Intel's BTX form factor is dead

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:09 pm

This is from Hexus.net

Intel shuffles BTX in to its deep dark closest

Intel called a meeting in Taipei with the mainboard and chassis manufacturers, our Willy managed to stealthfully get the gossip from the meeting and, we have some very interesting beans for all to gander upon. Interestingly enough,its all about one of the blocks which the axe has fallen upon. When Intel was suffering with thermals (not just CPU, but also with dual 160w Graphics cards) it launched a new method of chassis layout - called BTX.

Intel has now decided that it won't be supporting BTX in 2007 with new SKUs in the channel with retail products, however it will of course keep supporting SKUs which are present on the market such as the DQ965-CO. So, whilst the standards are not being ditched - Intel will no longer be supporting them directly for the channel customers, but no doubt will, if the large OEMs request offer support.

Of course, the need for BTX has not spread to the enthusiast user, but big OEMs such as HP, Dell and others have adopted BTX and have been using this in their systems for a couple of years. Some people may not be shocked with this, since Intel has recently launched Core2Duo which offers crazy performance at half the TDP of previous generation parts, however you still have hot graphics cards, and hard drives. Of course thermals will again return to being key when we see Kentsfield (Intel's Quad Core part) later this year, which will come in at 130W TDP (Dual Core2Duo), will we see BTX raised from its ashes again?

The only question to ponder is that, if Intel wishes to again propose a chassis standard, what support will the company see from the key players in Taiwan, whom have bought in to the vision and the concept? Will the other manufacturers regard Intel as a technology leader, what will this do to their reputation?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:25 pm

I remember Intel saying in the spring or so, that by this time of the year they would be doing only BTX

pipperoni · Post by **pipperoni** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:24 pm

Well I'm sad, BTX offered a lot in terms of significantly improved graphics card cooling, but now thats not going to happen.

Maybe when they first wrote the PCIe standard they should've reversed the cards so that it'd have the same orientation as ISA....

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:45 pm

im also dissapointed. i was looking forward to BTX becomming the mainstream. making the GPU side of a graphics card face up, and have it be in the same airflow path as the CPU region would have made keeping them both cool and quiet alot easier.

Well mabey Asus' "reverse cool" technology idea might catch on instead. Putting the GPU die on the opposite side of video cards. Its either that or having to resort to large aftermarked heatpipe coolers to move the heat to the other side of the graphics card.

I think the biggest reason it failed was because of the placement of the CPU to the ram. It would have totally screwed up AMD's whole memory controller on the cpu deal. If they had gone with somthing AMD would also benefit from, i think it would have got alot more praise and support.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 5:29 pm

I think it failed in the retail market, because the formfactor is so rigid, that it doesn't leave case and heatsink manufacturers enough room to make something unique enough to sell. So they simply didn't design for it at all.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 5:33 pm

What we really need, is a 'growth' of ATX, with minor changes, while still being entirely compatable with the vast majority of ATX cases. Sort of like relocating the video cards to the bottom of the board, a re-location of memory an cpu, while still using ATX layout. that's the sorta thing that's needed.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 2:03 am

making the GPU side of a graphics card face up, and have it be in the same airflow path as the CPU region would have made keeping them both cool and quiet alot easier.

There was a big thread on this (in Silent Front I think), having the CPU and GPU share the same airflow is not a great idea unless they both have very low heat dissipation.

NeoNSX · Post by **NeoNSX** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:28 am

i'm going to be the one "12-post n00b" who says HURRAH... BTX was just another scam to force us to upgrade our cases & systems, and spend more money. The goals of BTX were good but it was too ridged for its own good.

Now if only nVidia and ATi started designing conroe-efficient gpus, cooling in my case would be a lot easier.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:05 am

NeoNSX wrote:i'm going to be the one "12-post n00b" who says HURRAH... BTX was just another scam to force us to upgrade our cases & systems, and spend more money. The goals of BTX were good but it was too ridged for its own good.

Now if only nVidia and ATi started designing conroe-efficient gpus, cooling in my case would be a lot easier.

Well any of the lower high end GPU's tend to put out a lot less heat. Specifically the 7900GT is pretty low wattage at under 50. I do agree it would be nice to have it low power from top to bottom, but I don't see gpu technology that can push pixels faster without brute force(more pipes or more mhz) so far. It seems we can attribute a lot of the 100-120W video cards on having high voltage. I think the 7900GTX has .2 volts over the 7900GT and I'm sure ATI does similar things.

BTX seemed like such a headache with needing a whole new setup for a pretty small gain in cooling unless you have a high power system. For any of us using systems under 200 watts, BTX wouldn't have much of an advantage over ATX. I'm glad to see it go, I think it makes far more sense to improve the ATX standard in a way that we can move forward without losing compatability.