Cable management can be a faff and sometimes I just wish that we could make the cables invisible, unfortunately, wireless electricity is not something we’ll be seeing any time soon but ASUS has the next best thing for it.
ASUS TUF-Gaming B760M-BTF WiFi D4
Asus has revealed a new motherboard the TUF B760M-BTF Wifi D4. This new micro-atx motherboard from ASUS features a design which takes all the power connectors and headers to be out of sight on the rear of the motherboard. This unique design is perfect for those who wish to hide their cables completely and allow their primary components to stand out without clutter in a clean minimalist build.
The Specs
The Asus TUF B760M-BTF on its front is a standard motherboard and is the exact same as the ASUS TUF B760M but on the rear is all the cable connections including the ATX 24 pin, CPU power, USB cables, SATA cables literally any motherboard connector that has a wire is hidden behind here. The board features 12+1 DrMOS power stages, 4 x DDR4 DIMMs supporting up to 128GB with a max speed of 5333MHz. The board has support for up to 3 M.2s with 2 Gen 4 slots on the front and another Gen 4 slot on the rear as well as 4 SATA ports also on the rear. The top PCIe slot is PCIe 5.0 x16 and also features a PCIe 4.0 x1 slot and under that a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot.
IO Support
For Front IO the board features 1 connector for USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C, 1 x USB 3.2 gen 1 header, 2 front usb 2.0 headers and a thunderbolt header. The Rear IO of the board features both HDMI and Display Port connectors alongside a clear CMOS button. For USB the board features 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 3 USB gen 2 Type-C ports one of which is 2×2 and finally one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Port. The board supports 2.5GB Ethernet as well as WiFi 6 and comes with an included antenna.
Practical Design, Not So Practical in Practice
This idea is good on paper and ASUS previously attempted it last year as shown in this BilliBilli leak. This project has also even been done by Gigabyte previously with project stealth but this hidden cables design has a glaring problem. The problem with this is that it requires a specific case that supports having the cables connected through the back of the motherboard which is why the Gigabyte project stealth was a prebuilt with dedicated case and graphics card limiting some of your customisation options. On the product page Asus states “This motherboard is compatible with specific case models.” but I can’t seem to find any examples listed on the page.
I’d be interested to see a build using this but doubt we will be seeing one over here anytime soon as Asus has supposedly stated after being contacted by ExtremeTech that the board will only be available in China.
For this to work, we need a PC ecosystem that supports this form factor but that won’t just appear out of thin air. If you would like to learn more you can view the product page for the Asus TUF B760 BTF here. Do you think this will catch on? Let us know in the comments.
