Intel's Long Awaited BTX Form Factor

Thermals Micro BTX (uBTX)

This is where everything we have heard about the BTX form factor is either proven right or wrong. Intel claims BTX the better design to efficiently cool more components with less equipment while using less power and space. Intel released a virtual press kit on their BTX form factor in April of this year. Unfortunately, the press kit is a little too general to really draw many conclusions, but feel free to judge for yourself.

Intel's press kit reports that the BTX design cools the CPU to 2 degrees lower than the ATX form factor while only providing 40 cubic feet per minute, or 40 cfm with our Type I Thermal Module. ATX, on the other hand, requires 150 linear feet per minute, or 150 lfm.

We performed our inch by inch temperature observation with the D915GMH microBTX motherboard and the Pentium 550 CPU in the AOpen B300 which is 15" in width by 13" in depth.


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From our results above we see that the temperatures of each square inch of the case are a few degrees higher than those we found on our ATX Ahanix D.Vine 5 chassis. The warmest pocket of air hovers between the PCIe card, Southbridge, Northbridge, and CPU. This area, which averages about 35 degrees, is warmer than the ATX ambient average of about 32 degrees. Intel's whitepaper was not clear on the equipment they used to get the results in their table but from our results, the standard ATX system performs cooler than the BTX system. The microATX system, however, produced temperatures higher than those of the microBTX system.


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The results for the core temperatures of each component shown above also tell us that the microBTX equipment does not exactly perform better than the ATX hardware, but for the amount of fans in the system, microBTX is more efficient when it comes to cost of energy and space. With only the CPU's HSF and the power supply's single 80mm fan, the uBTX system performs at temperatures lower than an uATX system with three case fans and a dedicated CPU HSF.


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These temperatures are not set in stone for every processor Intel manufacturers or will release in the future. Each will require a different thermal module according to their Thermal Design Power rating. For example, The Pentium 550J will come bundled with a Type I Stacked-fin module whereas the Pentium 560J will come with the Type I Spiral-fin module. Obviously the spiral-fin module will dissipate heat better than the stacked fins.