BTX (form Factor)

BTX (form Factor)

BTX (for Balanced Technology eXtended) is a form factor for motherboards, originally intended to be the replacement for the aging ATX motherboard form factor in late 2004 and early 2005. It was designed to alleviate some of the issues that arose from using newer technologies (which often demand more power and create more heat) on motherboards compliant with the circa-1996 ATX specification. The ATX and BTX standards were both proposed by Intel. Intel's decision to refocus on low-power CPUs, after suffering scaling and thermal issues with the Pentium 4, has added some doubt to the future of the form factor. The first company to implement BTX was Gateway Inc, followed by Dell and MPC. Apple's Mac Pro utilizes some elements of the BTX design system as well but is not BTX compliant, rather using a proprietary form factor. However, future development of BTX retail products by Intel was canceled in September 2006.