BTX - A bad thing?

[Quitch]

I don't tend to pay attention to hardware until I buy a new PC, roughly every four years. It's only recently I started following the graphics industry all that closely.

I'd heard of BTX and thought it was a "good thing", but now I read a topic over on T&H and suddenly it sounds like a bad, bad thing, or at the very least a massive inconvinience and waste of time for everyone bar Intel.

About all I know of BTX is that the cards get flipped. I can go look up BTX, so I'm not too interested to knowing what it does, rather what people here think of it.

 

[mustrum]

I think it's a big pile of BS. BTX designs will be small desktop PC's with optimal airflow. Sounds great but leaves no space fore overclockers like me. No way to place a moster cooler in such a smale case as the showed prototype on the cebit.
It's intels idea but i am not sure if ppl are stupid enough to buy it this time.
In fact who's stupid enough to buy an intel by now? Ok now i am getting biased.

 

[Mendel]

Personally. I don't believe BTX has any future at all. Just too much hassle.
I've been wrong before though but I'm pretty sure the transition period will be long. You will be able to buy ATX cases, power supplies and motherboards for the remainder of a decade. You can quote me on that.

 

[digitalwanderer]

So will AMD boards have a BTX factor or will they stay with ATX/shuttle?

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

So will AMD boards have a BTX factor or will they stay with ATX/shuttle?

Looks like AMD will stay with ATX.
The BTX has more - then +.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Looks like AMD will stay with ATX.
The BTX has more - then +.

Wow! Thanks Snipe, I really hadn't thought about it much but that will be a huge plus to stick with AMD for me.

 

[jvd]

There is alot of good things in btx .

Esp for graphics cards we all know heat rises .

The way the graphics card are now htey are not getting optimal cooling. having them flipped over so thier heatsinks are no longer in a dead spot for air flow.

the cpu is now moved over and the ram is pushed up. Which means there is now nothing blocking air flow from the cpu. Its lined up right with an intake fan.

The gpu can now have bigger heatsinks with out blocking anything (i.e the geforce 6800ultra cooler wont take up more slots ) as there is nothing there .

Its a smarter design with the goal being to cool down the hottest parts . The gpu and the cpu.

The atx spec is very out dated and was never meant to cool off 100 watt gpus and cpus

 

[AlphaWolf]

There are some issues with btx. Intel trying to offload the cost of cpu cooling onto the case manufacturers is certainly going to hold back its adoption.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Pfffft!

If I were to flip me tower over it'd put my CPU on the bottom with my ram and my viddy card pointing up the right way, if it were such a big deal I would have done that long ago.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

BTX has problem in space. You would have to have a full tower size case to get the same usable space of a mid tower. All the mid tower BTX cases are all micro boards and only 2, 5 1/4 bays. The air flow is all in the center of the case so there is little air flow for the rest of you cards, ram, hard drives, and mobo chipsets becase there is no space or place for other fans in the BTX case. It sacrifices all the air flow for the CPU and GPU.

 

[jvd]

BTX has problem in space. You would have to have a full tower size case to get the same usable space of a mid tower. All the mid tower BTX cases are all micro boards and only 2, 5 1/4 bays. The air flow is all in the center of the case so there is little air flow for the rest of you cards, ram, hard drives, and mobo chipsets becase there is no space or place for other fans in the BTX case. It sacrifices all the air flow for the CPU and GPU.

right now u get all the cooling on your hardrives , then you have a huge dead zone on the bottom of your case by your video card and pci slots as there is nothing moving air there. Then you have hot air finally reaching your ram , which blocks some of the air , then u get to your cpu / chipset .

Remember the btx cases are all first generation. Your comparing them to cases that have been modded and pushed to what we currently have. Give them a year and the lanboys , antecs and other companys will make them into much better things than the current atx cases .


this is an interesting design. http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage...73-02.JPG/11-112-073-06.JPG/11-112-073-05.JPG

 

[karlotta]

it will be the Dell box. It will be sucssesfull in the OEM market.

 

[3dilettante]

BTX will probably become a standard eventually. AMD might not need it now, but it will eventually. Give them about two generations and they'll make Prescott look like a 486 thermal wise.

It's an inevitable march of heat and leakage. I predict that Intel is going to thank Apple for going liquid cooling first with its latest announced dual processor rig. Now the x86 guys can always say Apple did it first, and then they can procede to pillage the thermal budget permitted by water cooling for about four years before going for active chilling.

 

[Nappe1]

to me, BTX seems like to be something that ATX's little brother (desktop pizza box version of it) was. as in case of ATX, the desktop version (I just can't remember what it was called.) came first and tower version followed soon. (and left the desktop design to very small minority.)

most likely, we are going to see something similar on this "case" too.


EDIT: and I don't mean Micro-ATX noor ITX boards. there was another stadard for desktop (or should I use word "table top") cases that shared some similarities with ATX, but as soon as ATX arrived to replace AT towers, started table top cases lose the market share.)

 

[hoom]

I think we need AMD to come up with a CTX with proper cooling + expansion capability (actually, I expect my next PC to be small form factor anyway).

ATX needs to go.

 

[aZZa]

I have to agree with karlotta. This design is made for large oem groups Dell etc. It is designed to cheaply cool the hot Intel CPUs by placing them in a cooler area within the path of airflow. I think it will be ideal for the highly intergrated system, which only need the CPU cooled as the rest will be fine with heatsinks at most.

Will the add-in (graphics) boards actually be any cooler with the warm airflow from cpu transferred in the direction of the expansion slots? Maybe ATX needs some minor updates, but BTX seems to focused on the CPU.

 

[jvd]

Will the add-in (graphics) boards actually be any cooler with the warm airflow from cpu transferred in the direction of the expansion slots? Maybe ATX needs some minor updates, but BTX seems to focused on the CPU.

the flipped over 3d graphics card with actual air flow no matter if its warm or not will be much better off than it being upside down with very limited cooling room in a dead zone for air flow

 

[Fox5]

BTX will probably become a standard eventually. AMD might not need it now, but it will eventually. Give them about two generations and they'll make Prescott look like a 486 thermal wise.

It's an inevitable march of heat and leakage. I predict that Intel is going to thank Apple for going liquid cooling first with its latest announced dual processor rig. Now the x86 guys can always say Apple did it first, and then they can procede to pillage the thermal budget permitted by water cooling for about four years before going for active chilling.

AMD had the Tbirds and they got through that just fine. And remember slot type cpus?

the flipped over 3d graphics card with actual air flow no matter if its warm or not will be much better off than it being upside down with very limited cooling room in a dead zone for air flow

Why can't it be flipped over in the current design? Wouldn't it only require the companies to put the cpu on the other side?(or would that make the tracings impossible?)

Anyhow, how about just adding in exhaust fans vga silencer or geforce fx 5800 ultra style? Just get the hot air out of the case immediately. Sounds pretty good to me.(and I'm very happy with my vga silencer, between that and my volcano 12 on high, there is no hot air anywhere in my pc, though I wish the vga silencer had a stronger fan since there actually is quite a bit of hot air contained within it, it just doesn't get to the rest of the computer)

 

[Althornin]

Will the add-in (graphics) boards actually be any cooler with the warm airflow from cpu transferred in the direction of the expansion slots? Maybe ATX needs some minor updates, but BTX seems to focused on the CPU.

the flipped over 3d graphics card with actual air flow no matter if its warm or not will be much better off than it being upside down with very limited cooling room in a dead zone for air flow

OK, i have to correct you.
HEAT DOES NOT RISE.
Hot air does
being "upside down" has supremely little relevence. If you dont believe me, turn your case upside down and compare video card temps.

 

[Sxotty]

jvd, just get a hole saw and put a fan right over your graphics card Really it is very very easy, and many atx cases have one built in. With that there really isn't a dead spot there.