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BTX and heatsinks

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White Rain

Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Intel is going to be pushing BTX as the new MB standard, and it looks pretty good from what I've seen, mainly due to the setup the cpu is in a diffrent area (well everything is in a diffrent area) but the cpu is positioned to get the cool intake air before anything else as it enters the pc.

Question being...

Considering the larger heatsinks like the xp120 and the like, how will this new form effect what heatsinks you can buy being some of these barely fit on the boards we have now, much less ones where the cpu is in a diffrent location and also rotated.

Does anyone know if the upper end heatsink manufactures are working on new top of the line heatsinks for this new standard or is anyone who buys a BTX board going to be out of luck for decent cooling and stuck with stock for 6 months after BTX becomes more widely available?
 
BTX is comming out in all 3 sizes as the replacement for ATX.

A size that is slightly larger than ATX, is the standard BTX.

MicroBTX and PicoBTX.

This information can be found easily by Google.

I've just not been able to find any information as to what the major heatsink manufacturers are comming up with for solutions to BTX>

On the intel demo board I saw their own heatsink which was completely round and passive, cooled by being ducted from the intake fan.

My question is in reguards to say thermalright and the other top end cooling companies as to what their larger solutions will be, how they will be changing their designs of say the xp-120 if they are changing them at all to be able to fit.


Will BTX, the new standard made to make cooling easier, actually make it harder for upper end system builders by making all the best heatsinks obselete and not to be replaced anytime soon by equal or greater preforming heatsinks.
 
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He He rain after i was talking to you about the BTX and u asked me about that u decided to post this? good thread it is very true about the size factor but i think there will be more room then ur thinking (its going to be were the south bridge is)

im shure its fine the xp120 will fit in my mind.
 
Your mind may have a lot more room around the edges than the new BTX form factor does lol j/k :p

But yeah I like to try to gather as many opinions as possible to find out what the majority of people think about said topic, being that's normally the way things work out in the end.
 
ok no mean to be and @SS but guys we dont care about the form factor we are only talking about the amount of space for the HS on a normal size BTX mobo in say what a 18'' or 19'' case.

me and rain ahve been talking an we would love it if you would just stay on topic about the size of the HS compaired to the space the BTX mobo config will give you.

subtotal so, sorry about pico BTX dont matter here ect.

(there we go rain. =)
o and dont post this cuz i know some one wants to :argue:
 
Yeah I don't think compatibility will be much of an issue here. It's basically an ATX board with components moved around for optimized cooling on RAM and the CPU.
It looks like a logical setup. The video card can now have a direct outtake fan on the top of the case. Also, it look like case airflow will go from being from front to back, to instead being from bottom to top.

Cool beans. :burn:

EDIT: Well I looked again, and it looks like the vid card won't get its own outtake fan after all. :(
 
If you look now, the CPU is rotated so that it doesn't sit level against the ground in a parallel orientation, but is set up on it's end like a diamond. I don't think that an XP-120 has a chance to fit in a case at that orientation on the cpu unless they basically rotate the bottom of the heatsink in orientation with the cpu w/o changing the orientation of the fins.
 
it seems to me that by the time btx is actually standard in everything a lot of computers might just have water cooling stock, kind of like what apple is doing with their new 2.5 ghz dual g5s. But in any case Im sure the major heatsink manufacturers will come up with something that cools well and fits into the btx standard. but it seems to me like this is going to take a few years to happen anyways, everyone right now is still perfectly happy with atx, so we will probably go through another couple of generations of heatsinks before we're there
 
Acctually i think its going to come out in 2006 around longhorn or mabey after long horn but not by much.

BTX is very smart imo but its wrong in some big ways i think.
as fat as the XP120 and the slanted socket. it looks to me as if it will fit but they want more $ so i think they will make all new hs's for the BTX/socket setups.
they will have to change the way the fins of the HS go because the fins should be in line with the air flow fron the front intake so the air goes through the fins to help cooling.

but to the origonal post to me i think it may fit but logics tell me that it wont (ie they wnt it not to fit for you to buy new HS's ect.
 
I just got back from an Intel Channel Conference. They are starting to push btx in this quarter - lga only. I was talking with one of the reps about the socket, mainly the how close the capacitors are. He didn't give me really anything to actually answer my question but was more interested in watercooling as I mentioned the cap's position so close to the socket will really suck for heatsinks and waterblocks.

Edit:
btx.gif


They had a demo board at the convention. I got to touch it. heh
 
They had a demo board at the convention. I got to touch it. heh
Woops you forgot to ground yourself, Intel's prototype is ruined. Now we gotta wait another year for them to remake it. :santa2:

Now I see what you meant by the CPU slot position being turned 45 degrees. I'm...not really sure, though, why they did that. Not only do HS manufacturers have to create new s to be more efficient, but also air going through the middle of the HS will take longer to pass through (Air has to go though uneven diagonals of the square, instead of even lengthways).
:-/
 
Woops you forgot to ground yourself, Intel's prototype is ruined. Now we gotta wait another year for them to remake it.

I'm in no hurry to buy all new equipment.

Intels BTX heatsinks art atually different than the standard heatsinks you see now. Instead of having long fins, they have a heatpipe core sticking perpendicular to the core. Around this heatpipe are copper rings. The air flows parallel to the cpu through the fins.

btx1_sm.jpg
bigwater3.jpg

btx_heatsink.jpg

btx_heatsink_flusso.jpg
 
Looks good nice pics. i see what you mean by the caps to close. wow big copper hs i wonder how thermalright is going to beat that thing?
mabey air cooling will be only stock now no more aftermarket HS's??
 
Thermalright is going to make a giant block of silver that mounts to the cpu that's filled with liquid nitrogen =p j/k
 
BTX really isn't everything that Intel would like you guys to think it is. A lot of motherboard manufacturer's and other companies are not happy with Intel trying to convert everything to BTX (if you look at the situation, Intel is the only company really backing BTX). BTX is going to fit the motherboard manufacturer's with a higher bill because of all the layout changes, thicker PCBs (to support the 1KG+ passive heatsinks Intel and BTX are calling for), and a few other changes that are being forced on motherboard manufacturer's. In reality, BTX isn't really needed all that much - Intel needed the move to BTX so that it could adequately cool high-speed prescott and the now cancelled Tejas processors. Before Intel found out it couldn't even make these processors, they knew that they were going to be furnaces, so that's why they came up with the standard we know as BTX (some have lovingly *cough* started calling it Beelzebub's Technology eXtended). I made a thread about this a few months ago, unfortunately I can't seem to find the article URL I was refering to. So that's the low down - don't believe all the hype you hear, BTX is likely to turn out another Intel mistake.

*EDIT: Intel is sticking with BTX for the same reason they kept Socket T alove after Tejas died - they've sunk too much money into both technologies to just abandon them.
 
well i think they do need a few changes.
The one main one is video cards if the mob was bigger and the nb was down by the south bridge then you moved the vga and pci slots down you could have a bigger HS but the main thing is they could chage the layout of the video card they could flit them so the gpu was facing up and then put a nice hs on it (heat rises and it puts more strain on the GPU)
thats my 2cents
 
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