BTX Standard

Balanced Technology Extension is something that came and went quick. It had a lot of promise but never really caught on. I give some anecdote of my own, talk about why it was made, and why it never really caught on.

[Trumanlol]

Dude, this is like, the only video on YouTube I could find about BTX. Obviously, the standard has disappeared, but I was surprised that almost all information about it disappeared too. I remember being very excited about it when the transition started happening while I was selling computers waaay back in the day. Thanks for making this video! Very thorough, brings back a lot of fun memories.

[samgray]

My old desktop died when the hard drive gave out, the thing survived the capacitor plague and made it to 2017, and I recently found a Dell workstation PC at my church that was BTX and the damn thing was still running in 2021 and it was from 2005.

[arnaldodaniel]

I have a 2006 intel BTX motherboard and that thing still works perfect even today despite the years. I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

[Trumanlol]

Recently, I acquired a Dell XPS Gaming BTX system, must have been their ultimate highest end at the time. Intel Core 2 Extreme, GeForce 8800 Ultra, and this computer is in PRISTINE condition. No dust, no scratches, just an absolutely beautiful system. I'm pretty sure only the power supply is bad, I haven't tested it beyond trying to turn it on yet. I'm hoping it's only capacitors in the PSU that are bad, because finding a replacement motherboard might be more effort than I'm willing to put into fixing it.

[ofmsetest]

so much memory this raised. I have a dell dimension 5100 and used it for over a decade, upgraded literally everything possible, first get a better heatsink from a dell dimensions 9100 with 4 heatpipe (dell cheaped out the 5100/e510 heatsink) to better cooling the pentium 4, then upgraded the pentium 4 to pentium D 945, already passed the compatibility of the bios that need to press F1 everytime pc starts (but it will work ), then maxed out ram to 4G, installed total of four hard drives, switched graphic card from 6800 to 7600, cut out back of case to add more fans to cool the hot pentium 4. switched multiple PSU (not sure why it fail so fast each time), until it finally died in 2017, loved the wind tunnel design of btx form factor, much more superior than atx form factor, also addressed the gpu cooling much better. what a shame it died

[Sidicas]

The BTX standard was defeated by PC builders. The main problems with the BTX standard is that the supporters of it like Dell were pushing a large quantity of proprietary parts that you could not get generic replacements for at reasonable prices, and the replacement parts you needed were manufactured only by Dell. So if you bought a BTX Dell system you had to buy BTX parts from Dell even though BTX was "on paper" a universal standard. These PC companies didn't want another universal standard like ATX had become. They wanted to get rid of it. And they sure as heck didn't want a universal standard to be replaced by another universal standard. They wanted you to buy a whole new PC case every time a new CPU socket was made which would have generated a lot of ewaste. So they tried to kill ATX with BTX being a wolf in sheep's clothes and they tried to convince people that it was somehow better. Even though "BTX" was supposed to be a standard, it was manipulated by PC manufs. to come with hidden "gotchas" of tunnels and cooler designs that were not compatible with each other from one PC case to the next even within the same CPU generation. CPU coolers that instead of being motherboard specific, were PC case specific which was the most retarded thing ever designed and was intentionally done by the most evil of companies, with the explicit purpose of destroying the entire PC building market so that they would have more sales. A wolf in sheep's clothes so to speak. For example, you could have 20 "BTX" standard cases offered by Dell that all came in different shapes and sizes and every single one of them would have a different cooler funnel, shroud, or tunnel and would not be compatible with each other. So if your cooler broke, you had to throw out your whole PC, motherboard, case, and all if you couldn't find the exact correct replacement part. And since there were so many variations of these cooler funnels, shrouds, and mountings, you couldn't realistically stock replacement parts in the backroom. Additionally, the BTX standard introduced fans that had mounting that was not compatible with the standard case fan sizes at the time. 60mm, 80mm, 120mm, etc. and they did not have the same method of mounting. This meant that your CPU cooler fan was a proprietary embedded component that could not be swapped with a 60mm case fan if it failed and you were in a pinch. You would have to buy a new proprietary dell CPU cooler for $100 instead of buying a new generic fan for $5. These evil PC manuf. companies pushed this "BTX" trash like it was the next evolution of PCs. As if it was some sort of improvement when in fact it was the exact opposite. The price of simple component failure was much larger for BTX so we waged a war against it. So we intentionally fought the BTX standard, we told people not to buy it, we told mobo manufs. not to make boards for it, and we as PC builders supported the ATX standard by purchasing parts that would be swappable instead of the long list of proprietary parts that you wouldn't be able to get replaced if you need to that these supporters of the "BTX Standard" were trying to push onto the market. They still do stupid things like changing the mounting holes of a cpu cooler to prevent you from using the cooler you bought before with the new motherboard. Which is specifically done to force you to spend more money and buy a new cooler to replace a fully functioning cooler. Which is something that we still fight against Intel, AMD, and nVidia to this day and have for decades, but the BTX standard is dead, and we killed it, and we're glad its dead. The PC building and repair market would have looked exactly like what John Deere and Apple is doing which would have been a nightmare for everybody and ruined the entire PC building community. If BTX won in replacing a real universal standard such as ATX with a fake standard of BTX, then you would need to buy a new PC case with every motherboard because the PC case is tied to the CPU cooler and the CPU cooler is then generation specific to the CPU socket as it regularly is despite consumer complaints about it. The PC manufacturers used BTX standard to wage a war against PC builders, and they lost that war.. I can only hope that the next generation of PC builders has some respect for the fact that they can build a new PC and keep using the exact same ATX case, exact same ATX powersupply from their last build if they so desire. Down with the CPU Socket specific PC cases that tried to be born by the BTX standard, Long live ATX, the PC building community that supports it, and recycling and reusing good PC components when possible instead of throwing your money away to greedy PC manufacturers that have evil agendas of destroying the PC building community so they have more sales!

[alejandrotorres]

hace unos meses, encontré una dell mt 780 (Btx) a muy buen precio, y creo que va a ser un proyecto de modificación interesante, me recomendarías algún microprocesador ? xeon ? o core 2 quad? Saludos

[shrimppaste]

Perfect, very clear and in bullet points. 👍

[Atmk]

👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 THE 👏 BTX 👏 FORM 👏 FACTOR

👏 MAKE 👏 DIRECTIONAL 👏 AIRFLOW 👏 IN 👏 PCs 👏 GREAT 👏 AGAIN