I just wonder when they will get rid of all the old technology they stuff on the motherboards these days. Generally the layouts are okay on motherboards but they aren't great. The thoughts I have is general but I will use GA-MA780GM-S2H as an example. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] MA78GM-S2H

IDE: Most use SATA (whichever version) these days, and having it for opticals is redundant, opticals come with sata now too and I would say most of them come with sata. The old cabling is huge and ruins airflow and tidyness inside the case.

Parallel/Serial ports: Those should have died many years ago. USB for the way.

Floppy: I can't recall when I last used a floppydisk but still I have a floppy drive in my pc. Why I even bothered to put it in, is still something I wonder about, but one thing is for sure, I wont put a floppy in my next build.

Chipset coolers: They are usually blocked important slots, preventing the use of longer cards and if they aren't blocking the slots then they have ultra low profile coolers on and gets very hot, so the cards you do put over them will get very hot too. A solution here would be to put them where you most often don't have very long cards, so away from the PCIe X16 and X1 (usually only 1 of these on a mATX board).

They should generally be big and tall so we don't have annoying little 40mm fans that begin to be noisy after 2-3 months of use and so the chipsets doesn't get too hot. Good case flow is expected.

A solution for the southbridge could be a heatpipe up to the northbridge which has more room for a large cooler.

Power connector: The power connecter (24pin) should be placed near the cpu and not down where the floppy power is (on the gigabyte board). and then all the sata slots should be moved up in that area where ide/floppy/power connecter was removed from.

Additional connectors: Many additional connectors are found on motherboards for extra usb or firewire connections should be placed at the bottom so they don't block the lowest pci slots.

Major issues with the gigabyte board are these (and most other boards share these issues):

A. Using a doublewide X16 card will block several of the sata ports (up to 3).
B. Using a X1 soundcard or tvcard will block the northbridge cooler and cause heat issues.

So what can be done to improve things?
Why do we keep this ancient technology that most people hardly ever use?

its hard to remove because most corporate people still use these.... imagine having 100pcs ide on stock.. for more than 200 workstations in your office. its not easy upgrading corporate computers

with multinational offices with billion dollar programs.. even some huge companies still use Windows 2000 as primary OS

Alot of the ide todays boards is emulated through the sata bus. And many boards no longer come with a floppy connector. it's happening but really there is no good reason to rush it, i'm glad they're giving time for everyone to upgrade their parts casually.

IDE: There are still a LOT of IDE drives around. People don't just throw them away and buy SATA. Also, IDE cables do have some advantages. They are flat so they can be easily ran under your motherboard for cleaner cabling. They are also more flexible so they can be folded for better cabling. Also, many people complain that SATA cables don't connect securely to the drives. That's not a problem on IDE. Besides, they are going out, slowly. Most manufacturers only include 1 IDE port anymore. New Dells and HPs have gone exclusively SATA.

Parallel/Serial ports: I agree, not in a gamer's board. However, there are still plenty of commercial/business application for these ports. A lot of equipment still in production use these types of connections. It's too expensive to upgrade everything, so there is still a demand for motherboards with serial/parallel. I don't know what you're complaining about. Look at any of the popular motherboards and you'll see the parallel/serial ports are already gone.

Floppy: HP and Dell no longer ship PCs with floppy drives. Some manufacturers are shipping motherboards without a floppy port. There is still somewhat of a demand in the enthusiast market and floppy drives are often needed to update your BIOS.

Chipset cooler: I think you're not looking very hard. There are plenty of boards out there that don't have the problems you described, and even include the heatpipe on the southbridge. You chose a micro atx board, anyway. Of course the components are going to be crammed on there.

Power connector: A lot of cases now have bottom-mounted power supplies. It would be a bad idea to move the power port to the top. In the middle it's more compatible.

SATA connectors: I agree, they don't always place them in good spots. That's why I typically look for boards which have the right-angle SATA connectors.

I think you just haven't been looking. Check out most enthusiast boards and a lot of these problems have already been addressed. You also have to consider the market each board is targeting.

I recently built a computer for farmer and he needed serial for his computerto plug in his combine computer.

I also recently built 2 office computers that had parallel printers.

A lot of people still used legacy components, recently built one for a client that needed a serial port.

Maybe because counter to your thinking, not everyone is like you .

I just built a new system with e8400 computer and DS3L mobo.

I need the IDE connectors because I choose to install a tape drive for regular backups and don't want to be burning a new disk every day but do want copies to take offsite. They do not make reasonably priced tape drives with SATA connectors for desktops,

I need the parallel port because I still use a great HP 6MP laser printer and prefer not to be forced to purchase a new one when this one works fine.

I still use floppies for quick backup and having mobile copies of serveral work products with relatively small files. They are cheap and convenient.

I am glad not all the vendors are deserting the "old" technology. Its a shame more don't build products to last and then provide support for a longer life - like MS dumping XP support. Forced obsolescence is often not in the consumers best interest.

obviously you havent seen my board , very well layed out and meets most of your requirements.

dunno, I want a small and modern one but most of them seem to include lots of ancient tech on them.

my printers have used usb for years and the newest one which is 2-3 years even support network and wireless.

those few that still need some "legacy" stuff can get that via usb converters thus saving precious pcb space

samuraiblade thats a very nice board and if I was building an extreme gaming rig I would go for something like that, they put a lot of thought into it.

some coling like that could have been possible on a mATK as well, very impressive

I am pondering on a build use for multiple purposes but the plan is to hook it up to a 40" hdtv (blu ray etc.) but also possibly upgrade it to a gaming station, hence the 2slot X16 card which there is room for in this case and the case is small but with quite decent airflow, but I do need that the mobo doesn't create further heat problems by halfhearted cooling solutions

Put simply when demand for "old tech" ends so will "old tech".
The ATX design Specs are the reason for most of the location options of components.
Most factories are setup to make ATX spec boards.
The AT to ATX transition took years, no one uses BTX, and the next great thing will be years in transition too.

Nice of Samuraible to decide that his needs come first and that we should pay for an expensive add-in card rather than have inexpensive components added to the board.

Its also simple economics that it is often cheaper for a manufacturer to make one model with a few components that only some users need than to make severl different models that address only the specific requirements of a smaller group of users. They save on engineering, tooling, longer production runs, and fewer items with smaller numbers to inventory.

Gee, come to think of it they do have boards already set up without the old technology. They just cots more. Is that what you are whining about Samuraible?

p.s you know that a pci-e x1 card doesnt have to go in the x1 slot , my asus xonar is in the bottom most slot on that motherboard which is a x4. it will automatically run it at the speed required.

samuraiblade I know this, but at the board I found with the most interesting chipset for my needs only have 1 and it is located at the top.

I am looking for other makers that use the same chipset but they are all worse then the gigabyte one as none of them come with esata and such

so your looking for an AM2 board thats compact but has AMD 780G Chipset
onboard graphics and 'new tech' on it like esata , pci-e slots and good passive cooling?