Jacob Ridley, cable hater
This month I tested: Gaming mice with ultra-high polling speed, to see what all the fuss is about; and try to find out which is the best PC fan.
This month I played: a bit of Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm mostly into Helldivers 2 and Content Warning.
Cable management isn't my forte, but when I'm close to completing a gaming PC build, there's nothing that annoys me more than a loose cable that I have to hide somehow, whether that's around my liquid cooler is, which runs over the VRM or looped under the 24-pin motherboard. I just don't worry about my test bench; I spend most of every workday staring at a tangle of cables coming loose.
Although that shouldn't be necessary, and perhaps not for much longer.
A gaming PC today looks very different from a PC from 10 years ago. I was reminded of this only recently when cleaning out an old Corsair Air 540 chassis I had in storage. I still love the cubic shape, but it looks dated now. Yet many of the changes that have occurred over the past decade only scratch the surface. Dig deeper into the core functionality, design and interplay of the core components and they work in much the same way as they always have.
Take a fan for example. Most fans come with a short cable with a three- or four-pin connector on the end, running to a complementary header on a motherboard. Or a GPU, which connects to your motherboard via a PCIe slot, but still requires one, two, maybe even three extra power cables to keep it powered up.
The same goes for a motherboard. These central hubs haven't changed much in decades. There are some Mini-ITX models with creatively configured parts, but ask a PC gamer to draw one and we'll all come up with the same kind of sketch, artistry notwithstanding. Standardization dictates that the CPU is placed towards the top, the IO on the left and a series of headers for power and connectivity generally placed around the top, right and bottom edges. The names and sockets change, but the connections remain the same.
The story continues
However, a more drastic change is underway in the way gaming PCs are linked together.
A few PC companies are rethinking their thinking about cable management and the core connectors every gaming PC needs, and they appear to be making serious changes this time that will stick. If they do, a cable-free future isn't far away for gaming PCs, or at least a future where they're all hidden in the back.
Asus and MSI have taken the lead in dealing with the old-school way of thinking, namely when it comes to motherboards and how different components and cables connect to them. MSI has the Back-Connect, Asus has its BTF equipment. The latter our Nick tested and praised, calling it "the future of gaming and enthusiast PCs", and both I saw a a lot at CES, when I previously said they were "becoming one of the few fun concepts that are making it mainstream."
Whatever you're talking about, BTF or Back-Connect, it works by taking the power and data connections from the front of the motherboard and installing them on the back. Sounds simple, right? Motherboards are incredibly complicated, especially beneath the surface, and redesigning the way the multi-layer PCBs are designed to ensure traces are rotated reliably is a big task. Fortunately, we already have some options for suitable motherboards, as Asus and MSI make their own motherboards.
Case manufacturers are also jumping on board with enthusiasm. There are already some cases available that support the BTF and Back-Connect formats, such as the Thermaltake Ceres 330 TG ARGB. You can of course take a dremel to a standard case yourself, but for the smoothest solution it's probably better to buy a specific case. I saw quite a few at CES this year, and I'm sure there will be more to come.
All this helps to reduce the number of motherboard cables, but Asus goes one step further with its BTF-compatible graphics card. It removes the PCIe power cables that were required for almost all graphics cards in recent decades, replacing them with a single in-line connector along the same edge as the PCIe port. This requires support from the motherboard, and therefore only companies offering GPUs and motherboards could even attempt such an approach without any form of standardization, but the result is a completely sleek PC without any unsightly cables. No fancy cable mods required either, although I usually like the look of it.
In doing so, we've eliminated the majority of cables from a PC. And yet some still remain.
One of the worst offenders that cause terrible cable runs and makes planning difficult are case fans. Each fan comes with a cable (or two for some RGB models) and these are a required component for most gaming PCs. I know some diehard fanless fanatics will be annoyed if I say that without at least mentioning passive PC builds. So there you go, passive builds also exist. However, for most of us, a fan is a must. They're also a bit of a cable nightmare.
Only lately I've been playing with a few fans who completely remove all cable routes from the equation. I currently have both Corsair's iCUE Link QX120 fans and Hyte's Thicc FP12 fans on the test bench, although there are plenty of options including those from MSI, Lian Li and Thermaltake.
They all use the same thing, but presumably legally distinct, systems to connect with each other. Each fan clicks to the next, creating a chain of interconnected and individually controllable fans. When a larger break is needed, such as between top and side mounted cooling in a chassis, the Corsair system allows you to use an iCUE link cable to continue the same chain, while the Hyte system uses a new Type -C cable to go back to a chassis. Hyte controller.
Two systems of daisy chain fans, and both deliver similar results: fewer cables, cleaner enclosures, and sleeker aesthetics.
The Hyte fans came up with the Thicc Q60 cooler, which, despite the enormous screen, keeps the number of cables to an absolute minimum. From the fans to the cooler itself, there are only a handful of cables connecting the whole thing together. Hyte claims on its website: "Cables are just super dirty, so we just got rid of all the cables."
If you thought this is the most cables sorted, you're right. Although we haven't yet discussed the connection between cable clutter: the power supply. A black box that squirts out connectors can be quite difficult to clean up, although I've come across a great solution for that too. It's a bit finicky, as it requires a few things from a PC case to actually be usable, but Corsair's RMx Shift power supply takes some of the cable fuss out of the equation.
The RMx Shift is built to store cables on the side of the case, allowing it to extend toward the side panel of a PC for easy access, rather than in the depth of the chassis. You might say that it doesn't help the clutter, it just refocuses it, and you'd probably be right. Although it also uses micro versions of all PCIe connections to keep things organized.
All in all, the RMx Shift is a solid way for a serial tinkerer or lazy builder to quickly access each cable individually, without the need to remove shrouds or even the entire PSU itself.
I haven't put together every piece of the puzzle yet, not yet anyway, but combine the board, fan, card, PSU and case I mentioned here today and you're about as close to a truly cable-free PC as you could ask for. Some components really minimize cable clutter, others just hide it, but suddenly we PC gamers are moving from cable hell to cables that are almost extinct.
