When carried out appropriately and with persistence, cable administration is usually a rewarding expertise; for probably the most half, it is irritating, particularly for premium programs. A lot of the onus has been on chassis producers to make the most of the house supplied to offer ample room for cable administration. ASUS appears to go the opposite manner and has introduced a motherboard with the first energy connectors and headers on the rear, the TUF Gaming B760M-BTF WIFI D4. Like MSI’s Undertaking Zero and GIGABYTE’s Undertaking Stealth, ASUS calls its new sequence Again to ‘the’ Future, or BTF for brief, to differentiate them from the remainder of its alphabet spaghetti-named line-ups.
Extra on the value-oriented aspect of the fence than their extra premium fashions, ASUS has taken one in all its pre-existing motherboards (TUF Gaming B760M-PLUS WIFI) and engineered it in order that the facility headers and first connectors resembling SATA, fan headers, and entrance panel USB headers are positioned on the rear. Based mostly on the B760 chipset for Intel’s twelfth Gen and eleventh Gen Core sequence processors, the ASUS TUF Gaming B760M-BTF is a micro-ATX providing and represents ASUS’s TUF Gaming sequence. Because it’s consultant of an entry-level mannequin, ASUS has opted for DDR4 assist, as Intel’s Alder Lake (eleventh Gen) and Raptor Lake (twelfth Gen) each assist DDR5 and DDR4.
Concerning the core particulars, the entrance of the ASUS TUF Gaming B760M-BTF WIFI D4 appears like every typical motherboard sans the connectors on the rear. It has a black PCB with gray highlights and packs an entry-level to mid-range characteristic set. ASUS consists of 4 reminiscence slots with assist for as much as DDR4-5333 with a most capability of 128 GB. As a WIFI mannequin, it comes with a WIFI 6 wi-fi interface, an unspecified Realtek 2.5 GbE controller, and an unspecified HD audio codec. Nonetheless, ASUS hasn’t offered specifics on these as of but. ASUS additionally consists of two M.2 connectors on the entrance with heatsinks, which might assist PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives.
Trying on the rear of the board, that is the place all of ASUS’s new Again to the Future implementations come into play. All related connectors are in the identical locations as they’d be on the entrance, however they’ve simply been reverse-engineered to protrude out the rear of the case. This consists of the 24-pin ATX motherboard, one 8-pin 12 V, and one 4-pin 12 V CPU energy enter, 4 SATA ports, entrance panel USB headers, and eight 4-pin fan headers. There may be additionally a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot on the rear, though this does not include a heatsink, so if an NVMe drive goes for use, it will doubtless require a low-profile aftermarket heatsink.
ASUS does embody assist for USB 3.2 G2x2 on the rear panel by one port, with a further two USB 3.2 G2 ports (1 x TypeA and C), with two USB 3.2 G1 Sort-A and one USB 3.2 G1 Sort-C; this implies the rear panel has three USB Sort-C ports. ASUS additionally consists of 4 USB 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort, one HDMI output, three 3.5 mm audio outputs, and a transparent CMOS button.
Regardless of the obvious advantages of lowering cable litter in the primary compartment of a system’s chassis, an present chassis will doubtless want some type of modification to comprehend its potential totally. That is obvious because the 24-pin motherboard and 12 V CPU energy inputs come out of the board and aren’t at a proper angle as we have seen on some boards from different distributors. There may be additionally the probability {that a} new chassis constructed round this idea will come to market within the coming months. Possibly ASUS has jumped right into a DeLorean, time-warped into the long run, noticed what chassis designs are coming to market, and determined to leap the gun; who is aware of?
On the time of writing, ASUS hasn’t indicated the board’s pricing or when the TUF Gaming B760M-BTF WIFI D4 is anticipated to hit retail cabinets. ASUS additionally hasn’t introduced whether or not or not its Again to The Future (BTF) rear-mounted connector design will likely be featured in different mannequin strains as we go additional into 2023.
Supply: ASUS