Back in the early dark days of LGA775 computing (think back when your furnace had to take a step to the left), Intel came on up with an idea. They figured that by placing all the system's componentery in the path of airflow, it would allow for better cooling, and lower noise. Unfortunately, this design wasn't very becoming to the end user, as it required a brand new case, motherboard, memory, processor, power supply... basically the whole shebang of what made it go. Now, I used to be skeptical of this too, until I actually got a chance to sit down with BTX (this afternoon, if you'd believe). So far as I've seen, the airflow bled off of this cooler has kept the North and Southbridges cool, while fanning out the memory, and feeding the hungry videocard. The question then, is why didn't BTX fly? In a week or two's time, I'll take a look at the performance of two BTX motherboards so kindly donated by Gigabyte back in the stone age (when the heatsinks were still hard to get). In the mean time, I'm going to put up a little bit of thermal testing on what currently is out there, to see - was BTX really something, or just a way to beat the heat.
