OK, time for a field day. Warning, this is with an enthusiast in mind (but not overboard $10K computer budget enthusiast)
1) 4/8pin CPU power - place it somewhere my cables will reach without buying a case with cable-management holes above the spot EVERYONE puts it (annoying!)
2) RAM sticks - move away from CPU a tad to ensure clearence of 'top performing' air coolers. We all read the reviews and know which models those are...shouldn't be too hard.
3) As others have mentioned, junk all the legacy interfaces/chips/etc. IDE, firewire, serial, PS2, floppy.
4) I don't need 4xGPUs in my system - at best, I'll get 2 cards with dual GPUs on them. Design PCIE spacing around this... the two full bandwidth PCIE sockets should be spaced far enough apart for 3-slot solutions (GPU+cooler). The rest of the PCIE sockets can be bunched together towards the bottom as those will be the low impact cards (sound/USB/etc...)
5) built in wi-fi, n-spec (bonus points if you somehow make this modular allowing to improve the wi-fi spec without replacing the mobo - something like Auzentech does with their pre-amps on their sound-cards)
6) built in bluetooth (and give it some power!)
7) internal USB headers - not the pin configuration but legit plugs so I don't have to route my media card cable out back of the computer
8) Dual BIOS and a bios reset button - no more jumpers!!!
9) on-board power/reset buttons
10) quick-plug for the case interface (power/reset/HDD activity, etc). Something with loose ends on one end to connect to the case wires and a solid single connection on the other. I'm very tired of pulling these tiny one-pin connectors in&out.
11) 90 degree plugs for both ATX power and SATA, plus move one or two of the SATA connectors up for optical drives.
12) while we are on it, SATA 6 (at least 8 ports!) / USB 3 /PCI-E 3.0. Also, LightPeak (assuming its finalized prior to manufacture of this dream-board, and in that case, scrap the 3 I mentioned and just have the light-peak)
13) strip out all onboard audio AND integrated video. I want quality boards for both of these functions and this usually means that each costs more then the mobo itself. As I don't think people will appreciate paying $600 for a board, regardless of the amazing graphics/audio on it, take it out altogether. I dont need/appreciate the driver conflicts
14) Must admit I'm stealing this one, but its a good idea... put some LEDs into all the interface ports so I can tinker around in less then ideal lighting.
15) NO HYDRA LUCID CHIP. I do not want to pay the extra cost for something no enthusiast will ever use. And while we are at it, being an AMD fan, you can scrap the SLI support as well, crossfire is just fine 😛 (feel free to ignore the last one - I realize that's a thorny issue)
16) BIOS interface that looks/functions like it was designed during this century
17) This combines with point 8 really, but bring back 'turbo' boost button. Now what I mean by this is, a button that switches which BIOS is currently being used (if possible, in real time). This way we can have an 'overclocked' bios and a vanilla one to create the old-school turbo mode (like my 386 that went from 33MHz to 66... though I realize that in that case, 33 was actually throttling the CPU)
18) Give this board to me for free
I think that just about covers it. Just kidding about point 18, naturally...
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