motherboards Why Did BTX Die?

[K9Thefirst1]

I'm an IT student at a trade school (and I am graduating just as the pandemic stabs the economy, FML), and one thing has made me curious ever since we covered motherboard form factors. Specifically, how the form factor that was supposed to replace the venerable ATX family of form factors, BTX, was killed almost as soon as it was released.

 

So I was wondering why that is. I grant you, the extent of my knowledge of the form factor is that the RAM slots were oriented to be parallel with the Expansion slots, and so they wouldn't be in the way of the airflow over the CPU and its cooler. And that's it. As far as I know, there wasn't - or shouldn't - be any other differences between the two standards.

 

So I guess that's my real question: Why hasn't ATX adopted the one major physical difference between the two form factors, especially for the Enthusiast (and perhaps Research) market where cooling is so vital to performance that some are even willing to de-lid their CPUs in order to mod the chip for maximum cooling.

 

...Is there a place we can make requests for Tech Quickie episodes?

[minibois]

3 minutes ago, K9Thefirst1 said:

...Is there a place we can make requests for Tech Quickie episodes?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

17 minutes ago, K9Thefirst1 said:

And that's it. As far as I know, there wasn't - or shouldn't - be any other differences between the two standards.

Well the cpu was also at the front of the board, and got fresh air from the intake at the front

 

There normally wasn't any exaust fans, just the main intake at the front.

 

The layout was backwards, so a dual slot card will stick up and normally not fit in a 16 at the top.

 

 

I think the big killer was core 2 chips. BTX was made to deal with hot p4 and pentium d chips, and with core 2 that wasn't an issue anymore.

[svmlegacy]

2 hours ago, K9Thefirst1 said:

I'm an IT student at a trade school (and I am graduating just as the pandemic stabs the economy, FML), and one thing has made me curious ever since we covered motherboard form factors. Specifically, how the form factor that was supposed to replace the venerable ATX family of form factors, BTX, was killed almost as soon as it was released.

 

So I was wondering why that is. I grant you, the extent of my knowledge of the form factor is that the RAM slots were oriented to be parallel with the Expansion slots, and so they wouldn't be in the way of the airflow over the CPU and its cooler. And that's it. As far as I know, there wasn't - or shouldn't - be any other differences between the two standards.

 

So I guess that's my real question: Why hasn't ATX adopted the one major physical difference between the two form factors, especially for the Enthusiast (and perhaps Research) market where cooling is so vital to performance that some are even willing to de-lid their CPUs in order to mod the chip for maximum cooling.

 

...Is there a place we can make requests for Tech Quickie episodes?

There in fact, are board which have the DIMM slots parallel with the expansion ports. EVGA Z390 DARK, and my personal Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe, for example. My guess is that the BTX "advantages" really weren't there for the consumer, and it required a completely different case layout. This would have stratified the cases for either ATX or BTX.

[Kilrah]

Funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

 

Quote

BTX (for Balanced Technology eXtended) is a form factor for motherboards, originally intended to be the replacement for the aging ATX motherboard form factor in late 2004 and early 2005.

It was designed to alleviate some of the issues that arose from using newer technologies (which often demand more power and create more heat) on motherboards compliant with the circa 1996 ATX specification.

And here we are still using ATX 15 years later 

 

So apparently it was designed to cool the "scorching" P4s that were replaced by Core which was much less power hungry and removed the need... yet funnily enough it looks like the highest TDP SKUs of those P4 "furnaces" is about 115W, which is nothing compared to some of today's parts... I'm currently running a CPU that will pump up to 280W, and an ATX case can deal with it just fine... and I can run my 9900K at 130W in a 4.7L case with a GPU.

 

I think it just shows that people learnt case airflow was a thing and just putting a couple more cheap fans was probably more sensible than redesigning the whole form factor.

 

Nowadays we're at a stage where any "consumer" mid level PC runs cool enough that nothing special is required, and for the few who want high performance cooling has become part of the fun, so all is good with the world...

 

Pretty crazy that we're using a 24 year old standard. But hey, if it works it works.