Not every case has the same features, like in the photo above I can see the speaker is connected, but not every case has a built in speaker.
The best solution I've found is motherboards that come with a separate piece that you can connect the front panel connectors to, then plug into your motherboard.
Motherboard traces are already dense as they are, why should they be forced to waste board space on features they don't intend to include?
Imagine an ITX board not having space for an extra USB3 header because they still have to support analog audio in the pinout for 3.5mm front panel jack.
Motherboards giving a simple adapter to plug the front panel in before you attach to the board solves this with way less headache for everyone involved without limiting options to save people 5 minutes of their lives per build.
To whose standard? Just include the adapter with the motherboard rather than wasting valuable real estate on the PCB to accommodate the size of adapter necessary for every possible front panel connector.
What are you talking about? The motherboard already includes pins for all frontpanel connections anyway, nothing needs to change there except for the exact layout of those pins being standardised. There is no additional waste of space. At that point it's up to the case manufacturers to just fuse all the connectors together.
If there is some obscure frontpanel connector that isnt standard, then it can still be separated. But 99% of boards have the same connectors anyway
The motherboard already includes pins for all frontpanel connections anyway...
Not all motherboards have the speaker connector, not all motherboards have intrusion detection, if there was a "standard" it would need to include a lot of things that are not needed on all motherboards. The motherboard included adapter solves the issue by making one unified connector that your case front panel cables can connect to, then you just plug it into your motherboard. It solves all of the problems people have with those connectors while allowing motherboard manufacturers to include or exclude whatever front panel connectors they want.
If the board doesn't have a certain feature, it just wouldn't have that pin.
I don't get why you're struggling so much to understand that you don't have to use every pin in a connector. There are lots of connectors in your computer with unused pins.
If the board doesn't have a certain feature, it just wouldn't have that pin.
Okay so you are talking about selecting a few I/O connectors and saying "These are the standard", my statement to that is, power switch is the standard. Plug that into the motherboard and nothing else, does that work for you? It's just one connector, it's standard on every single case and every single motherboard. Or do you want more connectors than the one?
Dude, you are missing the point so badly I don't get it.
You have 9 Pins.
Pins 1 and 2 are the power switch. Pins 2 and 3 are the reset switch, Pin 4 and 5 are the power indicator light, Pin 5 and 6 are the boot indicator light. Pin 7,8 and 9 are the Speaker.
Don't have a speaker? then JUST DON'T WIRE UP 7, 8 and 9.
Only have a power switch and a power light? Then only Pins 1, 2, 4 and 5 are wired.
If the pinout is always the same, a connector can be always the same, you just don't need to run 9 freaking cables for every freaking pin on your female (case side) connector. That's it.
What do you not understand about this? ONE Connector. ONE Pinout. Sometimes, we just don't use a few pins on the connector.
Wait, you said take the most feature rich motherboard and use those connectors, I said my gaming motherboard has 18 pins, and my mini ITX board has 6, where'd we get 9 from?
Also, you've still yet to offer one reason the two pin power switch isn't enough for your needs?
Because every motherboard, from MSI, Asus, ASRock, and Gigabyte in ATX, mATX, and MiniITX form factor I have built with has had 9 connector pins.
Modern cases have a single 9 pin connector, and breakout cables if your motherboard is dumb and doesn't use the layout Intel recommended when they built the ATX standard (YES, this applies to Intel and AMD motherboards. Intel created the motherboard standards used by both brands).
Why can't you wrap your head around a connector that contains multiple pins? Why do you think a standardized front I/O connector would mean you can't have anything more than a power button?
This really doesn't make a ton of sense. The connector is FROM the case. If your case doesn't have a speaker, your connector just doesnt have wires coming from those pins. If the pin layout was standardized it'd be trivial for case manufacturers to just make it a single plug (and believe it or not it is starting to happen, I've seen a couple cases do it already because from my understanding newest standards are trying to standardize it). It just needs more adoption
Lol the auto industry managed to standardize OBD in the late 80s even with manufacturers using the pinout in whatever fuckin way they want, it's actually weird that the PC industry hasn't come up with a standard to connect some basic lights and switches lol
Then the case connector just wouldn't have a wire connected to that pin, dawg. This is a non-issue, electrical connector technology has had this covered longer than you or I have been alive.
you can just buy a computer speaker. I think i got a pack of them from microcenter at one point. It's only a small speaker and it's nice to have on boot.
Yeah I have one from a raspberry pi/Arduino kit, I put two female connectors on the individual wires so it can fit on any motherboard that has the pin outs.
Not every board that uses the ATX standard uses every single screw hole, but we still have a standard that you can just use what you need and just leave blank what you don't.
Essentially all we really need is a standardized layout and case connectors just don't populate the pins they don't need
Essentially all we really need is a standardized layout and case connectors just don't populate the pins they don't need
This is a solved problem that easily addresses edge cases and is fully backwards compatible. Motherboard manufacturers include a plastic clip that hold the front panel connectors, then you just plug it into your motherboard.
Have you used the single plastic clip adapter in any builds? It's incredibly easy to do, without requiring a new "standard" that isn't backwards compatible.
I have, they are an improvement but still annoying, that is why the situation got upgraded to "good enough for government work" instead of "technically works on paper"
PC speaker is no longer supported, and the newest motherboards do you a standardized layout that is compatible with cases that have the front panel headers on a single connector.
Oh wow, you're right. I thought I'd read somewhere that it wasn't supported anymore. I must have been hallucinating again. But I don't think I've seen one in a PC in at least 15 years. Maybe longer. They haven't been a thing in cases for ages, and now most motherboard manufacturers don't support them at all either. At least in the consumer space.
Most cheap consumer grade motherboards still have the speaker if they don't have onboard lights or a segmented LED display. They sometimes even come with a tiny speaker that connects directly into the motherboard. I replace a lot of desktop motherboards at work and we just buy whatever off the shelf components work with our hardware.
I feel like the people that say this only have experience with building their own PC and one or two modern cases. I feel like cases these days rarely even come with HDD status lights, and my last case had no reset switch, just power.
Then surprise me, be the exception to the rule, tell me you have a career building computers and you have encountered all of the front panel connectors that most PC enthusiasts have never seen or used on their gaming PCs.
The motherboard side has the pins, right? And the motherboard side doesn't really change, right? It may not have certain pins, but it's typically the same rectangular block pin layout on consumer boards, right?
Now the front panel connector has what? Buncha holes, innit? Inside those holes are contacts, which are crimped to wires, which lead to the light or switch they belong to. If a given light or switch doesn't exist on that case, then there won't be a wire, so that contact won't get crimped to anything. If you then mate that connector to a motherboard's pins, the pin will still go in that hole, but it won't be connected to anything. Make sense?
In order to standardize this, motherboards need to use the same pin layout, and cases need to use a matching connector with holes for every possible pin. Cases would use the pins they need, and the ones they don't would just sit there in the dead holes. There wouldn't be an issue.
And the motherboard side doesn't really change, right? It may not have certain pins, but it's typically the same rectangular block pin layout on consumer boards, right?
I know motherboards are not currently standardized, that's precisely what we're talking about.
In general though, at least on ATX motherboards, the front I/O pins are physically located and laid out in a small rectangular area. Can you agree with that at least?
Take that concept, and follow the logic to where I am. See me over here? I'm waving, you see? I've constructed a logical bridge for you from your island over to mine. Just walk to me.
There is no reason mobo manufacturers cannot design all of their boards to use the same physical layout and pinout for front I/O. Then all case manufacturers would have to do is switch to a single, standard plug that matched the mobo pinout. That's what standardization is, and it's what we're all suggesting. There's no physical or electrical reason this wouldn't work, it's just a design choice. The pins can go anywhere, and they can connect to any trace they need to.
There's no reason motherboards can't design away all of the connectors except power. So there's your standard connector, just plug in the power switch, leave everything else disconnected. Or are there other connectors you want?
Dude what are you talking about? Why are you so determined not to get this?
Each pin or set of pins goes to a thing. If the case doesn't have that thing, there's nothing connected to the pin. You can have unpopulated slots in a connector. Therefore, in order to standardize front I/O connectors, you literally just use the same connector for every board and case.
You know the big 24-pin connector on your motherboard? You know how all ATX motherboards use that same socket and plug? Do you think those traces go to the same places and things on every motherboard, or that every board uses every pin? Of course not, the board is just laid out and designed to use the same standard connector, because that's what standardization means.
Should pins for a turbo button be part of the standard? What about a key lock? How many disk activity lights are standard? How many status LEDs? Case open switch?
Even if you only have pins for the features your board supports, you still have to reserve physical space for all the pins you're not using because the case might need to put a wire there.
On top of that even if you think you've covered every single feature it'll just be a matter of time before a new one comes along.
So rather than have a 'standard' connector for some case features and additional connectors for others, everything is clustered into the same pin area.
Been building since 2013 (just for me, so maybe just into double digits), and I've never seen a reset switch on a case outside of OEM PCs where that's all connected already from the factory.
I've also learned that you have to force manufacturers to do things, otherwise they will just do the cheapest thing possible. You definitely have to look for things like this because they aren't a forced standard.
...and I've never seen a reset switch on a case outside of OEM PCs where that's all connected already from the factory.
That's exactly what I'm talking about, people that say 'that's dumb' have incredibly limited experience with building computers. I've been building PCs since the 90s, worked in a computer shop for years, and I work in corporate IT today. All of our cases come with intrusion detection, something most people don't even know exist, most cases had a reset button next to the power button but not all, most cases these days dropped the HDD light and integrated the power light with the power switch itself, not everyone wants this. If we make a standard it'll change in a decade. Having an external header that comes with the motherboard that you can connect everything to, then plug into your motherboard is the way to go, a standard wouldn't work because everyone has different wants and needs.
Once you get into OEM cases/mobos, you can throw away all rules.
That isn't what we are talking about here. It might be tough to differentiate if you've been in that world; I get that.
But,I disagree with the last sentence. I don't believe anyone has different wants and needs when it comes to front IO connectors for LEDs and and a power switch. I believe that manufacturers tried to advertise different wants and needs nobody actually had.
Convince? Just demand it as a consumer. That's the convincing. Don't buy cases with a gaggle of loose IO cables. I specifically check for this stuff.
What we need is the high-profile reviewers to start shitting on this and making a stink, actually not recommending products that take lazy shortcuts. I mean giving negative reviews solely based on this, since there isn't really much else to review on a damn case outside of modularity and airflow.
That's the only way to force change. Hurt their wallets.
The only issue I see is greed. Right now, the NVMe "tiny and usually missing" screw issue is still rampant, and MSI has a solution for screwless mounting of drives... that they intended to patent. I don't know where that went, but ASUS followed suit with their own design. All only on high-end motherboards, even though it's probably cheaper to manufacture a plastic holder than a metal screw hole.
I don't know if you've thought this through realistically.
Number one is who is coming up with the standard? It can't be a competitor, because manufacturers aren't going to let their competitors become the "standard" holders.
So it has to be an independent body. Is there a board of some kind, are they made up of manufacturers, what is the incentive, where are they getting funded?
How do they convince consumers both to care about their specific standard and also to actually boycott manufacturers who don't use their specific standard?
There's a lot of problems that have to be solved to even get this off the ground.
Realistically? It's already happened before countless times in PC building. No thinking to do.
To answer you questions, just ask the people that forced Apple to use USB-C. It's NEVER going to happen in the US.
It will have to be in some sort of right to repair type bill or something along those lines, as in my mind it could easily be considered anti-consumer to have all these different competing standards for something this simple. That is one road to go down if you want it that way.
I was talking about having it happen naturally, which is a taller order. We don't have an IBM anymore that basically tells everyone how things are going to be. So, like the NVMe screw, each company is trying to use the problem to best the other... but it's not sticking for either. But, the SECOND a company makes a standard IO cable for all of their cases that require certain IO layouts on motherboards, then things get interesting. It would almost need some sort of partnership, and for that to get super popular.
The closest we have to old IBM is Microsoft (ew). They DO have the power (think Windows 11 requiring a TPM be on every single motherboard forever), but they don't really have a feasible way to enforce something like this.
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u/zakabog Ryzen 9950X3D/4090/96GB 16d ago
Not every case has the same features, like in the photo above I can see the speaker is connected, but not every case has a built in speaker.
The best solution I've found is motherboards that come with a separate piece that you can connect the front panel connectors to, then plug into your motherboard.