It's one thing to say that "gaming" is being increasingly associated with "gaudy", "childish" and "immature", but it's quite another to say that computer hardware is becoming any of those things.
Gaming, as the word is commonly used today, is a market that caters to young people. That's not to say that people of all ages don't enjoy playing computer games, but the demographics of games like WoW, League, CS:GO and COD should be a good indicator that you won't find large numbers of 40-year-olds playing.
Older hardware, before video gaming was such an influential force that hardware manufacturers designed the aesthetics of their products with it in mind, looked bland. Remember when CPU heatsinks were just tiny black fin stacks, hanging 90 degrees off a SECC cartridge? Fast forward to today, and you have products like the CM V6GT and V8, but you also have products like the Dark Rock Pro 3 and NH-D15, which have a much more neutral look.
Old motherboards were obviously extremely ugly but didn't have "Super Overclock" and "L33T Gaming" written all over them, nor did they sport toy bullets strapped to the heatsink of the chipset. I suppose it was due to the lack of the "gaming" presence, motivating the designers to go any further than this:
Then, when gaming took hold, it all changed. Suddenly, it was all about appealing to as many gamers as possible, and unfortunately, (subjectively) most of these gamers have very little taste for elegant design. Now, you can find motherboards such as these:
(yes, ACK was my reaction too)
(someone got in deep doodoo with airport security with one of these boards)
But you can also find others that stick to that same air of professionalism. Without going too far, we can safely conclude that Gigabyte's UD lineup (specifically the UD5/UD5H boards) never offend anyone for being too gaudy. From Z77 to Z170, these boards have always shared a common goal: making good use of new tech and new features of the chipset/platform without aggressive designs, dragons and guns.
Plus, that matte black PCB on the UD3H/UD5H/UD7 is always beautiful to behold. I like to think that GB was, until recently when MSI hopped on the boat too, the only large manufacturer to use that matte black coating on the majority of its midrange-high end boards.
So, if anything, hardware design has surprisingly improved in terms of aesthetics, when elegance and professionalism are of particular concern. It's just that you have to look a little harder because "gaming" is such a big thing that the Gaming 9 ACK becomes the posterboy for PC hardware, while the UD5H is relegated to the sidelines both in terms of popularity, desire and revenue. Perhaps the gaming effect is more pronounced with graphics cards, where, for example, a Gaming product might be the only possible SKU for a specific GPU (think MSI's Gaming lineup, and lately Asus as well by ditching DCII for Strix), but EVGA, Zotac (most recently), and Palit have all demonstrated time and time again that it's not hard to stay classy when buying a graphics card.
