Intel's Long Awaited BTX Form Factor
by Purav Sanghani on November 15, 2004 5:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Thermals Micro ATX (uATX)
Our first assumption of miniATX cases was that due to the smaller size, air could be circulated in and out quicker than larger cases with smaller and less fans. We tested our D915GUX ATX motherboard and Pentium 550 CPU in the TT-501 microATX chassis from Opus Technologies. Opus Technologies does not have as many products on its list as other big name manufacturers like Thermaltake or SilverStone, but it does have a few tower cases and power supplies with unique features. We had a chance to look at their titanium plated MT-200 mid tower chassis in April which did not disappoint us with its performance.The TT-501 is also a unique case with various features that take away the blandness we usually find in value prices chassis. It has plenty of room for expansion for its size. With two 3-1/2" drive bays, and two 5-1/4" drive bays as well as an area at the bottom to mount a floppy drive or flash memory card reader it is ready to compete even with some mid tower cases. Things may seem a bit cramped when the case is packed with hardware, though. The TT-501 is about 13" in width by 15" in depth and about 6" in height when laid on its side. Since this is meant to be a mini tower chassis we will stand it upright for our benchmarks.
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The temperatures of the ambient air throughout the TT-501 are generally higher than we had expected them to be. We can see from the overlay that the warmest region of the system is around the CPU, Northbridge, and PCIe VGA card. What we did not expect was how hot these temperatures would be in those areas. Let's see if the temperatures of the components themselves can tell us something more.
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It is obvious the TT-501 is not the best in cooling performance. Though it has two 80mm fans mounted at the back of the case it is not enough to circulate air in and out efficiently. An extra fan on the left side panel of the case may have helped exhaust some of the warm air from various areas.
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ZobarStyl - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
God looking at those small cases makes me tremble and remember my parent's old IBM Pentium I system where you had to remove the PSU and the CD drive to install the RAM. I was so glad when I saw computers moving AWAY from this type of design...forget footprint, I want a case I can actually work in.Either way, congrats to Intel on making a new Delleron case, but I'm simply not interested. Great for OEM's but useless for me, just like most of Intel's products...
As for #3's question, why does Intel need it outside of helping their OEM buddies? Dual core is only going to make Prescott's heat issues stand out further and their x20/30/40's on the roadmap still are clocked in the range where they are going to be high heat output. All that heat has to go somewhere...
shabby - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
#5 that must be the canadian version, it'll keep us warm during winter by exhausting warm air into our faces.Jeff7181 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
Am I reading this right... warm air from the CPU is exhausted out the FRONT of the case????mcveigh - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
I can't get past page 1??????skunkbuster - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
will intel even need btx anymore? since they are probably going to be dumping the p4 in favor of the pM(eventually)?i thought one of the main reasons why btx was designed was to better handle the hotter p4 processors and to cool them more efficiently?
PuravSanghani - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
Thanks MAME, problem fixed :)MAME - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
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