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New BTX Form Factor Announced At IDF
xyote writes "A new motherboard form factor was announced at IDF today. See Google News for various press stories on it (how's that for up to date links?). Also, go here for the actual BTX specs."
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The specs pdf for those whose browser doesn't handle backslashes.
For the ones not getting what I mean.
Is there any point with changing the form-factor besides just changing stuff so that people need to buy new gear?
Well lets see, ATX is getting replaced by BTX, so if I remeber correctly from Kindergarten the next new technology will be CTX, DTX and ETX. I just love it when a plan comes together! (A-Team circa 1984).
Gotta love the acoustics of my motherboard. In fact, I do all of my home recording inside while sitting inside my PC box.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but does anyone want to take a stab at how long it takes for this to turn into a problem?
Supposedly BTX allows for a smaller overall system... So it has that going for it.
--Kobayashi--
.. 6 comments after (notice the asp in the address if you happened to be able to click on any link in that site) :
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I remember seeing a WTX case from Addtronics. I thought that was the next standard.
The announcement of a 3.2GHz P4 with 2MB of cache targeted at gamers as reported by The Enquirer is more of an eye opener to me. The price tag will probable live up to the "Extreme" label tho, seems like they are affraid that the Athlon 64 will take away some of their "bleeding edge gotta have it" revenue.
So will other mobo makers follow intel footsteps and make up to this formfactor, or will they fork off to make their own FormFactors ? Does anyone see any of this happening and by whom ?
Was n't very sucessful though, was meant for slim PC's where the PCI slots where on a riser card.
Didn't we have instant "off" capabilities back in the day of the 8086? Does anyone else miss the ability to push the power button and have their computer turn off now? With most modern BIOS's ignoring user settings for instant off, it really has to make me wonder about some of these new fangled "innovations".
The thing that makes me wonder though is this part
Just how are they going to avoid rebooting a computer if the power goes off? MRAM is set to debut, and this could in theory hold the users' data state, but you still have to boot the computer up through the normal BIOS process, or am I missing something?
now they'll have to design Micro-BTX, Flex-BTX and Mini-BTX designs as well ;)
... and the processor UNDER the expansion cards, and ... and ... mebbe something like the form factor that Apple are using for their G5)
(oh, and can they put the heavy power supply at the bottom of the case with the new design
That pdf is so slow Here is a mirror.
BuTtoX
Much like a TV. That's what Intel/MS wants to do, make the PC into a "proper" consumer device.
Could read the article because it is slashdotted, but a replacement for atx is really needed.
At the time of introduction, atx was designed for CPUs with a power dissipation of 10-20W. The cpu socket was placed right under the power suply to cool the heatsink with the airflow of the PS fan.
Nowaday, 80W CPUs dont benefit from this closeness to another heatsource in the PC. ATX doesnt include anything that allows thermal coupling between board and case (think of audio amp heathsink) or air-tunnels to cool the cpu with air from outside the case.
Also, eATX boards are quite huge, to big for anything but server cases, but normal atx isnt quite big enough for dual cpu boards with dual channel RAM (or opteron with 4 channel ram).
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Can't read the specs, they seem to be slashdotted, how did that happen... Of course, the main thing that happens when a new form factor comes out is that everybody who wants to upgrade their motherboard needs to upgrade their case as well which means a nice fat pay-cheque for the the beige box builders... That, more than any technical reason, will probably drive the uptake of BTX.
Slashdotted Again!
-d
Well, in the 80's in Germany and Austria (maybe in other countries, too?) a system called BTX (Bildschirmtext, On-Screen Text) was introduced. You could call it an Interner-precursor, comparable to the French stuff (Minitel?).
;)
Anyway, here are the pics: BTX
Maybe we'll get the cool cases back
Yes.
I know that South African mining is followed closely by the Slashdot readership. I am sure the failure to sell the stake in BTX affects us all deeply.
I can't access the "google" news stories as the site has been slashdotted.
Anyone have a mirror?
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
http://reptilian.net/BTX_Spec_1_0.pdf
http://web.newsguy.com/nstrom/BTX_Spec_1_0.pdf
FWIW Macs have more or less done this ever since OS X came out. I just nudge the power button on my Apple TFT, and the Mac instantly goes into sleep mode; nudge it again and it wakes up in about a second.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
is not another desktop form factor.
This is just a neato way to make your old case and PSU obsolete come next upgrade. Hooray!
At least BabyAT to ATX made some sense, in that it generally relocated the hotter CPUs next to PSU fans, etc...
What we need is a common laptop form factor. I want to be able to buy an empty laptop chassis/lcd, my own mobo, drive, etc, etc an put one together... While possible, its a major hoof in the noots right now. I want to build a laptop with a trackball and full sized keyboard and not one of those useless touchpads or thumbsticks. I dont care if it's 8 inches wider than Dells junk.
Etc etc
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I can see it now. My shiney new home multimedia ... ... 8^(
computer gets an urgent request from Microsoft
Update, and the damn thing gets locked into a
typical WTF reboot sequence. And since I can't
really ever turn the damn thing off to clear
memory, I will be forced to disassemble it
with a 12-gage
Steadily decreasing box size, I smell a problem.
Wumpus
You mean like MicroATX, FlexATX, or even MiniITX?
The difference is the above ffs are all somewhat interchangable - you can stick a flexATX board in a full ATX tower with a 700 watt ATX PSU if you wanted to.
This is more like the switch from AT to ATX - new case, new PSU, etc..
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I have been yelling at people about putting back slashes in URLS for soooo long and now slashdot dang goes and does it! It just so wong I just have to rant.
Hey slashdot! Fix your website! What did you write it with frontpage?! Slashdot: News for those using MSIE 5 or higher. Yech. Whatever.
Congradulations, you now have what any ATX PC with Windows (or a properly set up Linux) has had since 1998.
Yeah, but windows standby sucks, at least on 9x - probably more than half the time I've had to reboot 9x boxes on standby. And you have to do Start -> Shut Down -> Standby, instead of just tapping a button as you get up to leave. X does it right; fast, stable, and easy. BTW, Classic has supported Sleep since the first PPCs came out. Works OK, at least better than Win..
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I'll tell ya what's next. I give up. That's what's next! I'm going to go dig up my Tandy 1000 with its state-of-the-art XT form factor. I used to think that the best advantage of a pc was its modularity, but each time they come out with a new form factor I have to buy a whole new everything. Bleh....
('tho I give props to the mini-itx, tres cool)
So... basically you have no idea what you're on about but thought you found a good spot to stick in an anti-apple comment?
They already did: They are called microBTX and picoBTX. See the PDF...
No text to mention, but read on my dying friends.
PC's should get bigger, not smaller. We have plenty of space on our desktops, so I don't see why I should have to sacrifice speed for space.
What Intel should do is crank up CPU speeds to unreal heights - like 10 Ghz and put a monster cooling system on it. I don't mind if I have to plug the heat sink system into a separate outlet.
What Seagate should do is increase HD size to 100 terabytes and put a huge heat sink on that too. If I have to plug the hard drive and heat sink into separate outlets, that should be fine. I have plenty of free outlets on my power strip.
What NVidia should do is make a triple-slot GeForce FX2. Make it 10 times faster, with a huge huge heat sink fan that I can plug into another outlet.
With all this, I think the new PC form factor should be a cube, about 3 feet on all sides.
For the super-custom stuff you're talking about. Sure, it would be perfectly possible - but the parts would be so low-volume that the cost would be astronomical, probably far more than just buying an off-the-shelf laptop.
Anyway, any standard laptop form factor nowadays would be rather thin and not overly wide, certainly nothing you could fit a trackball and full-size keyboard in without a hacksaw and some bondo.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
No text to mention, but stay tuned my dying friends.
Every John Doe sits at home with WIFI.... Lets pray to big Bill that Windows enables this by default.....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Call me silly, but I rather liked the VME and/or multi-bus for computers. [http://www.vita.com/vmefaq/index.html]
For those not familar, basicly you had a series of cards that you shoved directly into the case it self, without need of popping the top. Two thumbscrews for each card and it just slids on out. [http://www.vita.com/vmefaq/resources/Image2.gif]
There was no *motherboard* per say but rather a "cpu board" but basicly it was the same thing. While VME boards were "huge", I can imagine much in the way of scalability for a trimmed up variation of the theme. Small desktop systems can enjoy the benifits of having a smaller backplane with only 3 or 4 slots, more robust users could enjoy larger cases with just more slots but essentaly the same motherboard.
Silly idea, probally. It would produce less in the way of waste in every motherboard wouldn't need yet another slew of slots on it. Cards would be mounted at two points rather then one point without fear of one end poping up when you put the screw in like was an issue with AGP video cards.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Seeing as the BTX spec calls for a specific channel to the front of the case to allow air for cooling the CPU, I can already see the air conditioner + dryer vent hose into front of case mods. Also, the part of the spec which calls for a method to mount a device through the motherboard to the chassis, sort of like the original P4 heatsinks, is wonderful. It should be so much easier to design high performance, low noise coolers now.
You're parsing the sentence wrong. Clearer sentences would be:
If the PC loses power, this technology quickly recovers without losing data. Yes, under normal operation you don't have to reboot the PC.
This is an extension to what I do with my ATX PC every night. It's called Suspend-To-RAM (S3).
I want the CPU/motherboard manufactures to go back to SLOT style processors. The one thing that always ticked me off was the never ending form factor changes. I thought there was nothing wrong with slot 1 processors and ATX boards, I went to all the trouble to build a dualie slot 1 only to find that Intel went back to "socket" style CPUs..
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
... which is nice.
ok, i understand the rational for moving the CPU, in fact i applaud it, get my 60W space heater out from behind large large chunk of hot metal we call the PSU. I know many cases now turn the PSU 90 degrees from the ATX spec and mount it above the CPU, but requring good air flow around the CPU is nice addition. but some things here make very little sense to me. Like the +12V connector, they've already moved to a 24 pin BTX connector, so it's not like like they need legacy support for ATX boards, so why not make the +12V CPU power source part of the BTX connector? do they enjoy adding pigtails to clutter the inside of my case? -12VDC? i'm all for ensureing legacy support, but seriously what was the last desktop device to need a -12VDC rail? I want innovation for the sake of doing things better, not for making me buy new stuff. Looks to me like BTX is far more 'time to buy a new case' than 'hey we cleaned up alot of the hacks in ATX and tossed out the stuff we don't need anymore.'
Just look at the size of that case compared to the leaf in the backgroud -- I'll bet you could get a few servers in the space of a 5 1/4" drive bay.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"We're going after you gnerds who think you can upgrade by just plugging a new CPU or memory stick into your existing MB instead of buying a whole new computer. Muahahahahahahaha!"
I'd like to see a smart backplane that allowed me to plug multiple CPUs, display cards, NICs, disk controllers, etc but arbitrarily combine them without changing cabling or dissassembling.
We used to have this weird "communications server" that had a bunch of slots where you could mount smallish motherboards; it had one keyboard/mouse/monitor, and you could switch the display among all of them. This was 8 years ago and they were all 386s (I think we had one 486-20 card), but that was just a precursor to today's blade systems which aren't as flexible as I'd like.
The irony of that statement is rich. Just like an RCA TV perhaps? RCA used to dominate TV sales, distribution and service. What else whould you expect from the evil radio corporation that crushed the inventor of TV? In any case, they made crappy TVs that needed much service. Everyone in the supply train but the customer was happy until others started making reliable TVs. RCA lost out and has yet to recover. My free software run computers dont' need to be turned off and don't blow up if they are. M$ boot times, registry corruption and other marketing induced garbage are not a factor. Instant off to me is just another M$ workaround and is best avoided. That's what people think of "consumer devices."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
curious. after looking at the pdf from one of the mirrors, i wondered why the oddball metric measurements- and the answer is they're conversions from english. it's an even 10.5" deep, +/- .01". .25 millimeter.
all the other dimensions are based around english measurements, too, and have variances of 1/100 of an inch or
i presume this is for case compatibility, and existing case have slots that work out that way, too, so to avoid having to make a new case that replaces ATX, this is the compromise.
i wonder though- does this hurt manufacturing in the long run? is it harder for foreign factories to make something that fits *precisely* because of this? having spent much time over the years fighting to make things fit, especially cards, is it time to go to a more exact metric squaring?
or when manufacturing, does it really matter? is 266.7 mm just as easy to attain as 270?
some of you mechanical engineers, feel free to add.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
I read the PDF, and it provides space for "the" CPU, and defines the surrounding cooling space... and so seems to leave dual-CPUs out in the cold. So what version of what motherboard spec provides for dual CPUs?
Man they must be joking the standard tower form, has space for 2 Optical Drives (I assume they mean 5 1/4), one Floppy and one hard disk! There isn't even a required gap, in front of the hard disk for a fan!
It may be great for the processor but it justs sucks for all the other hardware.
James
What all people who work on computers on a regular basis would say is that we all would like some kind of standard connector for the re-set button, the power button and the Hard Drive LED. Why can't they put some thought in designing that part of the computer. I remeber having to look up motherboard manuals on the net because I had no idea which connector went where on the front panel. Mabye they should design an all encompassing front panel connector that would include some USB ports in them. Or mabye a standard for soundcard where you can re-direct your speakers to the front for people who use headphones.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The new BTX spec looks fine, except they forgot something... I can see the volumetric zones for the first CPU but what about the second? Will power users PCs be based around a different form factor?
No hyperthreading doesn't count as 2 CPUs. I know Intel are talking about puting two cores on one die but isn't that just going to result in a single die giving generating over 200W of heat! Is the air intake big enough?
I just looked at the nice picture in the pdf and I struck me that it seems that the board is mounted the other way around. Let me explain.
...
The expandable tower (which I'm sure will be 'expandable, making it where you can lt it grow upwards to make more room for optical/hard drives.) seems to be either upside down (someone mention the PSU beeing 'on the bottom' meaning that that image is upside down, and cd rom drives would be on the bottom. I doubt that, so I think we are supposed to be looking 'through' the case, e.g. we are looking through the motherboard. So systems would be 'the other way' around.
One big advantage I can see in that is that PCI and probably PCI-Express cards aren't mounted upside down anymore, e.g. with the chips up again, like back in the ISA days. I can see how that will affect thermal problems, as the old spec makes videocards hard(er) to cool.
Also what I miss is hard drive etc connectors on the layout. The old ATX spec did have recommandations for placement of such connecters, aswell as power connectors. I can imagine the power going between rear pannel and onder those 'bridging' chips, or maybe even squeese it between mem/real panel and the 12V connect going somewhere near the CPU (AMD doesn't use this approach does it? or is it even up to mobo designers to use the 12V rail instead of the allready loaded 5V rail. Then again, only thing nowadays really needing 12V are motors in PC's right?) but what about sata connectors? do they really suggest to have those run all accross the mobo? and floppy? not much squeesing left for that one, so is that gonna be under the cpu so it'll run over the CPU?
Agreed though that if you put a fan in fron (where it says chassis) you do have a nice airflow pathway, not cooling the I/O card slots aswell, but who needs those right? (also they don't get as ot except for video) So all in all it's kinda neat to see a maybe better designed standard. I think AMD boards will go with that standard aswell sooner or later, as it's kinda up to the motherboard designers. Anyway this was my rant : )
P.S. It's kinda strange that they still include the floppy disk, that one should have died a long time ago
How anyone can decide that a "pico" version of a new motherboard spec should be larger than the MiniITX standard of 17cm I don't know. Talk about a step backwards.
I just get a "too many users message." Oh no, guess what it's IIS!!! Would Apache have this problem? I think not!
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
the Applied Engineering RAMFactor 1MB card I had in my Apple ][ that was backed by a gelcell battery c. 1981(?). Because the RAM never powered off even when the system did, when you turned the system on,there was no boot process to go through. Presto, instant on.
Good God. I'm serious. Later I had one one their 6A power supplies with the internal 40MB Western Digital hard drive. Is everyone so young here as to thing I'm making this up?