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.
The BTX Specification will no doubt help with video card and north bridge cooling, allowing passive, very large heatsinks on both. The problem will lie in CPU cooling...
The problem with BTX, and that ATX has no problem, is the CPU cooling. In ATX, the video card is the problem, in BTX, the problem lies with the CPU. They make the CPU the end of the tunnel, where all the hot air accumulates before it is exhausted out of the case. Most high end video cards already get hotter (temperature wise) than cpu's in ATX computers, and heat wise, already produce equal or marginally less total heat, depending on the system. Doubling the heat that the CPU has to deal with is NOT going to help BTX become widely accepted in the enthusiast market. Remember, its the enthusiasts that will decide if BTX is worth a crap or not. Because none of the OEM's (except white boxers) use standard case design anyway.
I imagine BTX standards will be modified to change this early in its life, just like they did to the ATX 1.1 spec when it first arrived. There is no possible way you can put a high end video card and CPU in the same wind tunnel and expect any reasonable cooling performance for any reasonable noise and dust levels. It just isn't going to happen. Until the video card and CPU are seperated into seperate cooling compartments (like the current AGP + Extra PCI Slot ATX cases do for the video card) BTX will stay in the low end of the market. You just can't cool a CPU with air that has already been heated up by 5-15C by the video card.
On top of all this, the BTX specification disallows today's norm of large, slow spinning variable 120mm fans in the front and back of the case. Insted, they would rather everyone have a single fan cooling the entire computer. This specification needs a lot of work before it is ready for prime time. That's for sure.
"Good Troll, but *Red Hat* is the one innovating here."
Ever heard of the debian project? It has lots of commercial spinoffs, with a comunity maintained base system. In fact, it is the foundation of: UserLinux, Xandros, Progeny Linux, Knoppix, and Lindows OS.
In fact, Fedora, and Mandrake's new distribution, are both based around the social community model which already exists in Debian. RedHat just took this model and applied it to their proprietary distribution. There's nothing new to see here.
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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!
The BTX Specification will no doubt help with video card and north bridge cooling, allowing passive, very large heatsinks on both. The problem will lie in CPU cooling...
The problem with BTX, and that ATX has no problem, is the CPU cooling. In ATX, the video card is the problem, in BTX, the problem lies with the CPU. They make the CPU the end of the tunnel, where all the hot air accumulates before it is exhausted out of the case. Most high end video cards already get hotter (temperature wise) than cpu's in ATX computers, and heat wise, already produce equal or marginally less total heat, depending on the system. Doubling the heat that the CPU has to deal with is NOT going to help BTX become widely accepted in the enthusiast market. Remember, its the enthusiasts that will decide if BTX is worth a crap or not. Because none of the OEM's (except white boxers) use standard case design anyway.
I imagine BTX standards will be modified to change this early in its life, just like they did to the ATX 1.1 spec when it first arrived. There is no possible way you can put a high end video card and CPU in the same wind tunnel and expect any reasonable cooling performance for any reasonable noise and dust levels. It just isn't going to happen. Until the video card and CPU are seperated into seperate cooling compartments (like the current AGP + Extra PCI Slot ATX cases do for the video card) BTX will stay in the low end of the market. You just can't cool a CPU with air that has already been heated up by 5-15C by the video card.
On top of all this, the BTX specification disallows today's norm of large, slow spinning variable 120mm fans in the front and back of the case. Insted, they would rather everyone have a single fan cooling the entire computer. This specification needs a lot of work before it is ready for prime time. That's for sure.
"Good Troll, but *Red Hat* is the one innovating here."
Ever heard of the debian project? It has lots of commercial spinoffs, with a comunity maintained base system. In fact, it is the foundation of: UserLinux, Xandros, Progeny Linux, Knoppix, and Lindows OS.
In fact, Fedora, and Mandrake's new distribution, are both based around the social community model which already exists in Debian. RedHat just took this model and applied it to their proprietary distribution. There's nothing new to see here.