Bendable motherboards?

isegwayisegway
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Ok... IMO PCs are difficult to radically modify because of the shape of the board... lets say I wanted to take the new G5 and some how work it into a much smaller case... like a cube type case... I can't do it because of the shape of the G5's motherboard.



My question... is it possible you could melt a motherboard and bend it and fold it in such a way as to make it more compact? Or would you melt and burn vital components? Most likely yes... but I just wanted to see if maybe someone out there had done it or heard of such a thing.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    The solder would melt long before the board itself does. It would have to be designed in one shape or another. Being curved generally makes it difficult to install flat things like IDE buses, processors, and PCI slots, so that's why they're all flat. I do believe the Cube had a motherboard with at least one 90° angle on it, maybe four... wasn't the Cube's motherboard actually folded around the outside of the internal case?
  • Reply 2 of 10
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    It's not possible with any modern motherboards. The materials are not supposed to melt or bend without damage. However, with different materials it might be possible. The question is, will there be such a case design for the sake of which engineers will want to make bendable motherboards?
  • Reply 3 of 10
    isegwayisegway Posts: 133member
    Quote:

    The question is, will there be such a case design for the sake of which engineers will want to make bendable motherboards?



    I just wonder why they design the boards in such a way that they can't be reconfigured. They are all on one big flat board.. why is that?



    Why not use many smaller boards that are connected more flexibly?



    I guess it is just frustrating.. motherboards make it so limited what you can do when modifying a pc.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    I just wonder why they design the boards in such a way that they can't be reconfigured. They are all on one big flat board.. why is that?



    Why not use many smaller boards that are connected more flexibly?



    Because you will have to connect them. Many components are currently connected hard because of electric issues, signal/noise ratios, etc., which greatly influence boards' reliability and components' speed. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice either. Then again, when there's a need, there's a will. If the day comes, this may all change.
  • Reply 5 of 10
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    You could try to cut the board in a strategic place, and resolder all the connections back together, but then you'll run into the noise/strength issues that costique points out.



    It may be difficult to find such a place to cut the board, too, given today's complex motherboards.... you could need to solder thousands of times.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    isegwayisegway Posts: 133member
    Quote:

    electric issues, signal/noise ratios, etc.,



    What would the effects of this be?
  • Reply 7 of 10
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    What would the effects of this be?



    Whenever you have an AC current, electro-magnetic waves are created. This can, in turn, generate a current on other wires that aren't properly insulated. This is the premise for radio antennas... they pick up all the free electromagnetic waves and filter out all but a certain frequency... the channel you want to watch/listen to.



    So, if you have a bunch of small wires soldered on a board, they would immediately become mini-antennas and mini-transmitters, creating both a slight loss of power and a slight gain in noise.



    Additionally, each solder would take a bit of energy to 'jump' across. You would get a little loss here, and if you don't have good enough wires, you could create a fire hazard. Additionally, if the wires are too long, you could have significant signal loss since some protocols are only made to go a certain limited distance.



    [/Intro to Physics 101]



    I would imagine this could have all sorts of implications, including data failures, kernel panics, fried chips, fried mobos, bad read/writes, and who knows what else.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    isegwayisegway Posts: 133member
    OK... here is maybe another route to take.. What I am trying to do is make kind of a dream pc(my dream pc). What I want ot do is make an ultra compact computer that is as densely packed as possibly. But I want to use a liquid cooled fluorinert system to cool it. Now of course ideally I would like to do this with a G5 motherboard... but this sounds impossible.



    So what if I went a different direction and tried to make a pc that was built for massive multitasking abilty rather than raw power.



    What would be the best way to achieve this? So kind of like a mini supercomputer in which I used a lot of smaller motherboards like laptops and networked them somehow? Is this making any sense or am I just totally wrong about how all this works?
  • Reply 9 of 10
    overhopeoverhope Posts: 1,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

    I do believe the Cube had a motherboard with at least one 90° angle on it, maybe four... wasn't the Cube's motherboard actually folded around the outside of the internal case?



    Erm, no (I speak from ample experience of having my Cube in bits). The Cube's mobo is completely flat, but it has two other boards plugged into it at 90º: the AGP riser (which the graphics card plugs straight into, ending up parallel to the mobo) and the DC-DC converter. There's also the modem card (which plugs directly into a socket on the mobo) and the processor card (which does the same, but on the other side).



    I've done some PCB fabrication in the past, and getting even track development across a multi-planar board would not be a cinch...
  • Reply 10 of 10
    isegwayisegway Posts: 133member
    This is interesting...



    http://web.media.mit.edu/~rehmi/fabric/



    I wonder what the limitations are?
Sign In or Register to comment.