how long before BTX takes over?

C

cheezies

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 8, 2003
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I'm pondering about how long it would take for BTX style cases to take over. I'm delaying whether or not I should get a CoolerMaster WaveMaster case right now. Anyone have any ideas?
 
So far I havent even seen any BTX motherboards. I know they exists, but there just arent that many. Dont expect BTX to take over for another couple of years, motherboard manufacturers dont like the design :)
 
Didn't we just switch from AT a few years ago?

Why are we in a rush to adopt new standards?
 
BTX is a significantly superior format, it's just going to take time. Just like ATX is superior but it took quite a while for everyone to switch over. Personally I would like to see more cases that are mock btx like the lan-li one that flips over an atx board.
 
k1114 said:
BTX is a significantly superior format, it's just going to take time. Just like ATX is superior but it took quite a while for everyone to switch over. Personally I would like to see more cases that are mock btx like the lan-li one that flips over an atx board.
Click to expand...

BTX is only superior in smaller form factors such as Micro-BTX and Pico-BTX. I think it is definintely going to take over the small PC/desktop market but as far as full sized towers go, the ATX is just fine.

cheezies, I would just get the Wave Master case now and not worry about BTX making the case obsolete.
 
adri1456 said:
Didn't we just switch from AT a few years ago?

Why are we in a rush to adopt new standards?
Click to expand...


Because of the bottom line.....................MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY.


If we made a standard that would be in place for a minimum of 10-15 years that'd be a lot better. ATX is a shitty form factor in the first place but now they decide to correct it with BTX all these years later? Fuck that. We've been forced to adopt it and I'll be god damned if in the next two years I'll adopt another "slightly different" form factor.

Give me a brand new fucking form factor or STFU ........(this is directed at Intel who i'm assuming has a large say in this)
 
I have a feeling that btx will never take over for the full desktops, there will be some cases that are btx, but I have a feeling that there will be another standard that will take over atx
 
k1114 said:
BTX is a significantly superior format, it's just going to take time.
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I take it you didn't read the specs or did any other research on BTX?

If anything, BTX has worse cooling characteristics than ATX, because it cools the hottest component (CPU) first, instead of the other way around. This means that the CPU will be cooled very well, but the RAM, NB, voltage regulators, expansion cards (including the GPU), etc. will be working at far higher temperatures, shortening their lifespan and reducing overall system stability.

In regards to component placement, BTX isn't superior either, only more restrictive than any other formfactor.

BTX is likely to be used mainly by OEMs, before fading away, like WTX.
 
I read that BTX was superior to ATX too, but I didn't do any further research into it, as it wasn't likely to take over for a few years.
 
Not sure if any have even been manufactured, but I would kill to get my hands on a BTX with dual PCI-express support for SLI

mmmmmmmmmm.......

Gumbo
 
Why would you want a BTX? For SLI? Did you not read what was said. Your VPUs would just overheat... Permeneantly damaging your VPUs.
 
Inetl trys to pull these new standards every once in a while. The last time they tryed it was a more condensed and stadardized front panel header, there were a few MB and cases that supportsed it. But it soon faded away.
 
Also, AMD didn't want to endorse this new format so i doubt it will be adopted very fast. To make it happen, all the companies need to be unanimous on a format.
 
Speaking as to the CPU getting cooled better and all the other componants cooled worse, I absolutely agree with you. Ohh, let's feed my video card the CPU exhaust air! That's smart. :rolleyes:
 
well most of the new high end cases are btx compatable.... so i wouldnt say too far off
 
I hope this BTX project will burn somehow soon... It just sickens me, Intel acting superior "yeye, we need money so lets make something new so g33ks will buy stuff and we will swim in cash..". Why do we need BTX? Isnt ATX good enough?
Switching on BTX will make me buy everything!! Case, m0b0, GPU, SPU, CPU.. I dont clean my arse with cash!

Oh yeah, and thats just my oppinion!

Cheers //
 
If BTX was supposed to cool everything down better, why don't we spend the money to buy water cooling systems?

I won't be upgrading that's for sure.
 
BTX is going to take forever....No one is making BTX boards yet, if they are then there just is not that many of them...........I am going to say it is going to take 4-5 year the way that we are going.....
 
Atragon said:
Ohh, let's feed my video card the CPU exhaust air! That's smart. :rolleyes:
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And what do they have now? Stagnant air with no airflow. How is that better? There are solutions like the Arctic Cooling Silencer line, which draws air from the outside, but that solves the problem anyways, ATX or BTX.
 
Xilikon said:
Also, AMD didn't want to endorse this new format so i doubt it will be adopted very fast. To make it happen, all the companies need to be unanimous on a format.
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To be more specific, due to the aforementioned restrictions in regard to component layout, the two RAM banks in NUMA Opteron setups are made impossible, due to increased trace lengths.

If you've read the BTX spec you'll probably have realized at some point that it would make for an extremely lousy dual-CPU setup. There's a reason why many have accused Intel of only having introduced BTX as a way to compensate for their failure with the Netburst (P4) architecture, which was officially cancelled by Intel some time ago.
 
xonik said:
And what do they have now? Stagnant air with no airflow. How is that better? There are solutions like the Arctic Cooling Silencer line, which draws air from the outside, but that solves the problem anyways, ATX or BTX.
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The GPU can be cooled properly, even with ATX. It only requires you to think (literally) outside the box. By turning the ATX mainboard 90 degrees, so that the expansion cards are at the bottom, proper airflow can be established along the expansion cards, NB, CPU, etc.

Only trade-off is the fact that you'll have to plug in connectors at the bottom of the case, but in 99% of all cases (no pun intended), this shouldn't give any problems.
 
You mean rotate the ATX motherboard such that the expansion cards sit vertically with respect to the floor, and have the connectors point towards the floor? I'm not quite understanding.
 
Proper cooling can be achieved easily with ATX. BTX is not needed. The best air cooling you can get is by using a shroud that runs parallel to the mobo, down to the AGP slot. This leaves the fresh air for the cpu fan and funnels the hot air out, without it ever touching the memory or video. Rotating the mobo is not needed. Someone posted a link some time ago on these forums, probably in the cooling section. He used simple cardboard for the divider, then made an acrylic divider once the design was proven.
 
IMHO BTX will be quickly adopted and readily available on the SFF market, as lots of mid-sized companies that, up to now, didn't have the cash to produce propriatory mainboards themselves definitively want to eat into this market segment. even the big ones already show first BTX products for the SFF 'niche' (like ASUS for example, that was previously sort of out of the game with their pundit and terminator product lines). however, it remains to be seen how big a market SFF really is after companies like ahanix take away most of the HTT PCs again... for office environments the typical SFF boxes are way too loud if you ask me. but that's a different story.

now to BTX itself. is it a revolution, as intel stated in their latest PDFs? heck, no. is it a sensible evolution? not even that if you ask me, and there is plenty of reasons: While cooling may be better for small and cramped environments (microATX never took off, really, so there has hardly been put much efford into the development of well cooled mATX cases) it definitively looks bad on the desktop-, and especially workstation-side of things: there is virtually no benefit whatsoever cooling wise if you look at current ATX setups (see anandtechs review here).

Secondly, the spec seems to entirely neglect the fact that there is dual processor configurations to be cooled as well. how will you put a dual-board into a BTX case? cut another hole in it to house the 'thermal module'?

Thirdly smaller case designs, as stated by intel in all BTX papers, may definitively be the way to go - yet, strangely all comparable BTX boards are bigger than their ATX counterparts, and that does not even take into account the fact that system designers HAVE to put the huge fan in front of the mainboard, which increases the overall measurements again. picoBTX is an exception here, i give you that, but again: shuttles SFFs are quite a bit smaller than their BTX counterparts. ...and with SLI and all... who wants one? ;)

Then there is the sound argument: A more silent solution is definitively called for - again intel states so in all BTX PDFs available. now, why the hell do they place the fan directly in front of the user? there is quite a lot of cases that moved them onto the side resulting in a noticable noise reduction for the person working on the computer.

Furthermore, as already stated above, the cooling sequence seems a bit odd, to say at least: first the CPU and then have the hot exhaust air go over the northbridge and vid-card?
The biggest drawback of BTX is all the omitted chances to make something really distinct from- and better than ATX, yet forcing us to buy an entirely new setup (PSU, mobo, case). to be honest i always have to take a second look to see the difference between the flipped ATX cases and BTX style ones...

however, will it die? i fear not, albeit i hate to say it: Intel pushes BTX far more than WTX, AMD might jump the picoBTX wagon, OEMs may, too - big mainboard vendors start t pump out BTX mainly, certainly for intel mainboards. it could well happen that BTX will become the next de facto standard for desktops, mediaPCs and the likes faster than i'd like to see it happen. for workstations it's a different story, though, as intel has ATX boards on their formfactor roadmaps until late 2007 for the 'enthusiasts' sector.
in the end i find myself hopeing BTX does indeed die just like WTX, and someone comes up with something clever before forcing us to buy everything new. just because i'm against 'something new'? hell, no... :rolleyes:
 
From an engineering sense BTX makes very little sense. In almost all aplications you want the cooling inlet to hit the coldest part of the system and travel along to the warmest part of the system. This method will give you a lower ambient temperature overall, by ensuring that the delta T of the system is minimised you end up with a good heat transfer all through the system, this is counter current flow
The way BTX is set up is concurrent flow with the inlet hitting the hottest part of the system. This means that although the CPU will be cooler the rest of the system will be alot warmer because the delta T in the early part of the system is large but at the end of the system it is very small meaning very little heat exchange goes near the outlet. This is very inefficient and is used in engineering quite rarely when only very specific needs have to be met.

BTX is intels way of saying CPU's are getting hotter and we can't engineer a solution so they are trying to pass the problem onto the other component makers, so that graphics cards and RAM has to run cooler rather than them. Let's hope it dies like WTX.
 
The coolest solution would be removing the motherboard from the case completely.

This results in a small temperature drop over atx. Which means BTX is essentially a waste of time, since the gains just aren't there. Like RDRAM.
 
a friend of mine talked with a guy from Intel and brought it up, he said something alogn the lines of "We put it out there, now its out of our hands how to get it on the market"

In other words, Intel can't force any more stuff to become BTX, it lies in the hands of Abit, Asus, DFI, and the others to start pumping the mobos
 
xonik said:
You mean rotate the ATX motherboard such that the expansion cards sit vertically with respect to the floor, and have the connectors point towards the floor?
Click to expand...
Correct.

Of course, this design uses convection. Another option is to use a G5-style design, with literally tens of fans creating seperate 'thermal zones' inside the case, moving the air from the front to back instead of from top to bottom, as in the former design.

Needless to say, I very much prefer the convection-based design :)
 
BTX is like a dead end design, partly because of the heat management shortcomings, and alse due to its lack of agreement between parties ( AMD clearly stated that this design was majorly incompatible with their A64 platform designs, because of the increased distance between CPU & memory sockets - think about the integrated memory controler )

it's doomed to be abandoned in a couple years at best ( or worst, depending on sides you are in )

:D
 
Elledan said:
Correct.

Of course, this design uses convection. Another option is to use a G5-style design, with literally tens of fans creating seperate 'thermal zones' inside the case, moving the air from the front to back instead of from top to bottom, as in the former design.

Needless to say, I very much prefer the convection-based design :)
Click to expand...
There's a lot of problems with that, like drawing dust and static off the carpeting, and the major inconvenience of having ports on the bottom. I prefer the solutions currently used by ATi and NVIDIA and other videocard manufacturers, with the separate airflow paths drawing from the outside air. The CPU and other hot devices can be hit by a single large fan if they are positioned right (like in BTX, as one example). Still, I wish I had the resources to design something completely different.
 
xonik said:
There's a lot of problems with that, like drawing dust and static off the carpeting,
Click to expand...
Actually, the opposite is true. Any design with intake/exhaust fans will draw in more dust and other small particles than a convection-based design.

I've already made a prototype system which relies on convection instead of intake/exhaust fans, and aside from it being very silent, it's practically free of dust inside as well, even after nearly month of use.

The reason for this is that fans create turbulent airflow, which will draw small particles (dust) with it, whereas convection creates airflow which is practically laminar. In the latter case only a minimal amount of dust should be deposited on components inside the case; in the former case dust is deposited almost everywhere (turbulent flow with dust particles coming into contact with slightly static surfaces. You do the math)..

and the major inconvenience of having ports on the bottom.
Click to expand...
I actually like the idea of a swiveling case, which would make it easy to expose the bottom of the case.
I prefer the solutions currently used by ATi and NVIDIA and other videocard manufacturers, with the separate airflow paths drawing from the outside air. The CPU and other hot devices can be hit by a single large fan if they are positioned right (like in BTX, as one example).
Click to expand...
While this works quite well in practice, it's everything but optimal. As there's no strictly defined airflow path, dead air pockets and extremely turbulent flow sections are the result.

Truly an engineer's nightmare.
Still, I wish I had the resources to design something completely different.
Click to expand...
Don't we all ;)
 
Ah, lots of interesting points you brought up.
Elledan said:
Actually, the opposite is true. Any design with intake/exhaust fans will draw in more dust and other small particles than a convection-based design.

I've already made a prototype system which relies on convection instead of intake/exhaust fans, and aside from it being very silent, it's practically free of dust inside as well, even after nearly month of use.
Click to expand...
Yes, but is your fan on a desk or on the floor? Many John Q. Publics set their cases on the floor.
The reason for this is that fans create turbulent airflow, which will draw small particles (dust) with it, whereas convection creates airflow which is practically laminar. In the latter case only a minimal amount of dust should be deposited on components inside the case; in the former case dust is deposited almost everywhere (turbulent flow with dust particles coming into contact with slightly static surfaces. You do the math)..
Click to expand...
I think I'll pass on the math, you raise a good point. I'll be honest with you. I like the idea of drawing air from the bottom, as that is the idea behind my case in progress, but my case will always be on a desk or table, away from the floor. Front intakes can be be a bit of an aesthetic challenge, too.
I actually like the idea of a swiveling case, which would make it easy to expose the bottom of the case.
Click to expand...
Can't really argue with your preferences, as we all have our own opinions. I don't like seeing ports and connectors, so I suppose I can see where you're coming from.
While this works quite well in practice, it's everything but optimal. As there's no strictly defined airflow path, dead air pockets and extremely turbulent flow sections are the result.
Click to expand...
Just what are you referring to? The videocard cooling circuit, or the rest of the chassis interior? I would think that the dense fin array of a videocard heatsink would work well with a turbulent airflow, aggressively dislodging heat pockets and such. Unfortunately, I am not educated in fluid dynamics, so I'm just going off of intuition.
Don't we all ;)
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You're right. My attempt over the next year or two will stretch these definitions, but I am only a college student, not a poor one, but one who doesn't have the connections he would like ;)
 
xonik said:
Ah, lots of interesting points you brought up.Yes, but is your fan on a desk or on the floor?
Click to expand...
s/fan/case?

I actually placed this prototype system on the floor, in the same room as my main system, which is also placed on the floor, and again busy regrowing the dust carpet I removed a couple of weeks ago :)
think I'll pass on the math, you raise a good point. I'll be honest with you. I like the idea of drawing air from the bottom, as that is the idea behind my case in progress, but my case will always be on a desk or table, away from the floor. Front intakes can be be a bit of an aesthetic challenge, too.
Click to expand...
I actually kind of fancy the idea of a cube-shaped case, with no visible connectors along its sides and top, only some wires running from underneath it, which can then easily be hidden.
Just what are you referring to? The videocard cooling circuit, or the rest of the chassis interior? I would think that the dense fin array of a videocard heatsink would work well with a turbulent airflow, aggressively dislodging heat pockets and such.
Click to expand...
While the airflow from the front over the HDDs and from the back over the GPU will cool those components quite well, imagine what happens when those two flow meet. They basically collide, consequently being forced in all directions, instead of just the right one, which is up, towards the CPU.

In other words, if you visualize the airflows inside average case, it'd look like an absolute mess. Very different from the simplistic N CFM intake, X CFM exhaust calculations many people here use :)
 
My take on BTX is that processors are getting hotter so Intel decided to throw out this new format to make everyone else change their products to accomodate Intel's thermal issues rather than dealing with the cause of the problem.

However, BTX doesn't even seem to offer that great of an overall improvement anyway: sure, the processor temps are cooler, but at the expense of increased system temp. And the flipped-ATX does basically the same thing anyway.

The BTX-style cooling is only particularly effective in the SFF market. The new shuttle with the LGA socket has a BTX-style cooling system, and it looks to be pretty effective. But for desktops and full-size computers, the disadvantages of BTX far outweigh, imo, the very slight advantages it has over ATX.
 
Elledan said:
BTX is likely to be used mainly by OEMs, before fading away, like WTX.
Click to expand...

exactly, even WTX, an intel standard, was popular among oems for a little while then intel themselves abandonded it...

BTX will likely never be anything you go out and buy

ATX works, there is nothing horribly wrong with ATX, unlike the AT standard for example... every new board i have seen is ATX or EATX or whatever, but BTX was more of a "ooo look, we have a BTX board, yay, btx board..."
 
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