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There was a rep from Asrock here on the forums - asrock-system - I talked with him directly for some time before the launch of Sentry 2.0, but for the questions about this specific feature of the boards when they came out I never got any response. I would assume that we're either too small for them to care about us at this point, or I asked something that they are not allowed to talk about on the outside at all.Putting on a tinfoil hat I would say that IF they actually cooperated with Valve to make those 300 steam machine prototypes because their boards where in those, then maybe it's not a coincidence that this kind of board appears around the time steam deck is in development - maybe they have something waiting for valve to make the move. Or maybe it's just something different that optimising the board this way saves them a lot of money or allows for whatever else, and they won't talk about it.Either way, the problem is that this feature is not a standard, and I think it actually should be, but it's not going to happen without a proof of strength in numbers that people would want this, and effectively this is either about showing that we or someone else would start selling something using this feature in significant volume, or community comes up with a way to ask for improvements in ITX form factor spec with proof of numbers like using one of the petition platforms and gaining significant number of signatures for a list of requested spec improvements. The problem is that getting there needs some level of professional approach and getting some youtubers/influencers on board to have reasonable amount of people willing to sign something, because most of the people don't understand such complex problems and assume you're a crazy person wanting to throw your ideas at professionals (Homer Simpson car design case) until that's a won battle and they want to be a part of it.
There was a rep from Asrock here on the forums - asrock-system - I talked with him directly for some time before the launch of Sentry 2.0, but for the questions about this specific feature of the boards when they came out I never got any response. I would assume that we're either too small for them to care about us at this point, or I asked something that they are not allowed to talk about on the outside at all.
Putting on a tinfoil hat I would say that IF they actually cooperated with Valve to make those 300 steam machine prototypes because their boards where in those, then maybe it's not a coincidence that this kind of board appears around the time steam deck is in development - maybe they have something waiting for valve to make the move. Or maybe it's just something different that optimising the board this way saves them a lot of money or allows for whatever else, and they won't talk about it.
Either way, the problem is that this feature is not a standard, and I think it actually should be, but it's not going to happen without a proof of strength in numbers that people would want this, and effectively this is either about showing that we or someone else would start selling something using this feature in significant volume, or community comes up with a way to ask for improvements in ITX form factor spec with proof of numbers like using one of the petition platforms and gaining significant number of signatures for a list of requested spec improvements. The problem is that getting there needs some level of professional approach and getting some youtubers/influencers on board to have reasonable amount of people willing to sign something, because most of the people don't understand such complex problems and assume you're a crazy person wanting to throw your ideas at professionals (Homer Simpson car design case) until that's a won battle and they want to be a part of it.
