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Why is computer hardware looking more like toys?

Tartaros said:
I have been doing some cleaning today and I found the motherboard of my first custom pc, 13-14 years ago. Its color emphasized what it was: a turd.

Very mature from Asus, indeed :laugh:
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Looks similar to the P4P800 Deluxe mobo that my dad used to run. Asus at the time was still making brown colored products.

Full rig consisted also of a Pentium 4 HT Northwood, 2GB of hynix ram, 160GB hard drives and an MSI GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

All this back when everything was new, components costed around $1600 not accounting for inflation. I live in another country, plus I don't trust the conversion to be accurate because the currency we used is now discontinued.

Edited the post since I mistakenly named the Asus P4P800 Deluxe as a "P4-3000" which probably doesn't exist.
 
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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:

881.jpg

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:

msi-x99s-gaming-9-ack.jpg (yes, ACK was my reaction too) 5295_big.jpg (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.

5765_big.jpg 8094_big.jpg 10115_big.png 20150904094342_big.png

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.
 
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Yeah, some of the new motherboards are going a little over board. Though I like the idea of the RGB lights some are adding if going for looks. Plus, I seen some cases that look nuts. Like the one that looks like a yacht. Heck, there a transforming one as well.

Me I like my new case I got. Can't wait to move my folder into it.
Sweet part, its built to support water cooling.
images


Here a pic of the yacht one shown at CES. Yeah, sure not my cup of tea.
05091354145l.jpg
 
EntropyZ said:
Looks similar to the P4-3000 Deluxe mobo that my dad used to run. Asus at the time was still making brown colored products.

Full rig consisted also of a Pentium 4 HT Northwood, 2GB of hynix ram, 160GB hard drives and an MSI GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

All this back when everything was new, components costed around $1600 not accounting for inflation. I live in another country, plus I don't trust the conversion to be accurate because the currency we used is now discontinued.
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I discarded this motherboard and got a better p4p800-se, it was the same color as this. Seems diarrhea brown color was all the rage back then.
 
train.jpg

And how we could forget the lian li train case.

:roll:
 
ECS has had really weird motherboard colors for quite a while, but their current lineup is considerably more professional.

An old friend had a socket A board from them a while back. I think it was this one.

ecs_n2u400a.jpg


A different friend had, I think some 580x chipset ECS board. He described it "as if someone melted a box of crayons on it".
Just found it. It's an ECS KA3 MVP.

ECSKA3MVP-002.JPG
 
xvi said:
ECS has had really weird motherboard colors for quite a while, but their current lineup is considerably more professional.

An old friend had a socket A board from them a while back. I think it was this one.

A different friend had, I think some 580x chipset ECS board. He described it "as if someone melted a box of crayons on it".
Just found it. It's an ECS KA3 MVP.
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Well, it is true that the looks are much more subdued on their current boards, but it appears that they moved past colours and onto names.

L337 Gaming

GANK

GANK MACHINE

GANK DRONE

GANK DOMINATION

CLAYMORE

BLADE

Z97-Machine_V1_LGA_1150_Intel_Motherboard_1.jpg

:laugh:
 
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Reactions: xvi
Oooohh that heatsink a la RHCP.

Beautiful.
 
erocker said:
They still make hardware that looks like it did 20 years ago
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I think that is due much in part because the ATX Form Factor Standard establishes shapes and sizes for cases, motherboards, and add-on cards. And that's a good thing as it gives consumers 1000s of options - unlike proprietary notebooks with no ATX standard.
EntropyZ said:
I wonder how your Microsoft Keyboard+Mouse combo is doing,
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I don't know who makes the keyboards and mice for Microsoft but I have two 5000 combo sets and I really like them. One is from 2009, the other 2011. Just completely a new build and ordered the 5050 so looking forward to see how they work. They are not gaming keyboards, however - not a problem for me.
 
I do support that some boards look more like storm trooper face masks, but is needed to support that some boards are pretty plain enough to match sober schemes, I do like a lot gigabyte's G-1 Gaming and also Super Overclock force or series, but I have been getting ultra durable series as possible, these boards are extreme excellent ones, and also the built in coolers that support watercooling are not required or were not on my past builds,
Also some other manufacturers like Biostar or Asrock still sober enough, but every single brand has a model to match all people interests, like colored and odd designed boards or plain and sober ones,

also i don’t like that much the old "Blue" colored PCB for most of the old boards, or video cards,

aw9-board.jpg
576_m.jpg
DSC083152.jpg
Box.jpg
gigabyte-9800gx2-front.jpg

Regards,
 
This last year, I finally cleaned out my old store room and took all my old stuff to the electronics recycling center or I could have really given you a blast from the past. My first builds where with AT (not ATX) motherboards, cases and power supplies. No PCIe or AGP, only PCI slots. VGA (analog) graphics only. Only ATA (EIDE) drive interfaces and of course a floppy. And drives in MB, not GB. Serial and parallel I/O (no SATA, no USB), and AT mouse and keyboard ports (the round ones). No integrated sound. No integrated video.

The most noticeable difference with AT over ATX is the power supplies used a cable harness that ran from the PSU to the front panel of the case. At the end of the harness was the power button that mounted to the case.
 
We can always trust in the japanese for their contribution for this cause.

183muhglvbebejpg.jpg


 
Bill_Bright said:
This last year, I finally cleaned out my old store room and took all my old stuff to the electronics recycling center or I could have really given you a blast from the past. My first builds where with AT (not ATX) motherboards, cases and power supplies. No PCIe or AGP, only PCI slots. VGA (analog) graphics only. Only ATA (EIDE) drive interfaces and of course a floppy. And drives in MB, not GB. Serial and parallel I/O (no SATA, no USB), and AT mouse and keyboard ports (the round ones). No integrated sound. No integrated video.

The most noticeable difference with AT over ATX is the power supplies used a cable harness that ran from the PSU to the front panel of the case. At the end of the harness was the power button that mounted to the case.
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Motherboard_Baby_AT.jpg
 
The super colorful boards of ~2005-~2009 were usually going for easy assembly. They color coded different things on the board.

I don't really care what the board looks like, but I don't want heatsinks that look like guns and bullets. The huge plastic shielding thing going on now, with euro-club styling or armor/whatever, is also a turn off...
 
I had to google and find out what motherboards resemble a euro disco. Sounded far fetched...

Gigabyte UP4 / UD4 ...article is unclear

Need to watch the video in article. I can see the euro disco comment now. Not sure why you'd want your I/O shield doing that since it's the back of your computer but whatevs.
 
MustSeeMelons said:
Can't agree with you here, my old MSI 9600GT looks much more silly than my current MSI GTX 970.
msi_n9600gt_t2d1g.jpg

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Although, it still looks like a toy, but much more matured.
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I have the same 9600gt.
 
I like a professional look and nowadays you can get a motherboard with just about any color scheme (no accounting for weird designs,) so for me, I saw something like the Big Bang MSI board and thought it looked beyond stupid for what I would consider a professional tool (I'm software engineer,) whereas my P9X79 Deluxe is what I would consider a very clean and efficient board. For a motherboard that is 4 years old, it's still (in my opinion,) a very clean looking motherboard minus a little bit of branding in the only free spaces on the PCB.

Either way, I think it depends on what you're looking for. I don't consider my machine a toy so, I prefer that it doesn't look like one but, I'm not everyone.
110a.jpg
 
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