Opinions on BTX Boards?

[tgxiii]

With the upcoming new form factor for motherboards, BTX, coming up, I was wondering what your opinions are on it. What do you like/dislike about it?

I personally like the progress of technology and the improvements that come along with it. I especially like the improved airflow concept.

What I don't like is spending the money to upgrade. I was kinda ticked to find out that my motherboard won't support the upcoming Prescott core. Now, if I wanna keep up with technology, I'm going to have to upgrade my motherboard AND my case.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876

[Xeroid]

Now, if I wanna keep up with technology, I'm going to have to upgrade my motherboard AND my case.

I was kind of hoping ATX would hang around for a while. You know the way AT did. There for a while you could buy AT or ATX mobos and cases.

[Gait_Keeper]

Great link, good reading

I'll wait and see

[The Terk]

i think its great that they are tryin to make a more quieter and cooler computer just by rearranging things... but it was just weird looking at that and thinkin "its all backwards!!"

[Xeroid]

Originally posted by The Terk
i think its great that they are tryin to make a more quieter and cooler computer just by rearranging things... but it was just weird looking at that and thinkin "its all backwards!!"

A couple of years from now people will be looking at old ATX boards and say the same thing.

[XxCowOfChaosxX]

i hope they will fit atx cases

[tgxiii]

No... they won't fit ATX cases. It says so in the article. The form factor is really different.

[PresterJohn]

on the small-form factor, the new layout might make a difference but for the tower configuration, i really don't see any differences re: cooling. the cpu/hs is still in roughly the same place.

[tgxiii]

It's not that I don't believe you, PresterJohn, but I just made my comment based on what I read on the article:

From the second page of the article:
Just in case you were told otherwise, the BTX form factor is largely incompatible with the ATX form factor - the only area where this doesn't fully apply is in power supply support, as you can use ATX power supplies with BTX motherboards (more on this later).

You're right, though. When I was reading the article, I did not understand why a BTX mobo can't fit in an ATX case.

[PresterJohn]

Originally posted by tgxiii
You're right, though. When I was reading the article, I did not understand why a BTX mobo can't fit in an ATX case.

from the looks of it, the btx mobo wouldn't fit an atx case because the pci clots and the cpu location are flip-flopped. i really don't have a problem with that...

but if you look at the tower picture, the cpu/hsf still are located under the PS which is pretty much what we had in atx towers. all they did was change the mounting side within the case from right to left.