Transparent plastic and tempered glass have been the usual for PC instances for over a decade now. So in the event you’re going to be continually your PC’s guts, why not simply finish the pretense and stick a whole-ass monitor in there? That’s the concept behind the Side Panel Kit, a full 13.3-inch, 1080p monitor that sits behind the clear panel of your PC case and connects on to your motherboard. The display acts as an ordinary monitor in Windows, displaying no matter you need.

This isn’t the primary time we’ve seen huge screens mounted instantly onto a desktop PC. In addition to novelties like smaller LCDs connected to CPU AIO pumps, RAM, graphics playing cards, and doubtless the bottom of the motherboard by now, you may recall iBuyPower’s Project Snowblind. It additionally turned your entire facet of a PC case right into a show, albeit a clear one designed extra to indicate supplementary information. In comparability, Asrock’s display is comparatively fundamental. It’s only a good little IPS LCD that sticks to the within of your PC case with the included mounting brackets.

Asrock

While the display ought to be installable into any case that may bodily home it (you’ll want a transparent space on the facet panel 300mm by 193mm, horizontal or vertical), there’s one little foible to the design that could be a dealbreaker. The display connects on to the motherboard through an Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) cable for each information and energy, as famous by Tom’s Hardware. eDP is an ordinary connection usually seen in laptop computer display panels, however it’s not often seen in consumer-facing electronics…and Asrock is the one firm making motherboards with an eDP connection built-in. There’s no simple technique to make an adapter, both, since not like common DisplayPort it consists of electrical energy as nicely.

At the time of writing only a handful of Asrock motherboards assist the display, principally within the Z790 collection (Intel 1700, with one B650 choice for Ryzen followers). You can count on extra high-end boards from Asrock to incorporate the connection within the close to future. Maybe by then the corporate will even have an choice to purchase the Side Panel Kit, as a result of it doesn’t seem to have a transport date or value in the intervening time.

In the meantime, you possibly can all the time simply buy a USB portable monitor and stick it to the facet of your case. You received’t even want a motherboard improve.