CABLES—LOVE THEM or hate them, they’ve been a critical part of PC building since, well, we were building PCs. Over the years, these pesky connectors have developed considerably. From the humble days of the MOLEX and IDE connectors, to modern-day SATA, M.2, and 12VHPWR, as our PCs have got faster and more power hungry, so too have cables become streamlined and more efficient, catering to the whims of the PC builder.
Cases have developed special channels, rubber grommets, and cable tie-off points. No longer do we have great gobbets of them hanging loose across systems. Of course, we couldn’t talk about cables without mentioning such things as braided and sleeved custom cables, hidden away in paracord, or the likes of Lian Li and its Strimmer RGB illuminated variants, too. Corsair and its iCUE Link software and its Unifans are also worthy of honorable mentions.
THE BTF FORM FACTOR
The BTF form factor has been in development for a while, but products are now on the way.
One of the slightly more surprising debuts we’ve seen in the last few months is the arrival of the BTF form factor. These are motherboards specifically designed to hide the vast majority of your motherboard’s cables themselves by placing the connectors on the back of motherboard, hidden in the back of the case. We’re not going full wireless just yet.