I’m 75 and already have the rgb lighting and glass enclosed case. You’ll catch up. But the direction motherboards are taking as far as connections go seems to be undecided. At CES ASUS made a big deal about their ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial where the connections all pointed towards the side sandwiched between the motherboard and a decorative cover. But that seems to be a one-off and all motherboards released after that are the same old design. No new BTF sockets or gpus from ASUS. Sapphire seems to be left to carry the torch with its 2 new PhantomLink motherboards and 1 gpu. Others like MSI with the Project Zero are helping with back connect but no BTF gpu sockets. So I’m worried that these great concepts will just die off.

I have built every PC I have owned, starting with the release of Windows 95. However, I have never been someone who would build a new PC just because a new chipset or CPU generation was released; just when it was obvious things have become much too slow, or in my current PC build to get a board with the TPM 2.0 module to keep Microsoft happy.

After reading your post, for the first time I checked into BTF, looking into the Sapphire GPU and ASUS ROG Crosshair X870 HERO motherboard, which brings me to this conclusion: Regardless of whether one wants to build a new PC for the clean aesthetics or not, I personally believe BTF is by far the best option. Having all the cable connections on the back just makes more sense. The on-board GPU power connector seems to be a much safer way to deliver power.

Sapphire should definitely bring that GPU to the U.S. and the rest of the world. Even though my X670 motherboard will (hopefully) be fine for several more years, I would like to build a new BTF-based PC, maybe even with all the flashy RGB lighting in a glass-enclosed PC, and I’m 70 years old! I guess I’m just a kid at heart!

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if there’s anyone surpassing the Sandisk WD SN8100 in either read or write speed. Bon Voyage!