I’ve just rebuilt my computer for an upcoming review (which includes the Ryzen 7 8700G CPU and the Radeon RX 7800XT GPU). As I made my way through this rebuild, I’ve been blown away by the usefulness of a tiny piece of plastic included with my motherboard. It’s a small PC wire bracket that bundles the most annoying part of the process into one easy slot.
To set the table, I’m currently using the Gigabyte Aorus B650 ICE to review the new AM5 Ryzen chipset . My previous board, the predecessor to this motherboard (the B550M) was built for the AM4 chipset, so it wouldn’t do the job.
If you speak to most PC builders, they’ll tell you that the most tedious part of the whole process is getting the motherboard fully hooked up. As your PC’s central nervous system, it is the focus of most of the wiring, screwing and tinkering required to bring your system together.
Arguably, the most annoying part of this is connecting your front-of-PC wires to the motherboard, as they’re typically housed in tiny, individual copper wires. These often require some pretty good dexterity and can be quite annoying to get right if you have limited space or eyesight.
But this Aorus B650 board came with something that I have absolutely fallen in love with—a small PC wire adaptor that bundles these cables together for easy connection to the motherboard. Gigabyte calls it the ‘G Connector’, and I think it’s brilliant.
What would have been an annoying several minutes of tinkering was suddenly a breeze. It’s such a simple idea that, in my years of PC building, I have never seen anyone come up with before. What’s more, nobody I’ve spoken to has ever seen this kind of thing before either. And, look, maybe that’s because we’re all trying to save money on PC building, and this seems like something might need to be including in your pricing models.
Here’s how Gigabyte describes it on its website, beside a widget that says ‘patent pending’: “The tiny cables of the front panel connectors can be hard to manipulate as space is restricted and indications tiny. With the G Connector, you can connect all the FP cables at once, simplifying the process of building your next PC and saving you some frustrations.”
Now, despite that patent, Gigabyte is not the only company that has done something like this. ASUS has the ‘Q Connector’, which it has sold since the DDR3 days, but the company seems to reserve its PC wire bracket for more expensive models.
I get the logic in reserving this component for pricier boards, but it would be so, so useful if it were available for cheaper models.
Anyway – just showing my appreciation here for an awesome motherboard thing. Good stuff, Gigabyte and ASUS.
Image: Zachariah Kelly/Gizmodo Australia