Any PC builder knows that internal wiring can be a problem. Between power rails, SATA cables, cooling fans, and any number of other parts, you can spend as much time organizing cables and wires as putting together all your parts. Gigabyte has a solution to this problem in the Aorus Project Stealth PC: a system that places each wire in the assembly on the back of the case. This makes the main area optimized for airflow, not to mention stunningly beautiful and completely clean. Gigabyte has partnered with boutique system maker Maingear to bring this radical reimagining of the ATX standard to life.
Gordon Ung was lucky enough to get this design on the PCWorld YouTube channel. In the video, you can see Gigabyte’s painstaking design work: every connection to the motherboard, as well as the power rails for the GPU and case fans, are carefully routed to the back of the motherboard and hidden from view. Even the CMOS battery is mounted on the back.
And it’s a cool trick, but what’s really impressive is that there’s no proprietary technology here. The chassis mount board has extra cutout space, but it still mounts a standard ATX motherboard. The connections on the Project Stealth motherboard itself are neatly positioned so that the power and data connections are soldered on the back instead of the front. Someone with a soldering board and a steady hand could do about the same thing.
Every little back-panel connection and carefully labeled connection is a breeze, and the results speak for themselves. Could we see this kind of ultra-clean design on consumer motherboards and cases in the future? We can, but we hope. Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear, and Kevin Shea, Product Marketing Manager at Gigabyte, recently joined our Full Nerd podcast to discuss how Project Stealth came about and their ambitions for the initiative, including wanting to see other PC hardware makers such as Asus. and MSI supports the new design. You can see the interview in full below:
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