␡
- What the North Bridge and South Bridge Do
- Mobo Integration Madness
- What We Look for When Testing Motherboards
- How We Test Motherboards
- Careful Considerations for New Mobos
- Our Top Pentium 4 Chipsets: Intel's 875P and 865PE
- Also Solid: ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP
- Pentium 4 Chipset Pretenders
- Our P4 Mobo Recommendations
- The Back Story: Summer of Athlon XP
- Enter the 64-bit Chipset
- Why Hasn't Intel Integrated the Memory Controller?
- Looking to Overclock?
- Looking Ahead: Future Chipsets & Mobos
- VIA Makes Its Move
- Prepare for BTX
- New Sockets Forthcoming
This chapter is from the book
Prepare for BTX
The other big shift we're just starting to prepare for is BTX. Designed by Intel with increased thermal efficiency in mind, the BTX spec rearranges the mobo and PC case enclosure. The placement of the CPU has been positioned in such a way that it will be the first PC component to be cooled. Additionally, the memory slots have been realigned in such a way that air flows around them, rather than being forced over them. We don't expect BTX to be prevalent for at least another two years, but the spec will be readily available by the beginning of 2005.