At CES, I Saw MSI's Project Zero X. Could This Be the Future Look of Desktop PCs?

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LAS VEGAS—Desktop computers are full of wires, full stop. That's not going to change anytime soon. But many dedicated PC builders (not to mention boutique-PC build shops) are obsessed with—or make their living at—clean cable routing and keeping the interior of a PC pin-neat. That's especially true these days, when a transparent case side (or two, or three...) is standard issue for most enthusiast desktops you see.

Over the past year, one response to that drive for cable-cleanup aesthetics has been the "reverse connector" motherboard, of which MSI and Asus are today's two leading proponents. These boards aren't, feature-wise, all that different from their ordinary kin. Where they diverge: They have their cable sockets and header connectors—most everything that gets a wire attached to it—on the board's back instead of its front. Paired up with specially designed PC cases that have properly aligned holes for the reverse-side connectors, these motherboards let you connect all of your cables behind the board and, therefore, out of sight.

Asus dubs its reverse-connector solution Back to the Future (BTF), while MSI's is Project Zero. I did a test build of Project Zero in the run-up to 2024's edition of CES, and a colleague test-drove the Asus BTF ecosystem a few months ago in the same way. The solutions are similar, and you just need to match up a reverse-connector board with a case that supports that particular ecosystem to get going. (Some cases support both BTF and Project Zero.)

MSI, though, is escalating the cable-quashing battle, at least in prototype form, with a new initiative it's calling Project Zero X. It follows the same general approach as the original, but it takes on the last cable frontier—the cables sticking out of the rear edge of your PC—and puts them totally out of sight.

90 Degrees Off of Zero

MSI's designer did all this by pivoting the whole concept 90 degrees. The thinking: What if, in a typical tower PC, the wide right-side panel were to be the new "back"? That would let you position a tower up against, say, a wall, with the case's innards visible from three sides, instead of just one or two.

This obviously presents some not-insignificant logistical challenges. The I/O area on your typical motherboard is on its rear edge, and that comprises a lot of ports. The Project Zero X sample build MSI was showing off had repositioned the entire rear-panel I/O onto the broad right side of the case. Plus, the whole face of the motherboard, barring a cutout around the CPU socket, was encased in brushed-metal heat shielding.

Now, whether MSI has built a custom motherboard with all its external I/O on its rear surface, or was feeding the Zero X's back panel via an elaborate set of cabling between the motherboard's "ordinary" I/O area and the case's custom one, MSI wasn't telling. But a clue could be that the three-fan GPU also had its DisplayPort and HDMI connectors back here on the same panel, which would suggest the presence of some cable extenders between the graphics card and the mobo and the I/O on the case's rear panel.

You can't argue with the clean look, though. The only cable we spotted was a short bend of GPU power cable visible along the left edge, where it tucked into the recesses of the case. As noted, the motherboard was covered by a set of board-wide heatsinks that masked the PCB, any identifying marks, the surface-mounted M.2 SSDs, and the like.

MSI wasn't prepared to say which desktop platform it had built this prototype on, but Project Zero X was fired up and lit up, though not connected to any exterior display for a true "proof of life" or check on its components.

The X Future Is Unclear

All that said, this is an intriguing next step in the effort to hide the wires inherent in any PC build. MSI had no further info on whether Project Zero X will ever make it to market as a commercial product. But I would not count it out, or something like it. I was skeptical at first about the staying power of the original BTF and Project Zero—but, hey, here we are with a small-but-healthy selection of hardware for both. And MSI has laid out a rough map of where it could go from here.

About Our Expert

John Burek

Executive Editor and PC Labs Director

My Experience

I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine (and later, its digital counterpart), aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person. I was Computer Shopper's editor in chief for its final nine years, after which much of its digital content was folded into PCMag.com. I also served, briefly, as the editor in chief of the well-known hard-core tech site Tom's Hardware.

During that time, I've built and torn down enough desktop PCs to equip a city block's worth of internet cafes. Under race conditions, I've built PCs from bare-board to bootup in under 5 minutes. I never met a screwdriver I didn't like.

I was also a copy chief and a fact checker early in my career. (Editing and polishing technical content to make it palatable for consumer audiences is my forte.) I also worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of "Dummies"-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I'm a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University's journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

The Technology I Use

I use a lot of computers on rotation in my daily work, but I rely on just a few to get things done. I split my work life mostly between a Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (a 15-inch Ryzen model), paired with a Lenovo ThinkVision portable monitor, and a custom-built big-chassis Windows 10 desktop PC that has served me well for years now. (Specs: Liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, 32GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1080 card.) That's all in a giant chassis with six hard drives and SSDs packing its bays. (As I upgrade systems, I just keep moving the old warhorse drives over.) This behemoth is hooked up to a 32-inch LG monitor.

I also have a bunch of PCs around the house, all custom builds: another one attached to my main TV (for gaming and occasional forays into VR), a mini-PC on the bedroom TV (acting as a media server), and a Mini-ITX desktop in a corner of the living room...just because. I carry around an oversize OnePlus phone, but when I do long-haul travel, a vintage iPod Touch comes along, too, for old times' sake.

I wasn't always a PC guy. I cut my teeth on a cassette-drive-equipped Commodore VIC-20 in the 1980s. But I got serious with Apple desktops in the early 1990s, starting with a Macintosh SE, then a Macintosh LC, and finally one of the short-lived Umax "clone" Macs, before building my first PC and never looking back.

With all my typing and editing work over the years, I've become a huge proponent of thumb trackballs, which minimize wrist action (and my wrist pain). I have a secret cache of the long-discontinued Microsoft Trackball Optical Mouse (my personal favorite), held in an undisclosed location.

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