What things can Intel and AMD do to make the desktop a better value?

[cbn]

Well building desktops & even overclocking are easier now than they've ever been! I started making computers back in the AMD Athlon days, things weren't as straight forward as they are now. How much more idiot proof do they need to make them?

1.) One example might be to design some type of blower cooler for a full strength cpu/apu so additional case fans don't need to be used.

(Less case fans, less wires, less clutter)

2.) Maybe even having some motherboards with multiple M.2 slots rather than SATA ports?

(Having multiple M.2 is going to result in less cable clutter than SATA drives, but maybe this will require chips with more die area allocated to PCI-e lanes at the expense of some SATA?)

3.) Lastly would be to have a common connector for the front panel connectors to plug into...

...with that mentioned, I believe some mobo manufacturers have this problem fixed but it is not widespread yet.

 

[PPB]

Asus for example makes a "base" conector where you easily plug all those pesky power pins so you never have to worry about forgetting where they need to go every time you unplug them. This shows that with little effort and some witts diy system building can become even more idiot proof

 

[cbn]

Regarding that list in post #126, I wonder if we could add DC-in power and AC adapter (ie, power brick) as well?

(This would reduce cabling even further)

 

[cbn]

As a value adder, I would like to see Intel hyperthreading become more ubiquitous.

Instead of investing in quad small core (atom) dies for desktop (eg, Braswell), I would like to see dual big core dies with hyperthreading enabled instead.

Furthermore, the fact that Braswell is an SOC is of little benefit for desktop users. I believe sleek desktop machines are still very possible with the APU and PCH being separate.

 

[cbn]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36698579&postcount=27

And then there is storage. They need to force OEMs to use high speed flash for OS storage. They need to upgrade their memory controller to have ULLtra-DIMM style capabilities, ie the ability to cache DDR with NAND. They need to do somethign. The era of dog slow 5400 rpm hard drives that take 3 minutes to load windows needs to end. And it is not going to end until someone forces these OEMs to end it. Namely, by providing a lower cost alternative.

Definitely something fast and cheap for primary storage helps tremendously.