What happened to BTX?

Its around, its just not very dominating. Intel makes BTX boards and some case manufacturers make BTX cases.

I suspect its not really in demand... Alot of ATX cases can be made to run quiet (Antec's Sonata, P180). Also, many ATX cases that have Prescott chips (like Dell's computers) use heat ducts, etc etc to reduce noise and heat. Also w/ Intel's less-heater like CPUs coming, BTX loses alot of its attractiveness. BTX was designed to reduce cooling necessities and noise. Well, if the computer is cooler to begin with, BTX isn't really necessary at this point... And I think that's how the case manufacturers see it. Cuz it would cost $ to change their manufacturing cycle to include BTX parts and it would cost mboard makers $ to change theirs. No one wants to spend money on something that isn't deemed really necessary to begin with.

I like the BTX layout myself and I'll probably consider it on my next build. The fact of the matter is that there isn't legions of people demanding it, so no one is rushing to make BTX stuff. Plus it doesn't help that BTX cases aren't backwards compatible w/ ATX (although there are some cases that can do both).

Yep.

I've only seen a few myself.. On newegg, there's 1 BTX board and 3 micro-BTX boards...

The thing is that Antec's P180 case is based on the same principles, but still an ATX case. I'd only go BTX if it got alot cheaper - on par w/ ATX.

Or maybe it'll just die! hehe

Coz ppl are just too lazy to get used to the new BTX design, which, btw, is uber-1337.

It's looking like the P180 or the Sonata 2 are the way to go..

I have the Sonata 1, currently..

Dell uses BTX cases and motherboards. They run really quiet and cool because of it. I hate Dell but I give them props for it. I also wish BTX had taken off more but if people don't buy it, they don't build it.

Actully Gateway is using the BTX boards in there AMD (mostly X2) computers.

BTX is designed for better cooling and power saving. One of my pc is a BTX from Gateway, I moded it a little and gave it to my brother. I like it because its more quite and cooler than both my AMD and Intel ATX gaming rig.

The BTX rig has only two 120mm fans. The front fan cools the hard drive and the cpu then goes to the ram then finally hitting the graphics card. The back fan is right above and behind the graphics card sucking all the hot air out mainly generated from cpu and graphics card. Yeah there's total of two fans! Three if you count the graphics card fan.

So it is quiter and cooler than my ATX rigs. Less fans so it means less power consumption. But one thing I like about the that BTX rig I like was dead quite, I can only hear the graphics card which is the not so quite one inside the case, but only if I stop and listen to it. If it wasn't for the lighted power botton I wouldn't know if it's running.

But for gaming it really doesn't matter to me since I crank the volume loud and I used the headphone. I think the BTX design is very good but it's not really that popular since it doesn't really makes a big difference in performance which gamers and alike prefer the most.