Intel will no longer support BTX

[D_o_S]

Intel called a meeting in Taipei with the mainboard and chassis manufacturers, Hexus.net's Willy managed to stealthfully get the gossip from the meeting and has provided 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.

Source: Hexus.net (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6685)

[Sasqui]

Funny - the best laid plans of mice and men.

[Slater]

SO Intel is all like
"Well since we have a really cool(heatwise) processor now we don't have to think of the video cards"

[newtekie1]

Good, BTX sucked and was pointless.

[Slater]

Pointless?

Heat travels up.

Now the GPU is on the underside of the video card and the heatsink faces DOWN and the GPU is looking DOWN

It cant cool right

but with BTX the temps drop ALOT

ALOTALOTALOTALOTALOT.. alot.


Do your research before making aqusitions.

[magibeg]

Well i think its not a issue of intel not needing the extra cooling or it not being a very sound technology. I think it all came down to the simple matter of adaption. No one seemed to be going towards btx so there was no market for it. No point on continuing something that no one seems to want :)

[newtekie1]

Pointless?

Heat travels up.

Now the GPU is on the underside of the video card and the heatsink faces DOWN and the GPU is looking DOWN

It cant cool right

but with BTX the temps drop ALOT

ALOTALOTALOTALOTALOT.. alot.


Do your research before making aqusitions.

With BTX the temps do not drop a remarkable amount, certainly not enough to make an entire industry change, especially with ATX working just fine. The only thing that was limited by the ATX design was Intels complete fusion reactors of processors. With the current design of ATX cases with adiquite cooling, video cards have no problems keeping cool. The slight benefits from heat rising doesn't reall matter if you have good airflow. Also heat only rises when it is in air. So flipping the orientation of the video card so the heatsink is on top doesn't help cooling. If you pump air across the heatsink then dump it out the back of the case right away(like ATI does) then it doesn't matter that heat rises in the case because the heat from the video card is never in the case. And since the hot air does rise, moving the video cards to the top of the case is plain stupid. All that does is make the video cards suck in the hottest air possible, which can actually hurt cooling more then it helps.

[Sasqui]

I think they should have flipped the video card configuration a long time ago... too late now as most ATX motherboards and cases are desiged around the current layout.

This is all about consumer demand. BTX is probably better, but no one went out looking for it... except the people who bought Dell computers that are BTX ;)

[Dippyskoodlez]

Pointless?

Heat travels up.

Now the GPU is on the underside of the video card and the heatsink faces DOWN and the GPU is looking DOWN

It cant cool right

but with BTX the temps drop ALOT

ALOTALOTALOTALOTALOT.. alot.


Do your research before making aqusitions.

DO your reasearch before you support such an idiotic design.

The GPU flipping is the only really beneficial thing from BTX.

Which is easily solved by the newer cases that just flip the mobo ;)

Intel is ditching the BTX because it requires the CPU be placed in an akward position.

This is perfectly acceptable(for intel at the moment) because the chipset is in a PRIME spot. Perfect lengths from the ram.

However, since AMD uses an onboard memory controller that means all ram traces going to the CPU must be the same length. When you have pin 1 half the length of pin 244, you're going to have severe latency, and syncing issues.

This must mean intel is seriously considering the onboard mem controller, or realized the market really did say FU to the form factor.

Good: heat.
Bad: Everything else.

Its easily solved by rotating the ATX mobo however, making the only positive effect........ useless..

[XooM]

the market includes big time manufs like IBM/Lenovo and Dell, remember? I have yet to open a Lenovo box recently made that wasn't BTX, and i've touched a fair number of lenovo/IBMs as my school uses them exclusively.

Everything has its place...

[Dippyskoodlez]

the market includes big time manufs like IBM/Lenovo and Dell, remember? I have yet to open a Lenovo box recently made that wasn't BTX, and i've touched a fair number of lenovo/IBMs as my school uses them exclusively.

Everything has its place...

I just setup ~400 BTX dells.. Where they'll never be opened or changed so form factor is irrelevent.. the case isnt even btx anyways... just mobo..

Dells will no longer be BTX after they start selling their AMD desktops anyways as AMD mobos are incapable of handling BTX due to memory trace length issues...

[XooM]

AMD BTX mobos have been done... there was an MSI one at Computex a year or 2 ago (iirc)

[Dippyskoodlez]

AMD BTX mobos have been done... there was an MSI one at Computex a year or 2 ago (iirc)

Too bad it would have had to use the Via chipset that didnt use AMD's memory controller, or had traces so long you would have a hard time with stability and board space...


Making it completely unmarketable...

Hmm.. wonder why it isnt out on the market? :laugh: