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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."
Who bets this will be the new marketing feature to "power users"? Why don't we just stick with ATX? It's suited us fine for years, computers run too hot these days, maybe we ought to concentrate on stability and quality rather than quantity and TLA's...
Exactly. So we don't blame the physics exactly because it makes more sense to blame Intel for making design choices that don't reflect real-world priorities.
I've had this sig for three days.
There are some major problems with the BTX Specification. Some things are better than ATX, some are worse...
1) BTX forces you to cool your video card, north bridge, memory, and CPU with the same fan/duct combo. the BTX specification allows ONE 80mm fan to drive the wind tunnel.
This is a major design flaw. There is no possible way on earth that high end systems will be able to use the BTX form factor. Memory is getting hotter every year as clock ramps. North bridges too (not for athlon64, but other platforms it has) Video cards are already putting out more heat than even the hottest CPU's. You just can't push enough air with a single fan to cool all these components running under load unless you are using mid to low end hardware. It just won't happen.
2) BTX doesn't leave room for anything larger than 80mm at the end of the fan duct. This is a MAJOR problem.
This is actually a drawback from the ATX standard, where even the slimmest ATX cases have the physical room to house a 120mm fan in both the front intake, and rear exhaust. This means slower, lower powered fans pushing the same amount of air. This keeps your fans lasting longer, reduce maintenance needs, and reduce overall TCO. In the BTX specification, you are forced to use high speed 80mm fans to keep the system from overheating, even in a midrange setup. You simply cannot cool modern day video cards and northbridges, and memory banks and CPUs with just 1 80mm fan, no matter how efficient the ducting system is.
Suggestions for improvement:
1) Seperate the video card from the BTX wind tunnel. Put it at the bottom of the case, and make it part of its own tunnel. This would allow you to spin the fans dramatically slower and have overall cooler system.
2) Resize the ducting so 120mm fans fit properly. There is nothing worse than an 80mm fan whining in your ear running at 5,000 RPM's when you could have a 120 or 92mm fan running half the speed.
3) Do the same large fan combo for the video card tunnel.
4) Integrate circuitry that monitors temperature of the exhaust air of these 2 compartments. Set reasonable thresholds for this temperature, and have the fans spin up to a higher speed when the temperature rises such that you know that particular compartment is under load. For instance, if you load up Doom3, the video card compartment exhaust will heat up, thus requiring more airflow and thust faster fan spinning. This is not currently available on any standard systems and so far the only consumer systems which ship with microchip controlled fans are apple computers (sadly). No, thermister fans do no good, as they are tuned such that they are always running full speed (even at lowest temperature) or always running low speed (even at highest temperature). you need something which allows the PC Builder to adjust the thresholds.
4) Do away with all chipset mini fans and insted attach very large passive heatsinks. Be sure to make these heatsinks part of the wind tunnel of its repsective compartment.
5)...
6) Profit!
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
I think Intel's new form factor is more than a little imbalanced in that it's centred around the CPU. Just when we should be trying to strike a balance between performance and power consumption, Intel's design uses a "thermal module" that looks like it's custom made for a new generation of superhot CPUs like the >100W Prescott.
This is not a good indication of where they're trying to take us. While there will always be performance freaks out there who will demand higher benchmark results even if it means central-heating-in-a-775-pin-socket, there has to be a more sensible middle ground for the rest of us, even if that means slowing down the pace a bit.
AMD seems to have taken a slightly more sensible approach, with its Athlon 64 CPU peaking at less than 90W and implementation of a speed throttling technology they've branded "Cool 'n' Quiet". But it's still a pretty hot CPU at full speed.
What we really need is better middle ground. For a desktop PC at the moment you can choose between very fast and very power hungry Pentium 4s and Athlons, or very cool but very slow VIA C3s or Edens. But there's not much in-between.
Tests have shown that if you underclock/undervolt an Athlon XP, you can retain very good performance while drastically cutting power consumption (to P3 levels and below). Effectively, it's the opposite of overclocking. This setup is ideal for people who desire all the architectural benefits of the latest platforms, but don't quite require the CPU power. But despite this, it's still a very uncommon and unsupported approach.
Instead of recruiting everyone in their race to the top and designing new form factors to cope with the power-hungry CPUs that result, why don't AMD and Intel offer us cheaper CPUs with more sensible power consumption for the mainstream, and give people a genuinely balanced choice? Why can't I buy a nice, cool-running Barton clocked at 1166MHz, or a 2GHz Northwood?
On the other hand, things might get a bit choppy when Joe User tries to run Flight Simulator. So perhaps AMD does have the right approach after all with its Athlon 64: 2GHz when you need it, but a nice cool 800MHz when running web browsers and office programs.