New Form Factor!

[winewood]

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

Looks like heat is becoming such an issue that the next steps must be taken. Check out the resons and movements in the next cases and mobo's.

[Zhentar]

My only complaint is reversing which side of the case the motherboard is on. Was that really neccesary? Its going to be pretty confusing and weird for a couple years.

[sevisehda]

So my first though is that the board would basically be upside down in a tower case. Then the pic showed a mirror image of a normal case. This doesn't make much sense because now the cooling solutions don't work.

To be honest it doesn't look anything has changed except for maybe the postion of the memory. As for the boards going legacy free, Abits MAX series is already like that.

[jaydee]

With everything installed it doesn't appear to be much room for water cooling gear. Also it looks as if the air enters the front, right into the CPU area, and then the heated air from that goes through the rest of the case? Seems kind of backwards thinking to me. I would rather the CPU be the last part in the loop being it is the hottest. Whatever.....

[iroc409]

ugh... no more agp, eh?

[Zhentar]

nope, AGP is being replaced with PCI express.

And Jaydee- because the CPU is by far the hottest component, it makes sense to give it the coldest air.

Its a design thats not compatable with current solutions much, but it is a pretty good design and will be great for reducing price/noise on cooling solutions.

Some Useful links:

PDF describing the formfactor:
http://www.formfactors.org/developer...X_Spec_1_0.pdf

Log in here for the next four PDFs using username: attendee password: fall2003
http://wwwp.intel.com/idf/attendee

PDFs:
http://wwwp.intel.com/idf/us/fall200...SDSIS06_OS.pdf
http://wwwp.intel.com/idf/us/fall200...SDSIS07_OS.pdf
http://wwwp.intel.com/idf/us/fall200...SDSIS09_OS.pdf
http://wwwp.intel.com/idf/us/fall200...SDSIS10_OS.pdf

[jaydee]

EDIT.

[jaydee]

Originally posted by Zhentar
nope, AGP is being replaced with PCI express.

And Jaydee- because the CPU is by far the hottest component, it makes sense to give it the coldest air.

Its a design thats not compatable with current solutions much, but it is a pretty good design and will be great for reducing price/noise on cooling solutions.

No thats insane. You don't heat the rest of your computer up by adding hot air to it. The mobo, ram, NB, and whatever other parts on the mobo are NOT adding much heat to the air before it goes through the CPU cooler on ATX cases. With this new setup your taking heated air from the cooler and RAISING the temps of the parts on the rest of the system. Now your going to have to activly cool all the parts on the mobo being the air is going to be much warmer in the case now. With ATX the CPU is at the back of the computer with fans back there (well should be there) to remove the heat. The air is NOT heated before it gets to the CPU cooler, now the air will be heated before it gets to the mobo and parts. This will only cause stability issues with mobo parts getting hotter and hotter.

So your saying your hot running Vid card is going to run better now that the air that cooles it is heated up by the CPU cooler before it gets there? Put a air cooler on you CPU and duct the air comming off it to your vid card and see what happens.

[iroc409]

so how soon is agp out? should i not be looking to upgrade to another agp card? also, what about existing atx cases like my lian li... will it still fit the new format anyways?

[Zhentar]

iroc- agp has at least another year in it; and there will probably still be AGP slots on mobos for 2, though by then buying AGP video cards could be harder. And no, BTX won't be compatible with any ATX case. ATX PSUs may or may not be compatable with BTX cases, but if they are you'll need an adapter for the mobo connector. The motherboard, aside from different component locations, is a mirror image of ATX and will be mounted on the opposite side of cases. I'm guessing that part is just a trick to prevent you from modifying ATX cases, but maybe I'm just cynical.

Jaydee- The intent of the design is to cool a high power CPU and graphics card with only 2 or three fans. I'd rather have my graphics card cooled by warmed up air moving over it and out the back from the CPU fan than have it sitting the other way, with just a pocket of hot air to cool it down. If you want to avoid that you have to add a fan, and even then slot size restrictions obstruct good quiet fans. Furthermore, your CPU needs good cooling much more than the GPU; GPUs have considerably higher tolerance for heat and considerably lower heat production than the CPU. Furthermore, the great majority of users won't even be stressing the GPU with video games at all. (And most of them won't be stressing the CPU either but thats a whole different story). Cooling this form factor effectively with two quiet fans will be quite easy; especially since the CPU receives ambient air which is efficiently vented; despite the 'preheating' of case air, case temps could easily lowered below your usual ATX case temps with the right configuration.

[jaydee]

Originally posted by Zhentar

Jaydee- The intent of the design is to cool a high power CPU and graphics card with only 2 or three fans. I'd rather have my graphics card cooled by warmed up air moving over it and out the back from the CPU fan than have it sitting the other way, with just a pocket of hot air to cool it down. If you want to avoid that you have to add a fan, and even then slot size restrictions obstruct good quiet fans. Furthermore, your CPU needs good cooling much more than the GPU; GPUs have considerably higher tolerance for heat and considerably lower heat production than the CPU. Furthermore, the great majority of users won't even be stressing the GPU with video games at all. (And most of them won't be stressing the CPU either but thats a whole different story). Cooling this form factor effectively with two quiet fans will be quite easy; especially since the CPU receives ambient air which is efficiently vented; despite the 'preheating' of case air, case temps could easily lowered below your usual ATX case temps with the right configuration.

What? Non of what you said makes any sence and one point counters the other. Well whatever. Time will tell.

[airspirit]

This form factor is a fool's crusade. It is sad that they did such a horrible job with it. In reality, there should be two "air tunnels" rather than one: one to focus on the processor and memory, and the other to deal with the bridges and the expansion cards. Each should intake and exhaust from front to back. The disk drives should be cooled from front to back as well with the intake being in front of the drives and exhausting through the power supply (yes, the power supply and drives would be at the top of the case with the optical drives in the middle). This could use a total of five 80mm panaflo L class fans which would run nearly silent but keep every portion of the case in fresh air.

It is sad that it took them years to come up with this crap.

[airspirit]

You know, they would have been better off designing a standardized watercooler with shutoff disconnects than this.

[sevisehda]

In the standard tower BTX case everything is in the same spot as it is now. If you take a look the MB IO panel is still at the top. Which means the CPU is still at the top. The MB would just rest on the oppsite side of the case. The PCI slots would have to be above the MB IO panel in order for the CPU to get the intake air. That however could be accomplished by just making an ATX case with the MB upside down.

I think if anything BTX is a marketing ploy. Moving the RAM slots and adding in PCI-E slots doesn't justify a new form factor.

BTX is just another intel solution. Does anyone remember the intel front panel header? It was supposed to standardize and simplify the front panel connection. Manufacturers put it and the old header on MBs for a while then it kind of tapered off. I think BTX will either not be used at all or will be used in its smaller forms. The full size board doesn't change enough to warrant having to make so many changes and end backward compatability.

[Zhentar]

Originally posted by airspirit
This could use a total of five 80mm panaflo L class fans which would run nearly silent but keep every portion of the case in fresh air

You want FIVE fans? That would be a big backward step. A very big backwards step. I got my system running better than that with a shitty $5 aluminum heatsink on my old pally. You guys are looking at this with an overclocker/overkill attitude; This design will make cooling 100W prescotts with 2 fans possible with little work.

Jaydee- I can see how what I said could get confusing... basically, the CPU needs cold air more than the GPU.

[nicozeg]

Originally posted by jaydee116
With everything installed it doesn't appear to be much room for water cooling gear. Also it looks as if the air enters the front, right into the CPU area, and then the heated air from that goes through the rest of the case? Seems kind of backwards thinking to me. I would rather the CPU be the last part in the loop being it is the hottest. Whatever.....

That's exactly what most watercoolers do: place the rad in the intake to take the coldest air, and then cool the rest of the components with air warmed by whatever you have in your cooling loop.

[jaydee]

Originally posted by Zhentar
You want FIVE fans? That would be a big backward step. A very big backwards step. I got my system running better than that with a shitty $5 aluminum heatsink on my old pally. You guys are looking at this with an overclocker/overkill attitude; This design will make cooling 100W prescotts with 2 fans possible with little work.

Jaydee- I can see how what I said could get confusing... basically, the CPU needs cold air more than the GPU.

Once again your points counter each other. First you say you do better than that with a shitty $5 AL fan which tells me right there there is no justification for BTX, and then you say this design will cool a 100watt prescott (which I havn't seen any evidence that that it will be 100W, if so THAT is a HUGE step backwards) with 2 fans, which you said you could do anyway with an ATX case.

nicoseg: Yes I know. But it works no? Why make a new standard for no reason.

[Zhentar]

My set up was nothing an OEM would want.. the point is BTX won't have to go through all the work and mods I did to get a quiet set up; it will be cheap and easy to duct a near silent system, on a higher output processor than I was using.

And as for prescott, its been confirmed that the 3.2 ghz will have 103 watt power consumption, which leads to the concerns that current i865/875 motherboards won't have the VRs needed for prescott compatbility. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11588 shows its not a temporary trend; thus the reason they're making a new form factor to handle it.

[Zogthetroll]

yeah, i know what you mean. The voices in my head are chanting "Marketing ploy, can't use old parts, must buy new ones."
on the other hand maybe i'm just being overly cynical and not grasping the idea behind the redesign. besides, as was pointed out, it doesn't really seem to embrace anything radically different, other than the pci-e. passive gpu cooling, zalman's got that one covered, and with the fan configuration they seem to have they've gone to having fairly neutral air pressure in the case, that's bound to create some dead spots. or am i completely missing something here???

[jaydee]

Originally posted by Zhentar
My set up was nothing an OEM would want.. the point is BTX won't have to go through all the work and mods I did to get a quiet set up; it will be cheap and easy to duct a near silent system, on a higher output processor than I was using.

And as for prescott, its been confirmed that the 3.2 ghz will have 103 watt power consumption, which leads to the concerns that current i865/875 motherboards won't have the VRs needed for prescott compatbility. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11588 shows its not a temporary trend; thus the reason they're making a new form factor to handle it.

Ok so it went from $5 Aluminum HSF to extensive modding? Guess we will not need to buy a Presscott then. AMD has been lowering wattage every new core. Whats the A64 wattage? If increasing wattage is Intels only solution to competing with AMD they will bury themselfs. They just want to make everyone upgrade and threw a bunch a fancy lingo out to make people prepare for the big "upgrade". Looks like you bought it hook, line, and sinker.

[Zhentar]

extensive modding was a lot of dremel work, cardboard ducts and duct tape.

I'm not aware of any clear thermal specs for AMD but I've seen it estimated in the mid 50 watt range. That makes them a much better candidate for server rooms with high cooling costs.

And don't overestimate me getting hooked on the upgrade- I think its an excellent design, should have great potential for extremely quiet air cooled systems without too much mod work. The key difference being price and effort; there are SPCR rigs on ATX that are already completely silent, you can't get any quieter so a new form factor is not needed. But I'm going for watercooling; I don't care how they've got the board layout in my systems. I'm using a GeForce3 Ti200 I bought a year ago and I'm still satisfied with its performance. I'll probably fit in one upgrade mid next year before AGP is phased out completely. I'm going to get a Yeong Yang cube case next month; a day of mod work and it will fit a BTX mobo just fine

Not that they've got me with the upgrade thing there, its just that I keep damaging my motherboards.

[nicozeg]

Originally posted by jaydee116
nicoseg: Yes I know. But it works no? Why make a new standard for no reason.

ATX is a good standard,and making it obsolete is something I dont like too much, as I have plans of making a custom case that require a lot of work.

But there's a big point in the BTX standard that can make it a winner: The ability to design a beefy GPU cooler that dont interfere with expansion slots, CPU heatsink or ram sticks.

[TerraMex]

More beefy than these...?

http://www20.tomshardware.com/busine...utex_1-06.html

And we're back to the Siluro crap. nVidia doesnt learn.

[iroc409]

ugh, i don't like this at all. at least at and atx were SOMEWHAT compatible... at least the cases were fairly interchangable.

it's most likely just a $$ ploy more than anything. disgusting.

i was going to buy the $200 lian li 6070, but maybe i should rethink that. my 60 it sounds won't last as long as i thought it would either.


lame. very lame.

[Zhentar]

Looks like I was wrong on that mid 50s figure for the Athlon 64 heat; AMD's released the datasheets:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...docs/30430.pdf

For a Athlon64 3200+ its 89 watts max, The FX 21 is also listed as 89 watts despite 200mhz more, and for confusion the 1600 mhz 'desktop replacement' mobile Athlon64 is also listed as 89 watts, yet the 2 Ghz as 81.5!

The true mobile athlons are listed as 2800+ (1600 mhz) at 62 watts, or throttling to 800 mhz for 13 watts, or the 3000+ (1800 mhz) also at 62 watts, which throttles down to 1600mhz for 43 watts or 800 for 13 watts.