CTS 2005: BTX - Fear the factor

[Steve]

BTX, I'd imagined, would be an idea that appealed to makers of Small Form Factor (SFF) cases, so I was disappointed to discover at CTS only one SFF BTX design – Shuttle's SB86i. This was sitting pretty in a corner of the stand and made no noise at all. Mind you, that's not surprising; it wasn't even powered up!

As an owner of one of Shuttle's devices, I was hoping that the newcomer could take a high-end graphics card. Sadly, though, the answer was no. The SB86i is aimed at the business market and fitting such a card wasn't thought to be a good idea at all.

And that, I fear, will be same with most SFF BTX models. Your average graphics card is no problem but these tiny boxes can't take the sorts of card that gamers want to use. Their low-noise fans simply can’t deal with the heat, and there's no obvious way of getting sufficient air throughput to prevent things starting cooking.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD0xMTI3

[Jak Crow]

Every BTX case review I've read so far indicates bad designs for the drive bays because of the positioning being outside of the airflows.

[MD]

I really can't disagree with you in anyway for that comment, all the sites are reporting the failings of the format, to be honest, I would highly expect a spec 2.0 BTX before it becomes mainstream.

m@