ASRock Wants the Best Mobo Ideas in the World

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I'd like to see line of modular motherboards. It has to range in standard sized form factors possibly even extendable. You can add modules as to what features you want. The boards can be bare for the more advanced users (caps and CPU socket) to pre-packaged sets (pre-configured for the different segments) for the less informed person or bulk buyer. While most of the wanted features are included in most boards, some are either no longer needed with dated tech or just simply not used. Some on the otherhand are decked with lots of features that are not yet mainstream enough that the premium just isn't worth what's out in the market.

Seeing as how PCBs are basically modular in design anyways, why not take it to the next level and and make them fully modular for end users. It would be like being able to replace a USB 2 set to a USB 3, getting rid of serial ports for possibly eSATA ports, or even BIOS modules with differing degrees of complexity and conveniences,being able to swap out slots for other purposes till they're needed, modular cooling options, relocation of just about anything to suite the users needs...the possibilities are endless for both users and the company. It'd would be like the ultimate lego set for all types of comp users. I could rant on so much more but i think you guys get it : )
 
Oops, i forgot to add, the aesthetics would be alot more appealing too. Now users can actually choose the modules that appeal to them visually. For all the factory and end user customizing that's done to all sorts of casings to make them visually appealing, the internals tend to be rather bland in comparison and light years behind.

Think of how premier car manufacturers showcase the engines of their cars, you guys can be that but for comp market! No longer will the internals be relegated to the passenger seat, it can be the centerpiece!
 
I would like to have the UPS feature directly connect to the motherboard.
I would like to see a motherboard that has build-in UPS (power backup) feature that we do not need to install the ups software our own, and the motherboard maker will have a way to fit the battery or create an accessory that dettach or direct connect to the motherboard, so that all of our work will be safe when it comes to no power, and when we move our desktop to other location, we can just need to grab the tower and go, easy and clean.
 
I would like to see a number of things. Motherboards these days are hard to choose from but if all these components are TOGETHER in ONE motherboard, it will definitely be a winner.

1A. Small and efficient chipset heatsink that is out of the way and cools the chipset efficiently with the use of heatpipes
~~OR~~
1B. Plug and use type waterblock/heatsink that is ready to go. if you have watercooling, just attach hoses to the stock waterblock. if you dont, then leave it be and still have a cool chipset

2. Onboard Temperature sensor. Just a little readout that says how hot is the chipset

3. Quick Bios Reset. my OS doesnt boot when there is a wrong setting in the bios and so i normally have to end up using pliers to reset bios

4. Integrated Bios Stress test. To save alot of time when overclocking so you dont have to boot up into windows to run stress tests

5. Hybrid/Fusion Graphics cards. Use of Ati AND Nvidia Cards working together efficiently in a CrossfireX and SLI hybrid to cope with upgrades.

6. Standard ATX form Factor. To be used in many cases big or small

7.Lots of Fan Connectors, both 3-pin and 4-pin to accommodate Cases with lots of Fans

8. USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s. mainly because you want to have the latest hardware updates and support the newest hardware

9. built in TV tuner, bluetooth, and WiFi antenna. for all media purposes

10. Built in PWM fan speed control so you dont need special programs to control the fan but let the motherboard detect load and heat and take care of it.

11. 90 degree SATA connectors so it wont get in the way

12. Lights to indicate load and just for "showing off" as well
 
Move the sata ports closer to the power supply and 3.5" bays. Move the front audio, front usb to somewhere closer to the front of the chasis. And an option to connect the rear fans to the MB would be great. All this will prevent cables running all over the place.
 
1.)the motherboard to be cool, somewhere around 30-40 C
2.)2 gig lan ports
3.)6 channel audio + optical audio
4.)good raid, ability to do multiple raid channels
5.)Component ports so i can run RGB video also composite audio
6.)add an onboard fan controller for the ability to change fan speeds at will
7.)smart bios overclocking, have the computer know when something is overclocked to much or to little
8.}onboard ON and RESET buttons
9.)onboard 802.11N wireless
10.)onboard bluetooth for data transfer
11.) a core unlocker for proccessors
12.)the ability to boot from a usb harddrive
 
Keep the little round keyboard and mouse connections, please. Silk Screen the important stuff so it can be read easily (SATA 1,2, etc. what the led's are for, ram (DDR, DDR2, DDR3), socket type (775, ect.), one IDE is enough, mark the SATA regular and RAID as such, make the key on the memory socket easy to see in a crowded case alongside cables, etc., print a pinout of the power, reset, hdd, etc. so it can be seen in a crowded case and raise it up 1/2" so it can be accessed and seen, THANKS
 
"No whining!" The most annoying aspect of all my previous builds are whining coils and MOSFET chip buzzing. All voltage regulators need to be sinked and muted.

BIOS backups. When OCing and tuning, it's good to be able to save multiple BIOS tuning profiles. Allow BIOS settings to be saved to a file, and retrieved later if tuning settings go horribly wrong.

BIOS updates. Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but I hate having to DL a BIOS update, burn it to a CD or format a USB boot drive to update my BIOS through a reboot. Give my BIOS the smarts to update through a local file.

More fan connections, better tuning. The trend in modern cases is more fans. My current case a 1 rear, 2 top, 1 bottom, and two front, in addition the CPU cooler. Give us more fan plugs. Add voltage control software to regulate every fan speed that's hooked up. Have your machine channel a typhoon during full out gaming, and go whisper quiet at idle.

SATA6/USB3. Forget the old SATA and USB standards. I only want to see the new ones. Everything is backwards compatible anyhow, so you can still use your older tech. But if I want to upgrade to the new connections, I don't want to run out after 2 devices are plugged in.

No floppy/IDE. I haven't used a floppy drive in 5 years, and I phased out my last IDE drive a year ago. Get rid of em, and save space for all my extra SATA6, USB3, and plethora of fans.

SATA/USB plugs. Keep them near the edge of the board, away from other things. I don't know why I see SATA and USB plugs placed in the middle of a board, usually just around where my video card goes.

ATX 90° adapter. In smaller cases, it still needs to come directly out of the MB. But could you add a 90° adapter for us freaks that have huge cases with horrible cord clutter?

Case wiring disconnect. The absolute worst part of having to remove a motherboard is the pain of reconnecting the tiny leads for the power/reset/HDD wiring you find at the bottom corner. Instead of ripping out the dozen leads, give a single plug adapter that you can remove the lot without using a tweezers to reconnect.

Underclocking-Overclocking. This comes from my effort to build a silent HTPC with muscle. I want it to be low power and silent 95% of the time (underclocked for low TDP and low fan speeds), but turned up to 11 when transcoding and crunching serious numbers. Either allow the system to automatically switch profiles based on CPU load, or manually switch to what you want to keep it as. Performance when you need it, but a low electrical bill at the end of the month.

MB power/reset button. Comes in handy, just put in the top or bottom corners away from plugs and sockets.

Wireless, HDMI out, 7.1 audio, and all teh other bells and whistles.
 
Since I coming from a Pro Audio/Video background, I would just love to see a motherboard aimed at the workstation crowd. I don’t think there is enough of those in the world.
There is top companies like Adobe with Photoshop, and Avid with the Pro Tools and Media Composer line that would take advantage of that. The Motherboard would have to be a true workstation class board, with dual 1366 socket (with support from a nice heatsink as well) 16phase, sporting an Intel 5520 IOH and a ICH10R ICH. This board can support up to the Xeon Hexacores with high and stable performance. The board would have to support 12 slots of DDR3 ECC/Non-ECC RAM (Unbuffered or Registered), which can hold at least 48GB of total triple channel system memory, with speeds from 1066 to 1866MHz. It has to have between 6-8 SATA ports, with a couple of ESATAs on the back of the board, and maybe an extra to hook on the front of the case. Obviously you want to get the USB2.0 in there (and maybe a few USB3.0).
This board will also need FireWire, and I would love to see not just FW400, but FW800. FireWire is still highly used and preferred by the Pro market because of the sustained data transfer. It has to have dual PCIe connected dual LAN ports (10/100/1000). That is very important. The Motherboard will also have to have more than just four PCIe Slots. This is one thing the Mac Pro suffers from is the lack of PCIe slots, which they only have four. Have six of them, with all being mechanically x16. The slots would have to have a lot of links, either from putting a second ICH in or using the NVidia NF200 chips (for up to x72 to be shared for each slot). It should be NVidia TESLA Quad Card compatible too, and the top slot have no PCIe in it, since a double wide card will be in it. It would be nice to see these also have user-adjusted links, so I can change slot 5 from being x8 to being x4 or x1. That would be cool to adjust in the BIOS. While we are on the BIOS, why not get away from the PhoenixAward BIOS and go to a UEFI BIOS. It is about time I think we see more EFI BIOS out in the world. With that, maybe have a FailSafe BIOS as well, like Asus have with it’s FailSafe BIOS, and flash it like the EZ-Flash. The EFI BIOS would also have to have great power saving and fan control monitors, and be able to regulate everything to keep the system cool and quiet.
I would like to have no legacy ports either. No PATA, no PS/2, no PCI slots, none of them! Those are history, and we need to use the real estate for other things. The Board will have to run extremely good on Windows 7 64 bit and Linux. And it would be nice if it was Energy Efficient. Most likely to be a EATX (12x13in) Motherboard that is compatible with a lot of cases. The EVGA SR-2 is nice, but not Case friendly. This motherboard will also have to have a rack mount case in mind, since that could be where it will call “home”. The Motherboard will have to be completely stable and have very low latency. That is all I can think of for now.
 
P.S. The Board will also have to have built in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networking on the board itself, that can be user serviceable if there is something that can be upgraded.
 
Goes without saying, Sata 6 usb 3 ddr3
but what I'd like to see functions like Fuzion's graphic card mixing, X mode as well as their cooling "icy chill" although i would would have it without all remove all that integrated crap as well i do not think anybody with a decent motherboard would need it. Make decent boards specifically targeting over clockers and enough power for 6 power cpu. Hopefully oneday revolutionize the cpu it self and perhaps use 2 chipsets, mix chipsets etc. be able to use different chipsets and maybe oneday use more than one.
 
[citation][nom]M-ManLA[/nom] "and the top slot have no PCIe in it, since a double wide card will be in it."[/citation]

Sorry have to correct myself. I meant to say that there should be no slot 6, since the GPU will be in slot 7 will possibly be a Dual Wide GPU like a Quadro 5000.
 
make the Motherboard even smaller possibly double sided, and extend the screws so this can be installed into current cases, on all the area that the ATX takes that will be free, construct elaborate heatpipes, maybe using the case as a heat sink!
 
[citation][nom]M-ManLA[/nom]"Have six of them, with all being mechanically x16. The slots would have to have a lot of links, either from putting a second ICH in or using the NVidia NF200 chips (for up to x72 to be shared for each slot)."[/citation]

Sorry found another typo (I was rushing to meet the deadline), It should be IOH, since the PCIe links, as well as the secound QPI are on the 5520.
 
How about removing useless features and adding more fine tuning controls for overclocking. We need better and smaller steps for voltage controls.

Most of the motherboards that people buy are all used for the same thing in most cases. I have a motherboard by gigabyte and another from MSI and some from foxconn. Some of them have a ton of added features that I have not used and don't plan to ever use because I don't really care about them.

When I buy a motherboard, all I want are the connections I need, a full range of overclocking features and a faster startup (I hate waiting 2-3 seconds for the bios post then another 2-3 seconds for the AHCI)

Make the motherboard boot faster and allow for better overclocking controls and save money by removing the features that people don't use, then lower cost and people will buy your products.
 
Power Connectors at the top right and bottom right so it doesn't matter if your PSU is top or bottom, the cable will be out of the way.

LEDS to indicate power input is with ATX specs with and audible alarm in case your PSU starts to fail.

An onboard embedded CPU (ARM, etc.) even if its just a cheap cell phone chip to run a simple firmware based utility to boot up and test the board and its components, even without a CPU or RAM with a Live OSD that will display temps, voltages, exact current CPU/RAM/etc. speeds, LAN activity and allow you to change OC settings to defaults in case you get too crazy or want to tune speeds up.

Onboard wireless N and Bluetooth

Onboard DDR (NOT FLASH) cache for the hard drive controller. A cheap 256MB ECC chip would be awesome. I think the 64MB they put on todays big drives is too small. The idea would be to get performance more like a dedicated hardware RAID controller without the uneeded SCSI/SAS protocols, CPU and cost.

Onboard hardware remote KVM over IP so I can take control of my PC over the internet, even at the BIOS (no-OS running) level.

 
mobo with darker colers.. no orange pale blue slots/black pcbs
pci 3.0x16..of course more usb 3 and sata 6Gb/s
more full 16x/16x pci instead of 8x/8x
umm what more??
simplify Main connectors to one single cable(pci too)
more pwm
mosfets holes
 
Asrock could buy Creative Sound Blaster division, and put SB X-Fi, with exclusive audio 1GB DDR3 memory, on their mobos 🙂. Include the best DACs and op-amps, and ofcourse release monthly drivers/features updates. Then they could go into pro audio business...........
 
The perfect motherboard, in my opinion, would be:

Mini ITX form factor, six SATA 3 ports, at least 10 USB ports, integrated wireless N and dual gigabit LAN, 4 DDR slots, one PCI-E x16 connector, with bundled PCI-E x16 flexible riser card in order to shift the graphics card 90 degrees and place it elsewhere in the system case for better airflow and cooling. The same solution could be great for a PCI and or PCI-E slot for high quality audio card and/or a DVB tuner, if these cannot be squeezed on a miniITX form factor motherboard.

From the design point of view, i'd move the power connectors on the motherboard to the top and shift them 90 degrees for easier cable management. Also SATA connectors should be placed on the edge and shifted 90 degrees for easier access.

I'd get rid of Firewire, serial and parallel ports.

Also, an embedded operating system such as a small linux with access to local storage could be paramount for recovery purposes. If this embedded OS could also be used as a webserver for remote management, it would be even better.

I've been trying several miniITX boards in order to build my perfect home PC, to serve as a Media Center, Gaming rig and NAS, and such a motherboard could be a perfect candidate. A custom case can be designed and fabricated if the motherboard described above existed
 
i think the simplest and most convenient update would be to have motherboard that accepts a cooler of any socket type. Adding a few more holes around the CPU would be easy and much appreciated. I think people who wanna reuse old water blocks and coolers would like this option a lot.
 
Break the motherboard up into module based components. i.e. module for cpu, module for memory, etc. When you read everyone's responses they want some fantastic motherboard that is infinitely expandable. One way is to modularize the major bits, so that you can plug and play the different modules. i.e. some people may only want two slots memory, and others may want more...
 
Remove the ide from motherboard that space can be used for many different things. For example the board above the ide can be removed and be able to move the 24 pin connector lower and be able to put the 8 pin connector there. It is always a hassle getting the 8 pin connector on the back to reach the other side and connect there, it will be so much better for everyone specially for the ones who take their computer apart to add a new heatsink etc. Also for the pci slots to be swapable, just in case one goes bad or just for the ones who say, "why couldn't they put the pci slot here or there for better ski or crossfire. Implement a good built in sound card on the motherboard so one can get the best quality if either they are a gamer or a musician, have borne coax input and tosli.k.
 
Sorry for mispelled words I was typing this through my phone and it has the auto correct. "Ski" instead of ski, and "have both" insteaad of borne.
 
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