Comment by RachelF
1 day ago
Yeah, everything being black on modern motherboards might look cool with RGB lighting, but makes it harder to work on. I like the older green PCBs with white PCI slots.
I also lament the demise of color coded connectors at the back. I knew to plug my speakers into the green 3.5mm jack. Now everything is black, so I need to look at the manual again to see which of the 5 connectors is the right one.
I remember being a kid when standardized port colors came 'round (what was that, part of the AC'97 spec or something?). I thought that was dumb: I knew that the speakers plugged into the third hole from the top, and that was good enough for me. ;)
Back then: I would have loved black-on-black, labelled-in-black, with black cables and and black highlights on a black background. The accessories would be black, too: Black keyboard, black featureless keycaps, black mouse, with a black mousepad, on a black desk, in a black room with black walls and black windows.
Black.
I couldn't get black back then, of course. Computers were beige. The necessary floppy and optical drives were beige. Cables were beige. Keyboards were beige. Motherboards were some moral equivalent to beige. It might be possible to get one or two components in black at some points, but the rest were going to be beige so therefore the whole thing might as well just be resolutely beige.
That really annoyed me.
But I'm not a kid anymore; I'm old. I just want stuff that works well, and that is expandable enough to do some fun and unusual computing stuff with, and that I can see so that when I'm futzing around with it then my job is easier than it would otherwise be.
I don't want RGB or a tempered glass aquarium that shatters when part of it touches a tile floor the wrong way. I don't care about having multiple choices for the color of the anodizing on the heatsinks for the RAM. I don't want water cooling when a big slow-moving fan and some heat pipes does the job very quietly, with improved simplicity therefore longevity. I'm not trying to win a cooling benchmark; I'm just trying to keep the CPU within its specified thermal range while it does work for long periods at its maximum speed. I don't care what color the fans are as long as I can't hear them.
If I want to play with RGB by making or buying some party lights, then I know how to do that. Party lights for the room (or the whole house!), not the guts of the PC. :)
Otherwise: The computer is on the floor under the desk and the USB hub is on top of the desk, and that's all I need to deal with. It is purposeful and functional. There's no style points here, but I just don't care about that anymore.
(I'll be outside yelling at clouds if anyone needs me for anything.)
Agreed. My computing philosophy: If you aren't looking at the display, you're computing wrong.
I have a black case (some 10+ year old Fractal Design model) and an all black keyboard with no labels. Back in the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to score a videocard that happens to be light up RGB unicorn poop. I hate that part about it, so that helps remind me to keep the side panel of the case on. (I could, but I'd rather not disassemble it to unplug the LEDs.)
Actual CPU progress stopped so it's become a color and light show.
Maybe progress in terms of pure GHz measures or similar, but new and better CPUs are still being released, even outside of Apple. The CPU I'm on right now (AMD) was released in Q3 2025, and almost every CPU released today offers better value for the money than the previous generations.
> everything being black on modern motherboards might look cool with RGB lighting
I always figured white would look better for RGB-lit computers. I don't know why white is so rare.
Commonly, white finishes don't age well. That's at least part of the historical reason.
So they can upsell you a white version for €30-€300 more. (Looking at you Sapphire.)