BTX

Published:2011/8/10 22:36:00 Author:Amy From:SeekIC

Karel Walraven

What did you say BTX was again? Well, it’s just the successor of ATX! ATX is the collective term for the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the present generation of motherboards in your PC. There is now a new standard in its place, BTX (Balanced Technology extended Form Factor), with the main advantages of more compact dimensions and better heat removal. When grouping the components on the PCB, careful attention is paid to power dissipation and the possibility of efficiently removing the heat. This is necessary because the CPU meanwhile needs to dis­sipate 100 W and a respectable video card can easily dissipate 50 W. That is why there has to be serious consideration of how the heat can be removed from the case, where wide cables and other obstacles are no longer allowed to be in the way (also refer to SATA elsewhere in this issue). That the energy consumption is continually increasing can be deduced from the ever more powerful PSU units. While 10 years ago a 150-W power supply was quite adequate, these days 350 or 400 W is the norm. With the BTX standard, there is the assumption of a fan for the power supply (just as before), but also a separate second cooling circuit for the motherboard, drawing in cold air from outside the case and blowing out warm air via a separate path, completely independent of the fan in the power sup­ply.



BTX power supplies will also be able to supply more power. There is a new stan­dard for the power supply connector that increases the number of pins from the cur­rent 20 to 24 (’Main power connector’). The first 20 pins keep the same functionality as with ATX motherboards (only -5 V has been omitted!). The extra 4 pins are for more 3.3-V, 5-V and 12-V connections (refer figure). In addition, there has to be a separate 4-way connecter (’+12 V power connector’) that’s intended to power the CPU only.

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