BTX form factor

[borntosoul]

BTX form factor to replace ATX next year !
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876
In order to understand BTX you have to understand the motives for change. CPUs are getting hotter, graphics cards are as well, and despite all of these increases in thermal dissipation there is an increase in demand for quieter PCs. Today's ATX cases and motherboards were not designed for the incredible levels of heat that they have to deal with, and it is with this that we begin our understanding of BTX.
just as i was going to buy a lian li case to keep for a few years, now i have to wait till next year to get one that supports BTX.
anyone else have any more info?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

For those of you heavily invested in your ATX motherboard and AGP graphics card, there's no reason for panic. It will take quite a while before the death of ATX; and although we've done a lot to get rid of the "beige box" with the latest generation of ATX cases and the advent of small form factor systems, the final nail in the coffin of boring computers will be driven by BTX.

[gmontem]

People who use the front intake fan to cool down hot hard drives may not like the BTX design. I know I don't.

Even if BTX cases come out with the internal 3.5" drive cage placed in front of the intake fan, it defeats one of the purposes for their design, to give fresh, cool air for the processor.

[lukar]

I don't know what **** they think, but BTX is one retarded design.
Chipset and CPU are to close to each other, and video card is blowing hot air directly to CPU. Are they nuts?

I think BTX is design to prevent users from overclocking, because colling in this setup sucks, and also make us to buy new cases.

The similar design to BTX has Dell with their Dell Dimension 8200, where everything is ****ing hot after an hour playing games. The video card blows hot air direct to the CPU, chipset and CPU are on the same line close to each other, so similar. As I said the design sucks, what the hell they want, to force us to have crappy oem cases?

[Viral]

Looks stupid to me.. I don't exactly see the point of this and hope to be getting a PCI Express ATX board... i'm also very fond of todays case designs..

I'm not going to completely write this off as crap now as this article doesnt show everything.. but i'm not liking this.

[Filibuster]

Even in atx, air should enter in front and flow to the back, so the air (in btx) is going from the cpu to the video card, not the other way around.

In btx, the cpu is in the very front of the case, where the coolest air is. Putting the hot components in a line where there is a continuous stream of air will keep them cooler with less fans. Think about the atx case now, there is nothing to control which way the air flows. It just comes in, moves around, and goes out via a few different fans which each pull air in ways that may not really help cool the hot components.

Intel is doing this already with their server chassis and motherboards. The newer models don't have fans directly on the cpu, there is a plastic wind tunnel over the cpus/chipset and ram which forces air to flow where things need to be cooled, not just out into the case opening. In fact I'd say 50% of the case has no airflow at all because it's just empty space.

The wind tunnel idea is not cost effective for mass-quantity desktop systems, so they designed btx with the same idea, only the tunnel is being made up of the motherboard, side panel, and video card, and putting the cpu right in the middle of it all. For a typical desktop user, less noise is good. That is what btx is about.

If you want to overclock, do what they always do: add more/faster/bigger fans or watercool. Then again, part of the reason you need such a large fan on todays cpu is because the air at the back of the case is already warm, so it has to blow that much more air over the heatsink. If the cpu is in the front getting the cool air, you can overclock that much more. If you want to cool your hard drive, put a fan on it. They can't restrict high end cooling needs, they're just making it easier to make a typical desktop stay cool.

The other thing to keep in mind is the final case design will vary from one manufacturer to another, but the placement of certain components will be standardized (just as it is today with atx). Some cases will be better than others, and some will look generic and others will be modded, etc.

[gmontem]

Personally I prefer to have my hard drives get the coolest air first because I feel they are the most important component in my computer. And as for adding an additional fan to cool the drives, yes one can always do that. However, that may be difficult to do when shooting for a quiet PC. I doubt there will be room for a second front intake for a 120mm fan.

What the BTX is making me wonder is if it will allow Intel to become extremely lazy in their processor designs, that is to say they don't have to worry if their next fast processor is super hot now that it's getting fresh cool air. I wouldn't be surprised if they will still require users to place yet an additional fan on top of the heat sink. Sure defeats the point if you ask me.

[Filibuster]

Good point. If you are going for a small form factor btx case and you want a hard drive fan also, I agree, you are probably out of luck. A full size btx case will have plenty of room for an additional case fan for the hard drive. I definately look for this feature when I am buying a case because my main drive is 10k rpm and it gets really hot. It's something that is up to the case manufacturer, just like it is with atx.

As far as Intel goes, they have too many reasons to keep thermal issues in check to get lazy on purpose. Power consumption (heat generated by a cpu is wasted energy), cpu lifetime (due to heat), and pushing clock speeds crazy-high (limited by heat) are a few.

[Riptide]

Well, those of us w/uber drives are going to *require* cooling. So what are we left to do? Our options are limited, from what I can see.

My hard discs are mounted in a cooler that takes up 2 drive bays (5 1/4"). I also have a DVD drive and the audigy 2 control unit mounted in the other two bays. I require a case with 4 bays or I'm screwed.