes (based on photograph timestamps) to plug in each cable wanted, route them cleanly and cable tie them into place – what a revelation. The total construct took solely an hour too, and that is with frequent breaks to doc the method and sip espresso. That made for by far the best and most relaxed PC construct I’ve ever carried out, and the ultimate outcome appears tremendous clear too.

After having skilled it for myself, I’m now satisfied that these back-connect motherboards should be the usual going ahead. There are solely a handful of choices from MSI, Asus and Gigabyte available on the market proper now, however I might anticipate many extra for the subsequent era of AMD and Intel processors, particularly for mid-range and better boards that wish to one-up their rivals by way of options.

What do you consider this rising expertise? Have you constructed with one among these boards earlier than, and would you think about it sooner or later? Let me know within the ballot above or the feedback under.