Maingear's Innovative MG-RC Cable Management Tech Is Coming To Clean Up Your PC
Maingear is joining the push for desktops with cables hidden behind the motherboard, but the company isn't content with simply formulating its own designs. Instead, Maingear is aiming for standardizing rear cable connections for the desktop market, and it's joining forces with MSI and Phanteks to make this a reality. Maingear calls its rear-side connector technology "Maingear Rear Connection," or MG-RC for short. The first fruits of this partnership are the inaugural two members of the Maingear Zero lineup, which build on top of MSI's Project Zero motherboards that came out earlier this year.
Today, we plug in power cables, fan cables, data cables, and basically everything else into the front side of motherboards. Considering this is also where components like CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and more need to go as well, there's not a ton of room to go around. The idea behind MG-RC is pretty simple: move all those cables to the back side of the motherboard to make cable management easier and the front side of motherboards more attractive.
Putting those connectors on the back of a motherboard sounds like a pretty simple task, and you wouldn't be wrong. In theory, all companies need to do is move plugs to the back of the board and make sure there aren't any clearance issues with cases. However, the real challenge is uniting all hardware manufacturers into a standard way to do this. Just like with standardizing form factors such as ATX and ITX, both motherboard and case manufacturers will need to agree on what this standard is going to look like, and this Maingear-MSI-Phanteks alliance is trying to be the driving force behind standardizing rear-side cables.
MG-RC actually isn't all that new, or at least the broad strokes of it aren't. In 2011, Maingear patented putting cables on the back of a motherboard inside a desktop PC, which became very relevant when Gigabyte attempted to make desktops that used the same concept. However, Maingear didn't simply hold onto its patent and block Gigabyte, instead teaming up with Gigabyte to make Project Stealth a reality. MSI collaborated with Maingear on Project Zero as well, and the end goal for Maingear all along has been to get this technology out into the wider market.
The Maingear Zero lineup features two desktops: the Maingear Zero and the Maingear NV9: Zero Concept. The stars of the Zero are MSI's B760M Project Zero motherboard and the MAG Pano M1000 PZ White case, which host lots of RGB and NVIDIA's brand-new RTX 4070 Ti Super. The NV9: Zero Concept similarly uses MSI's Z790 Project Zero motherboard alongside Phanteks' NV9 chassis, and will come with Intel's Core i9-14900K cooled by Phanteks' 420mm Glacier One liquid cooler and NVIDIA's RTX 4080 Super. An LCD display is also installed into the NV9: Zero Concept.
The Zero launches on January 24 but will be a limited release, with supplies expected to last for two weeks or less. Meanwhile, the NV9: Zero Concept will arrive sometime in the first quarter of the year, and will not have limited availability.
Today, we plug in power cables, fan cables, data cables, and basically everything else into the front side of motherboards. Considering this is also where components like CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and more need to go as well, there's not a ton of room to go around. The idea behind MG-RC is pretty simple: move all those cables to the back side of the motherboard to make cable management easier and the front side of motherboards more attractive.
Putting those connectors on the back of a motherboard sounds like a pretty simple task, and you wouldn't be wrong. In theory, all companies need to do is move plugs to the back of the board and make sure there aren't any clearance issues with cases. However, the real challenge is uniting all hardware manufacturers into a standard way to do this. Just like with standardizing form factors such as ATX and ITX, both motherboard and case manufacturers will need to agree on what this standard is going to look like, and this Maingear-MSI-Phanteks alliance is trying to be the driving force behind standardizing rear-side cables.
MG-RC actually isn't all that new, or at least the broad strokes of it aren't. In 2011, Maingear patented putting cables on the back of a motherboard inside a desktop PC, which became very relevant when Gigabyte attempted to make desktops that used the same concept. However, Maingear didn't simply hold onto its patent and block Gigabyte, instead teaming up with Gigabyte to make Project Stealth a reality. MSI collaborated with Maingear on Project Zero as well, and the end goal for Maingear all along has been to get this technology out into the wider market.
The Maingear Zero lineup features two desktops: the Maingear Zero and the Maingear NV9: Zero Concept. The stars of the Zero are MSI's B760M Project Zero motherboard and the MAG Pano M1000 PZ White case, which host lots of RGB and NVIDIA's brand-new RTX 4070 Ti Super. The NV9: Zero Concept similarly uses MSI's Z790 Project Zero motherboard alongside Phanteks' NV9 chassis, and will come with Intel's Core i9-14900K cooled by Phanteks' 420mm Glacier One liquid cooler and NVIDIA's RTX 4080 Super. An LCD display is also installed into the NV9: Zero Concept.
The Zero launches on January 24 but will be a limited release, with supplies expected to last for two weeks or less. Meanwhile, the NV9: Zero Concept will arrive sometime in the first quarter of the year, and will not have limited availability.
