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Balance Technology Extended (BTX) Explained
Anonymous Coward writes "The folks over at TweakTown have just posted an article which talks about Balance Technology Extended (BTX) - Intel's upcoming new form factor which will replace the aging ATX form factor standard we've grown used to. BTX is meant to offer better cooling and quiet computing through its smart design."
More info, greater bandwidth, fewer ads, etc at Form Factors and, of course, Intel.
half cocked attempt to keep the intel/MS upgrade spiral happening.
Some informed information is avaialable here.
However this is also half cocked.
You can download a copy of the BTX spec in PDF from this site.
Try This
Or This
Or This
Here's a few other links to similar data:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876
http://www.dvhardware.net/article.php?sid=1894 Has PDF's of the Spec.
http://www.intel.com/update/contents/dt10031.htm
Introduction
The computer industry is constantly evolving and building upon technology with as much mind for the future as possible. However with such a constantly changing industry, standards which we rely on do not always anticipate the changes that occur in the future. That had been the case for the AT form factor and the issues with it were addressed by the creation of the ATX Form Factor all those years ago - the design specification which computer companies abide by when designing and manufacturing their products for the PC.
Now, as ATX and its closest cousins begin to show its age from the advent of new technologies like Serial ATA and PCI Express, a new form factor is seen as a need by many companies and Intel has the answer - it's called Balanced Technology eXtended (BTX). BTX, in its basic principle design, is very similar to that of ATX, but there are a slew of changes that can and will be utilized to show that it has the potential to improve the system as a whole in terms of acoustics and heat dissipation.
Intel has been kind enough to provide us with some technical information and pictures on BTX. Let's see what the future holds for us!
The BTX specifications call for a new location for the system processor. The relative position, at a locale close to the top and front of the motherboard, allows for a new way of cooling not only the processor but the highest heat producing components of the system through the use of a "thermal module."
The thermal module consists of a duct, seal, heatsink, fan, and clip. The duct encloses the heatsink area and forces the air inducted through the massive fan over the heatsink and processor directly to the upper back of the system in a tower case. After the airflow provides cooling for the processor, it continues through the system to the graphics subsystem, whether it is on a riser card or directly into a PCI Express slot, providing additional cooling to the video card. Supposedly, airflow then trickles throughout the rest of the system to the memory and the various other internal components.
The thermal module of BTX represents how the LGA-775 Prescott will have to be cooled. BTX will more than likely be coming to the market at the same time as the LGA-775 Prescott processors with such a higher heat production. The first motherboards we will see with BTX will probably be high-end solutions that target the wealthiest enthusiasts and workstation systems then as usual we'll see more affordable systems come onto the scene shortly afterwards.
BTX, unlike any prior standard form factor, was developed to support three different system sizes. With BTX, we have the standard BTX, microBTX, and picoBTX forms. At the IDF of Fall 2003, the reference systems Intel demonstrated were in the microBTX and standard BTX forms. With the microBTX form occupying only 12.9 Liters and regular BTX form system not much larger, Intel has been able to push acceptance of BTX with OEM manufacturers with some ease.
PicoBTX, the smallest of the BTX forms, is the most interesting of the BTX form factors, in my opinion. Intel will be demonstrating 6.9 Liter systems based around picoBTX, smaller than any small form factor PCs on the market. The 6.9 Liter system will be approximately 3.1 Liters smaller than the smallest SFF PCs currently on the market today from such companies as Shuttle. This compact size will push the evolution of the compact PC and increase the acceptance of BTX, specifically by SFF PC builders and users interested in buying SFF PCs - You can already imagine the SFF leaders of the industry rubbing their hands together.
An interesting thing about the different sizes of BTX is how Intel specifications reduce the need to shift system components significantly. With BTX locating most essential system components in the upper portion of the motherboard, there is a simple move of removing a few peripheral slots with each reduction in size, bringing the total peripheral slots to one with picoBTX.
Since BTX reference desig
It was my understanding (from articles about last year's IDF where this was intro'd) that the BTX design basically mandates a wind tunnel from the front of the case, over the CPU / chipset, out the back - with one "wall" of the tunnel typically being implemented by a video card. There was talk that both the CPU *and* the video card could revert to passive heatsinks, with large (slow rpm) fans driving the air through the tunnel. Regardless of the specifics, I'm positive that the BTX form factor will help video card cooling.
Dan
The new form factor is probably not strictly necessary, but is useful, given the move to much smaller connectors (PCI Express, USB, SATA, etc.). Serial connections are primarily institute because they use fewer pins, and so save money. The costs of packaging on modern chips, with hundreds of pins and BBGAs, is enormous. You can save more money if you engineer the form factor to go with it.
1 876. pdf. htm
PCI Express also allows low-profile cards, so with BTX, you can make much smaller machines if you go legacy-free (no PCI, AGP, MCA, VESA, EISA, or ISA slots). Generally, boards are much more integrated now, use solely SMT components, small connectors, and are cheaper, but the overall system also requires less room. Observe the number of PCI cards that consist of a 1" sliver of PCB, right up to the back of the computer, and then extend to full PCI height. That's expensive, and wastes space. The height of PCI comes from the days of ISA, with through-hole parts and 25 pin connectors going to printers. The only big cards I've seen in the past many years are custom boards and graphics cards. Graphics cards have a funky horizontal option in BTX.
To relieve the slashdotted server, a similar review:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=
The actual spec:
http://web.newsguy.com/nstrom/BTX_Spec_1_0
Intel's info about it:
http://www.intel.com/update/contents/dt10031
Please be kind on this server: MIRROR
BTX and ATX are totally incompatible concerning physical layout. The expansion slots are on the other side of the board, and the processor is in a different spot.
From what I have seen, there will be no AGP on BTX boards. Instead, there will be a PCI Express 1x16 port, which will offer bandwidth of 8GB/s.
You have memory riser cards. They are called DIMMs, SIMMs, and RIMMs, you young whipper-snapper. You do not know the pain of plugging in, chip-by-chip, DRAM chips, in a specific and defined order.
It's most likely the case that, unless you are talking about a NUMA system (which is really, at this stage of the game, only for high-end server systems where a standard architecture is not yet a good idea) electrical interference, impedence, power concerns, speed of light, etc. all work together to make you really only want a few memory sockets, say 4 tops. Otherwise, it just won't work without hurting performance in a major way.
Gentoo Sucks
From the anandtech article linked many times elsewhere: "Just in case you were told otherwise, the BTX form factor is largely incompatible with the ATX form factor..."
It looks from some of the pictures like the location of the slots will be entirely reversed, with the MoBo mounted on the other side of the case (Don't know if these pictures have been flipped however).
Luckily it looks like you'll still be able to use your existing PSU in most cases, unless you're trying to build a miniature sized system.
None of the articles I have seen even mention keeping an AGP port on the MoBo, but I suppose it could be possible for a manufacturer to put one in place of one of the PCI-X or PCI slots (with the correct spacing of course).
This is all assuming that you have good reason to bother upgrading such a system to BTX - why not keep it as ATX for now and then build your next one as BTX? After all, it is a shame to lose half of your components just to change the form factor, as you said...
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
Are there really people out there who are going to buy a brand new computer but still have a vital need for an old keyboard?
h tm l
Goddammit YES. The IBM Model M is the best keyboard ever made. I have 6 of them. Typing on one is an epiphany. The Stuff Of Legend.
And they have a PS/2 connection.
http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/keyboard.
To relieve the slashdotted server, a similar review:
The actual spec (PDF!):
Intel's info about it:
I've mirred it here:
http://209.15.36.47/btx.htm
the lack of a standardized layout of ports and such on the back means you have to make like 30 cut outs on each case to get it to work with every mobo on the market
That's a design feature in the ATX spec. It fixes the problem that the old AT-style cases had where you were forced into using expansion slot headers or punch-outs in order to provide access for connectors other then the AT-keyboard cable. If you look at any ATX motherboard on the market today, you'll see that they come with a ~1.5"x4" metal insert that fits into a standard cutout area on the back of the ATX-case and which matches up to whatever ports the vendor decided to put on the motherboard.
Yes, the G5 is probably prettier on the inside... but you get what you pay for, but with lack of options (there's only one maker for motherboard that you put inside a G5). OTOH, with the ATX-spec, you can mix-n-match motherboards and cases to get exactly what you want. The downside is that you have to do cable/wire management yourself (rounded cables and a bit of wire-tie do just fine).
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
IIRC from my super-special "Intel Training" when these things came out, the P60 was rated to operate at temperatures as high as 75C. The wild thing was doing the temperature test -- the "approved method" was to load the DOS edit program, tap the alt key, and wait a while. It seems that the editor went into a very tight loop when the menu thingamagig was up.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You also seem to think the airflow is from back to front. I got the impression it was the other direction. Hence, the CPU isn't where the heat problems will be. It's the graphics card.
On the whole, BTX strikes me as an excuse to design a new specification to deal with Prescott's outrageous heat output, rather than taking an existing suitable spec (like WTX) and updating it for PCI-Express. WTX was designed to deal with processor heat outputs up to 200W and system heat outputs up to around 600W (it was designed for dual processor workstations). That would be more than sufficient for even the most decked out enthusiast systems.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Well AGP is theoritically obsleted by PCI Xpress. See we actually have kind of a shitty situation right now. WE have only one slot that will work with performance graphics cards. That means if you have 2 or more monitors and want them all to have a performance graphics card (maybe you do engineering work, or maybe you're just a power gamer) you're SOL. PCI Xpress should cure that, you ought to be able to get a board with enough high-speed slots to have plenty of graphics cards, or other high performance devices. Also AGP sucks at talking back to the CPU. No big deal in the past, you pushed stuff to the graphics card and didn't care. Now, however, graphics cards are becomming highly programmable. It is becomming desirable to have efficient 2-way communication with them, which PCI Xpress should allow.
"The Apple G5 case is the best designed case around IMHFO and the BTX is still behind it on a number of fronts."
It is far easier to design a case that works with a single power supply and a single motherboard than it is to design a case that works with a whole class of power supplies, motherboards, CPUs, and other technologies that haven't even been invented.
ATX does a great job in many regards. Anyone can take any ATX compatible board and put it in an ATX compatible case. The power supply is standard, and so is the form factor.
Do note that many PC companies use special thermal solutions that expel hot air directly out the back of the case already. Dell in particular comes to mind. BTX simply standardizes this so it works in whitebox PCs as well.