DTX Case Standard

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 5:08 am

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36833

The specs are a bit thin on the ground at the moment, but we already know board dimensions, and 2 very important things, AMD wants to make this work, so its royaly free (unlike BTX), and the screw holes are in the same places as ATX/mATX.

This is an obvious choice for low power requirements, and ideal for SFF PC's.

The boards are smaller than mATX but a little bigger than ITX, you can put one of these boards into an ATX or mATX case without modification unlike ITX, and you can use generic componets for the rest of the PC.

Products will start to be available in the second half of this year.

Andy

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:23 am

Sounds pretty good, can't wait to see how this pans out. I didn't realize BTX had royalties, is this the main reason why it never caught on?

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:27 am

Wow. Superb potential!

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:39 am

From the pictures it seems that it's 244 mm horizontally and 200 mm vertically. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Which means it would fit in a NSK3300 (or 3400) with room for a 5.25" HDD enclosure on the bottom. Interesting...

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:42 am

There are a few reasons why BTX was a no-go from the start.

1: Royalties are paid to Intel.
2: It means a big design change from previous ATX designs, which puts of companies.
3: Its totally un-necessary unless you are buying a P4 (now dead).
4: Its more expensive to design a board/case that a tiny fraction of people will buy.

Its more expensive because of No 1, No 2, and No 4, and there is very little retail choice because of No 2 and No 3, and nothing AMD based because of No 1 and No 3.

The DTX standard is working on the mATX concept - take something that already exists (ATX), make it smaller and compatable with no hidden costs or pitfalls.

Andy

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:36 am

andyb wrote:There are a few reasons why BTX was a no-go from the start.

I wouldn't say BTX was a no-go exactly - Dell are shipping them in vast quantities in their XPS and Dimension lineups (both Intel and AMD incidentally).

One nice thing about BTX is the standardised CPU position, and I wish this could be carried across to ATX (or DTX). When I was messing around with my mother's Dell E521, I noticed how securely the 900g heatsink was fixed in place - as the "thermal module" is in a standard position, the whole thing is bolted *through* the motherboard into the steel tray behind. The motherboard is just sandwiched in between, and the PCB doesn't bear any of the weight.

I'd feel a lot happier having an Infinity or Ninja fixed in this way, rather than hanging on by those horrible LGA775 pushpins, especially if the PC gets moved around a lot. You'd also have a predetermined distance from the PSU, which would help when installing an aftermarket HSF...

Filias Cupio · Post by **Filias Cupio** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:04 pm

Here's another article, but it doesn't say much useful:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/01/10 ... r_sff_pcs/

Filias Cupio · Post by **Filias Cupio** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:29 pm

It looks like they still put the expansion cards the wrong way around, with chips on the bottom. (Perhaps the cases will mount the mb on the other side, but the reference to being able to put it into an ATX case suggests not.)

They also haven't followed BTX's lead of lining up the CPU and video hardware so that a single ducted straight-through air path could cool both. This is a disapointment.

From a novice's point of view, it is hard to see much difference between this and microATX/FlexATX. It is intermediate in size between these (MicroATX 244x244, DTX 244x200, FlexATX 229x191.) What is DTX giving me that I can't already get from ATX? (The smallest BTX is 267x203.)

I had not realized prior to this article that Intel were charging royalties on BTX. Perhaps the best outcome would be Intel makes BTX royalty free, BTX flourishes (under both Intel and AMD) and DTX dies.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:43 pm

They also haven't followed BTX's lead of lining up the CPU and video hardware so that a single ducted straight-through air path could cool both. This is a disapointment.

There have been long threads about this. Having a shared airflow for CPU+GPU is not necessarily the best arrangement.

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 3:37 pm

Filias Cupio wrote:From a novice's point of view, it is hard to see much difference between this and microATX/FlexATX. It is intermediate in size between these (MicroATX 244x244, DTX 244x200, FlexATX 229x191.) What is DTX giving me that I can't already get from ATX? (The smallest BTX is 267x203.)

It may not be any smaller than other standards, but the point is that it's the size that SFF PCs use. So it means that if you want a nice little SFF PC, you don't "have" to buy a barebones kit. Maybe you like the looks of one, but not the motherboard or other options. If there is a standard, no problem. Buy the case you like, the motherboard you like and the PSU you like. Although I didn't hear anything in those articles about the PSU. Is there going to be a DTX standard PSU? Or will they use SFX? Or leave that up to the case manufacturers?

I was never a fan of BTX. But I will say that I kind of like the arrangement of the Dell C521 which uses a slim micro-BTX form factor. The layout is clean and kind of splits up the drives/psu from the CPU/MB airflow paths even if there isn't a hard barrier. Most slim mirco-ATX cases seem more cluttered with the optical drive interfering with the CPU heat sink. And the thing I always liked about BTX is that it got rid of those stupid side intake vents. Which are the worse thing about ATX cases in my opinion.

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:51 pm

Courtesy of DailyTech:

I'm personally thrilled with the new form factor...especially since it is an open form factor.

-Derek

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:41 am

Looks good. Maybe SFF systems now will finally be affordable. I've always thought it was kind of lame how Shuttle, Silverstone, etc., were able to charge twice as much for a product that required half the materials. :/

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:18 am

The thing is, with such a small case there's no room for HDD suspension, big, slow-spinning fans, big heatsinks, all the usual SPCR tricks....the HDD you can solve with a laptop HDD, the fans is a trickier problem, the heatsinks you just have to get low-heat dissipation parts to make this SPCR-quiet.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 6:09 am

jaganath wrote:The thing is, with such a small case there's no room for... big, slow-spinning fans...

The only place I can see in the pic above is the fan - the fan - in the PSU, which seems to be the only possible fan in that layout.

BTW: my mobos for the past 20+ months have all been Asus K8S-MXs, whose dimension of 9.6" by 7.6" is inside the BTX mobo envelope. Have I been out front in having an early partial BTX system?

And Asus has another, newer, 6100-based 754 mobo that's also 9.6 x 7.6.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:03 pm

Quote from http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5648

"Mini-DTX will initially target sub-6 liter enclosures and support processors with TDPs up to 35 watts. The footprint of Mini-DTX motherboards will be 200mm x 170mm -- just a tad wider than Mini-ITX motherboards"

This is the next step beyond DTX in the same way that mATX was the next step. The SFF sector needed a push, and this is just the thing.

Quote.

"While there are already plenty of other standards on the market such as ATX, Mini-ITX and BTX, AMDâ€™s goal with DTX is greater flexibility and lower costs. Greater flexibility is achieved by making DTX motherboards backwards compatible with ATX and Micro-ATX. Lower costs will be addressed with DTX due to the clever sizing of DTX motherboards. Most manufacturers are able to produce two standard ATX motherboards PCBs per PCB panel, a manufacturer can now cut four DTX or six Mini-DTX motherboards from the same panel"

Personally I think that AMD are doing this now, so that DTX is an established platform for the "AMD Fusion" project, where they will combine the CPU, GPU and possibly other parts of the system into a single chip and give AMD an edge on technology and price in the SFF market - - - This is speculation anyway so we wont know for 12 months yet.

I am looking forward to some interesting designs of cases for the DTX platform, and I think that many will include damped mounting space for 2.5" drives as standard alongside the slimline optical drive.

Andy

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:06 am

With thanks to Kyle and Co. over at [H]ardOCP for the link.

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=M ... V3cywsLDE=

And the website itself, I havent had a chance to have a good read yet, but there is enough info to be getting on with.

http://www.dtxpc.org/

From Page 6 of the link below "Low Accoustic Noise Will Be Fundamental To The Definition", it doesnt get much clearer than this.

http://www.dtxpc.org/_docs/DTX_Overview.pdf

Andy

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:49 am

WOOT FOR MINI DTX!!!

I am also dissapointed they didnt move the video card to the opposite side like BTX standard was going to.

[rant-on]
Lets be frank people, this is SPCR forum, so we are here for optimal SILENCE over all else. And a single airflow path makes it easier to quiet a system over multiple airflow paths. So YES, as far as this forum is concerned, BTX's single airflow path for both CPU and GPU is superior.
[rant-off]

One thing that still needs to be addressed however are powersupplies. They really need to set a standard for single voltage PSUs for computers, and let mobo manufacturers deal with any other voltages that need to be stepped down. This would allow for much more effecient power supplies, and open up external power bricks to become more mainstream for low power desktop systems.

Cutting a couple inches off the bottom of the mobo is a step in the right direction for smaller computers, but the dream wont fully be realized in any mainstream fasion until they move the powersupply outside the case.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 7:26 am

if you arent cheap as hell, you can make any motherboard setup perfectly cool and silent with any modern cpu and a decently powerful gpu like my x1900 all-inwonder.

btx looks retarded.

Cpu on the bottom. WHy? cooler air comes in and cools it? what a bunch of nonsense. expansion cards near the blow hole in the rear? I dont see the point of this. rear air vent in center? heat rises never goes in the center. cpu needing a lot of cooling? nonsense, it is the most durable part of a computer and doesnt care about cooling much at all. 60 C is fine for it on load, not many other parts in the case can say that. Cooler air is on the bottom? er, id like someoen to take measurements of temperature differences in a case with a front and rear fan and an adequately opened front. The vid card creates the most heat and is the most difficult to cool in modern setups. it also easily blacks out on overload of heat and it makes this heat quickly. I think btx was just meant for crappy computers for office people so that they could have a single front fan, and the rest of the heat goes through the psu. psu's make the most noise in crap systems, causing heat to rise into them is a bad idea. i hate lame ideas.

dtx looks kinda cool.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:32 am

It seems that as per the DTX specification case manufacturers barely have to do a thing to support DTX boards physically, but the board in the link below made by Silverstone shows that you can just create more space by using a movable air guide - interesting but I dont really see the point.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38349

Andy

DTX Case Standard

DTX Case Standard

Prototype case shot