BTX

BALANCED TECHNOLOGY EXTENDED

BTX SYSTEM CASE

AND COMPONENTS

BTX (Balanced Technology eXtended) is a form factor for PC motherboards designed to replace the aging ATX
technology. It has been designed to bring latest technologies that need more power and produce more heat into
small form factor housings.
The revolutionary BTX technology has not died. It has simply never been popular with small and medium system
integrators due to the difficulty to get hold of BTX components. Due to its outstanding benefits, A-brand
professional PC providers such as Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Dell and HP have fully integrated BTX into their
systems and will continue to do so. We now provide all necessary BTX components, so like many of our customers,
win more tenders and contracts by using the outstanding benefits of BTX as unique selling points.

The outstanding acoustic and thermal improvements achieved by BTX technology are
due to a new layout of the motherboard. The CPU is cooled down directly from the fresh
air blown in by the front fan, and all components are strategically situated and
orientated to optimize the front to back air flow path. This can reduce the temperature
by 5 to 10 degrees compared to the ATX system. The only fan required is the massive
CPU cooler. The result is a dramatic reduction of noise, heat, power consumption and
consequently system size.

BTX Motherboard:
BTX, Micro BTX or PicoBTX motherboards are all designed to avoid the obstructed air
flow that is forced around components in ATX systems. They are optimised for the
newest technologies including PCI Express and SATA.

Balance technology extended was designed to reduce the problems of the circa-1996 ATX standards by decreasing
power consumption and heat. The BTX standards provided efficient design for small and large systems and new
features such as:
An increased number of expansion slots
Better electrical and thermal regulation
Multiple system sizes and configurations
Support for high-mass motherboard components
Enhanced cooling capabilities with a straighter air flow path
Reduced latency between the northbridge and southbridge
Better component placement for back-panel input/output (I/O) controllers
Reduced height requirements, which benefit system integration for blade servers and rack mounts

BTX advantages:

-Smaller and super silent systems (No extra fan needed).

-New component locations on motherboard reduce latency between devices. For example, the Northbridge and
Southbridge chips are located near each other and the hardware they control.
-Improved board design for a better signal transmission to memory and power supply.
-Improved cooling with only one high quality fan controlled by PWM technology.
-Higher components durability.
-Higher system stability guaranteed by efficient cooling of active components.
-Improved motherboard support to avoid board deflection due to heavy loads (heatsink, PCI cards…)

DEAD END OF BTX

The BTX was first introduced by Gateway Inc. and then by MPC Corporation and Dell Inc. It was also used in Apple’s
Mac Pro but was not BTX compliant. By September 2006, Intel canceled development; this was largely due to the
lack of backward compatibility with the ATX form factor.

BTX COMPONENTS

BTX Cooler:
The BTX Cooler system is the only fan required for most BTX systems. It cools down the
CPU efficiently as well as all other components. It is controlled by PWM technology
(Pulse Width Modulation) to offer an even more efficient and silent cooling.

BTX Chassis:
The BTX chassis is a mirror image of the ATX and both systems are
therefore not compatible. It has an integrated SRM (Support
Retention Module) and specific mounting holes to support heavy
loads and avoid motherboard deflection. Most chassis offer some
screwless features for easy installation.

BTX Power Supply Unit:

The BTX Power Supply Unit is the same as a standard 24pin ATX
PSU. Its physical size may vary depending on the size of the
chassis.

Other components:

All other components such as Processors, Hard drives, Optical drives, Memory etc… are the same as the ones used
with ATX.