BTX

What did you say BTX was again? Well, it’s just the successor of ATX! ATX is the collective term for the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the present generation of motherboards in your PC. There is now a new standard in its place, BTX (Balanced Technology eXtended Form Factor), with the main advantages of more compact dimensions and better heat removal. When grouping the components on the PCB, careful attention is paid to power dissipation and the possibility of efficiently removing the heat. This is necessary because the CPU meanwhile needs to dissipate 100 W and a respectable video card can easily dissipate 50 W. That is why there has to be serious consideration of how the heat can be removed from the case, where wide cables and other obstacles are no longer allowed to be in the way (also refer to SATA elsewhere in this issue).