Any PC builder knows that internal wiring can be a hassle. Between power supply rails, SATA cables, cooling fans, and any number of other parts, you might spend just as much time organizing your cables and wires as you do actually assembling all your parts. Gigabyte has a solution to that in its Aorus Project Stealth PC: a system that puts each and every wire in the build on the back side of the case. This makes the main area optimized for airflow — not to mention drop-dead gorgeous and utterly clean. Gigabyte partnered with boutique system builder Maingear to make this radical reimagining of the ATX standard a reality.
Gordon Ung got his lucky hands on this design over on the PCWorld YouTube channel. In the video you can see Gigabyte’s meticulous design work: every single motherboard connection, plus power rails for the GPU and case fans, has been carefully routed to the rear of the motherboard and out of sight. Even the CMOS battery is mounted in the rear.
And that’s a cool trick, but the really impressive bit is that there’s no proprietary technology at play here. The case mounting board has extra room in the cutouts, but it still mounts a standard ATX motherboard. The connections on the Project Stealth motherboard itself are just carefully placed so that the power and data connections are soldered through to the rear instead of the front. Someone with a soldering board and a steady hand could do more or less the same thing.
With every small connection on the rear and carefully labeled, wiring is a snap, and the results speak for themselves. Could we see this kind of ultra-clean design on consumer motherboards and cases in the future? We can but hope. Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear, and Kevin Shieh, Product Marketing Manager at Gigabyte, recently joined our Full Nerd podcast to discuss how Project Stealth came to be, and their ambitions for the initiative—including a desire to see other PC hardware makers like Asus and MSI support the new design. You can see that interview in its entirety below:
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Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who's been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.