[Grey Wolf]

An Inquirer article on the subject:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19795
And a review of an early BTX case:
http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2276

And for those worrying about your cases you just bought: Don't worry, AMD isn't planning on switching at the current point, as its actually less efficient with their designs.

[Taristin]

Intel = suck

[mitac]

Yeah. They can't solve the heat problems of their components, so they change the surroundings. While it may be efficient, it's not much of a permanent solution.

[Kamikaze]

Oh good, I was a bit worried when I bought my Chieftec case a while back.

[Knight Templar]

Why are these special?

[Flipside]

Because it compromises for Intel's sucky cooling technology whilst at the same time forces just about anyone who wants to upgrade to the latest wave of intel chips to probably have to go out and buy a whole new system instead of simply doing what computers are supposed to be designed for.

[Grey Wolf]

It's a new standard that's designed to cool the overheated Intel processors, but it's incompatible with your motherboard, case, heatsink, and power supply.

[aldo_14]

But... if manufacturers adopt it for a general case standard, it screws up AMD!

[Grey Wolf]

Nobodies really adopting it at the moment, except for some OEMs. In fact, the only widely availabe BTX case at the moment is the Cooler Master Stacker, which is both a BTX and ATX case.

[Ace Pace]

The BTX standerd isn't useless, while AMD's latest processors have great heat and power preformance, but the BTX standerd isn't just for Intel.

Notice the design layout of the board, CPU to Northbridge to GPU, with only 1 fan, this nearly equaled a full ATX tower, with no deadzones.

While no one needs BTX now, it is a neccesary standerd.

And ATX\BTX boards suck.

[Flipside]

Indeed, but the question remains whether such a serious overhaul of the external design of the board to achieve that result was the outcome of neccesity or design?

[Ace Pace]

Originally posted by Flipside
Indeed, but the question remains whether such a serious overhaul of the external design of the board to achieve that result was the outcome of neccesity or design?

In the future, both makers will have heat issue's, unless they find a way to easily shrink down massive processors into the 90nm process (Non of AMD's high end is down there, and Intel is having troubles).

Its a evolution, same way the market needed to go from the AT standerd to the ATX standerd from heat and room issue's.

Today, unless your a server, you need less and less PCI connectors, but more room for the GPU, and more cooling.

Instead of 5 system fans, a CPU fan, GPU fan, maybe even a northbridge fan, you get 1 system fan, 1 CPU fan, 1 GPU fan.
Dosn't sound better?

[Flipside]

Does indeed sound better

Well, I will see how things progress before I start looking at upgrades anyway, these things usually have a slightly bumpy start

[Ace Pace]

Originally posted by Flipside
Does indeed sound better

Well, I will see how things progress before I start looking at upgrades anyway, these things usually have a slightly bumpy start

You mean Hilly, Intel is consistently failing to get any big name onboard for BTX, and AMD is taking the high road with ATX and 90nm processors that output only 25W when idle :thepimp:

However, look what happens when the entire industry is behind something, PCI-E is greater then anyone could have guessed, with some novel uses.
Those novel uses are ATi using PCI-E as a connector inside the motherboard, beats the hell out of any other connection.