Intel's Long Awaited BTX Form Factor
by Purav Sanghani on November 15, 2004 5:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Final Thoughts
Instead of an overnight switch akin to what we saw from Intel during the transition from 865 to 915, the move from ATX to BTX will be more of a slow gentle transition. We saw some exciting things in the AOpen/Intel combination today; smaller power supply, no dead heat spots (places in the case that air hangs around with no where to go) and smaller design. Although there are certainly advantages in BTX, no one would realistically expect Intel to force the new form factor down our throats. As Anand mentioned several months ago, "Switching CPU sockets is one thing, but force people to buy all new cases, power supplies and motherboards and you're bound to get some negative response." In the lab, some of us were fairly divided on BTX in general; Anand and I had spent the majority of dinners over the last year debating where the technology fit. When Intel sent us a microBTX board rather than a standard BTX design we were extremely hesitant on what we were ultimately proving here with this analysis.Years of planning, marketing and finally deployment have lead up to today's official release of Intel's first BTX product. Although the BTX solution we looked at today performed poorer than a full ATX desktop, we need to put things in perspective. Our microBTX case and motherboard ran a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 significantly cooler than a microATX case with the same volume, even though the microATX setup had an additional fan. The noise benchmarks further tip the scales in BTX's favor. How is Intel doing it? Aligning the core components into a strict path for airflow to follow while using a slower 120mm fan to "push" air. The internal wiring is reduced in favor of a single 24-pin adaptor, thing SATA cables are used instead of fat PATA ones; things inside the case are just less cluttered.
With the flurry of SFF computers over the last few years, we know smaller computing platforms are necessary. When we saw Shuttle, IWill and FIC designing their own small form factors to produce smaller and smaller desktop PCs, the results become obvious that an industry standard design was long over due. The original goals of BTX have always been to decrease the form factor size and progressively reduce the size of desktop computers in general. MicroBTX isn't the ground floor of the BTX standard, PicoBTX - even smaller than MicroBTX - was planned in the original design of the BTX spec. When we see BTX mature a little more, letting Shuttle or FIC run with the PicoBTX blueprint might really show us some revolutionary computing.
To succinctly put it, the BTX approach to a case/motherboard design is an approach in efficiency. As we saw in our uBTX measurements, there were virtually no dead spots in the case, and these results were obtained with fewer fans. The much larger ATX chassis with several additional fans (including a dedicated CPU heatsink fan) ran cooler, but we could see unused portions of the case. The ATX case used more space and ran louder. Don't forget that additional non-redundant fans increase the failure rate of a computer as well - more moving parts. Now back to the question as to why Intel sent us a microBTX design rather than a full ATX setup. Thermals and noise tests today showed us that a first generation microBTX setup ran slightly hotter - although not as hot as a standard microATX case - while reducing size, fans and noise. This is significant as we will undoubtedly see cases and motherboards moving to smaller designs. Many of us were skeptical for a long time, but after seeing the numbers and realizing Intel's long term plan to reduce the PC footprint, and not just on the OEM side, we can conclude that BTX is not hype. It's obvious why Intel waited for Monday morning to lift their BTX platform - they have a winner on their hands.
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L3p3rM355i4h - Thursday, February 10, 2005 - link
Seems to be good for the OEM market, but what about us people who *actually* care about computers? Front exhuaust has to be the stupidest thing ever. Why was it so hard just to reverse the layout, so it would be atleast somewhat compatable with the current ATX standard.And the guy/gal who made up the "ATX II" standard, maybe you should contact AMD or someone. They might be interested.
EthernaL - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
What if I really LIKE my BIG ATX tower?Maybe I have temperature problems in summer... maybe is not all the efficient that could be but I really love this design and I don't want to move to a small design and I don't want to buy the whole thing again.
Another nice thing with the computers we currently have is the possibility to give our friends/relatives old pieces once we upgrade our computer (my sister's computer is build that way :P )
So, again, another decission based ONLY on money without thinking in what we (the users) want or need. Thanks Intel, I hate you more than ever, and if you 'force us' to move to that technology I hope your business will go bankrupt.
IntelUser2000 - Sunday, November 21, 2004 - link
"From the picture we see the flow of air pushed back through the CPU thermal module towards the Northbridge, Southbridge, and VGA card. As this air flows around the CPU, it warms up, as we can see from the red areas to the left and right of the CPU. This warm air then flows over the Northbridge and seems to cool as it travels further back in the chassis. At the left we see the channel of air flowing to the left over the memory and out through the PSU. The channel on the right flows straight back to the VGA card and out through groups of holes in the back of the case."Well doesn't look like to me that hot air comes out front.
MadAd - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
One question im having in my mind is how big of a paintbrush will i need to get inbetween those fins - talk about a dust trap.At least a majority of atx heatsink designs have easy to clean fins, and boy do they need cleaning sometimes, this is going to be worse.
Cue the repair calls in years to come, $50 an hour for removing wads of the customers cat/dog/children from around the cooler after the safety backoff system renders the machine temporatily gonadless.
epiv - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Intel can and should make BTX backward and forward compeitable with ATX so we can decide if a new BTX case and PSU is worth the money.I am a poor student and I already spend money on a good case and PSU. My case should be able to handle more heat than a regular BTX case. I really hope I will not have to get a new case and PSU when I upgrade my computer.
trikster2 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
facts? I actually own the silverstone version of the oppus case, so I am actually speaking from experience. Vertical vs horizontal lowprofile vs full height has a lot to do with heat disapation
Myrandex - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I wonder how BTX had a NDA because Gateway has been selling BTX computers at best buy for over a month at leastCygni - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Dont you bring facts into this, Kris! Trikster2 doesnt want any of that!KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
trikster2: The Opus case was chosen because it was the same volume as the mBTX case. I don't really see how a mATX tower and an mBTX case are going to differ significantly.Kristopher
ceefka - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
How can this possibly translate into lower cost for end users? Thank you, Intel.I am also disappointed by Intel's approach. Uhm, we have a hot CPU; let's make a cooler case!
Since they invented this in their own backyard without creating a wide support it looks like an ego-trip.