You are Building Your PC Wrong

The computer hardware enthusiast has always been a driving force in the computer hardware world.  We have often been called the vocal minority and the disruptors that lead to real changes in the industry. 

Some good examples include:

• Casemodding: The fact that we were changing our computer case indicated to case makers that they could start offering custom “pre-mod” designs.  The hardware had also improved so EMI was less of an issue and thus removed the manufacturing restriction.
• Stacker Case Designs: For awhile storage was slow and expensive so users started adding lots of drives to their computers. Case makers thought it would be a good idea to provide things like integrated drive docks and build out the entire front of the case was external 5.25 drive bays to support these crazies.
• Watercooling: When enthusiasts started building their own watercooling loops with car radiators and pond pumps it prompted several companies to start building custom watercooling components to make the parts more reliable and deliver better performance.
• Overclocking: Complaints related to the issues of using DICE and LN2 prompted motherboard and video card makers to providing more advanced overclocking controls.  The result was higher world record benchmark scores and NVIDIA getting upset when RMA costs were too high.
• Multi-GPU: This was discussed before and to actually run 4-way SLI you need a motherboard that supported 4 graphics cards while also accommodating the associated coolers.
• CryptoMining: This is an example I can fully appreciate given the creativity that went into creating a mining motherboard. Mining rigs used low powered CPUs, onboard storage and came with LOTS of video card compatible PCI Express slots.  I never supported crypto mining given the clear Ponzi nature of cryptocurrency but, the builds were quite amazing and really pushed Multi GPU to the limit.

Most everything we see here is a reaction to the current environment or a suggestion from the PC Hardware Enthusiast community.  Rarely is the hardware maker the genesis for a new idea as there are too many issues to contend with including their own sales department.  However, when an idea comes from the outside they can often run with it.  Sometimes those ideas work out and other times they are largely forgotten.  It all depends on how the idea is marketed and if there was real Hardware Enthusiast input beforehand.

When motherboards were being designed and optimized 2-way SLI they spaced the slots apart with enough room to support a dual slot cooler while allowing a 3^rd slot for airflow.  Video card makers took this as an excuse to started selling cards with triple slot coolers under the assumption that there is plenty of room.  At this point users could still install a second card or, more accurately, leave the second GPU slot unpopulated.

Left: Aorus Z790 Elite X Wifi 7 showing off the 3 missing PCI Express slots to make room for M.2 drives.  Right: EVGA Z790 Dark Kingpin Edition, a motherboard designed for overclocking, with 3 slots missing and filled with M.2 drives

Fast forward to when multi-GPU went away there was nothing stopping video card makers from building four(4) slot cooling solutions and somehow thinking that was ok.

The thing is, they were right. 

Hardware makers have been taking advantage of every situation where they can be guaranteed compatibility.  This allows them to check one more box when it comes to additional features and when released into wild often translates into more sales.

The motherboard design trend was to support graphics card coolers.  With dual slot designs they often removed the unused slot(s) to save money.  If we extend this thinking, we are left with quad slot coolers and full sized ATX motherboards with a single PCI Express slot followed by four empty slots and a couple 1x slots at the bottom just to make it seem like they did something.

Left: Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force supporting multiple video card and expansion card options and configurations, 2-way, 3-way, 4-way GPU + PhysX + General expansion.  Right: Aorus (Gigabyte) Z690 Pro motherboard with a single video card slot, the two at the bottom are limited to 4x PCI-Express

This breaks every logical reason why we would choose a certain motherboard and challenges our understanding as to why we feel we need one motherboard design over another.