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Antec CPX form factor: thoughts?

The cables are coloured that way for a reason, and it has nothing to do with aesthetics. Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to wire a PSU if all the wires were the same colour?

first of all its easy as hell to colour the wires any way they wish. the only thing that matters is that the wires are marked, which they should be anyway. btw corsair has black modular cables....they work just fine. the wire colours on the inside of the psu wouldnt be coloured, so its of no consequence. psu cabling is done by a standard. basic pinouts are all the same. you already know this, as i know you know more about psus than i do from your posts....
 
first of all its easy as hell to colour the wires any way they wish. the only thing that matters is that the wires are marked, which they should be anyway. btw corsair has black modular cables....they work just fine. the wire colours on the inside of the psu wouldnt be coloured, so its of no consequence. psu cabling is done by a standard. basic pinouts are all the same. you already know this, as i know you know more about psus than i do from your posts....
The wire colour is a standard. It will not be changed, because that would make no sense. For modular cables it is easy to colour all the wires black, because they only need to be matched up on both sides of the cable. However, the hard-wired cables must still use the proper colour scheme (the Corsair PSUs you mentioned still have normally-coloured wires for all non-modular cables).
 
The wire colour is a standard. It will not be changed, because that would make no sense. For modular cables it is easy to colour all the wires black, because they only need to be matched up on both sides of the cable. However, the hard-wired cables must still use the proper colour scheme (the Corsair PSUs you mentioned still have normally-coloured wires for all non-modular cables).

yes i know they have the regular coloured wires, but they could very easily have them black. all they would have to have is the standard colours on the inside ends to make it easier for connections.(this is NO different from having the modular cables coloured) the cables are pre-made and all standard therefore having the cables different colours is only aesthetic. just because "everyone" is doing it doesnt mean it cant be done. its just cheaper to use cheap sheath and a bit of heatshrink.
 
I understand what you are suggesting, but you clearly don't understand why it would still make manufacturing much more difficult and expensive. I'm not going to bother arguing about this any more.
 
Plenty of standards like this (remember BTX that was supposed to replace ATX?) that tried to make things "better" have come and gone having mostly failed.

The sad part is that both BTX and CPX are (perhaps arguably) better than ATX. If other manufacturers were to start making CPX compatible cases and power supplies, I'd switch to it in an instant for all of the machines I buy at work, and my home machines the next time they got upgraded.

As it is, I can't risk being stuck with a basically proprietary standard that doesn't have much backing, especially after BTX managed to faceplant despite being pushed by a number of companies that are much, much larger than Antec. Admittedly, ATX -> BTX is a bigger change than ATX -> CPX, but of the two I still think BTX had a better shot at success, and if it failed, I'm not touching CPX with a 10ft pole until someone besides Antec jumps on this bandwagon.
 
BTX failed because only Intel pushed it as long as they needed it to get around the uncomfortable truth of their P4 CPUs being very hot critters. Once Core CPUs got released they dropped BTX like a brick. AMD couldn't use BTX because the positioning of components was all wrong for running traces (on-die MCU). BTX was also completely unsuitable for multi-CPU layouts.

Good riddance, I say.
 
True, true, mostly true (there were a handful of BTX AMD boards; this one for instance) and true.

However, speaking strictly from the standpoint of airflow and cooling potential, BTX is a hell of a lot better than ATX ever was. Some of the newer ATX cases that place the power supply at the bottom of the case are basically doing what BTX (and hell, AT) did; put cooling fans near the edge of the board closest to the CPU socket and (in the case of BTX, not so much AT) the RAM slots.

Thermally speaking, BTX was a much, much, much better idea than ATX-or at least, it had the potential to be. And with the higher end i7s putting out every bit as much heat as a Pentium D, if not more, BTX could still have an application with modern systems. Or at least it could if the memory trace length issue could be addressed.

It was hardly without flaws, the points that you mentioned are very valid ones. But ATX is extremely old. It was never, ever, ever intended to support CPUs with 140w TDPs or video cards pushing 350w, and a new form factor could potentially deal with them much better than ATX can. BTX wasn't the be-all, end-all of form factors, but I think it was a step in the right direction. Something similar that addressed memory trace length issues, and multi-socket issues, and also allowed for larger power supplies a la Antec's CPX would be a hell of an improvement over ATX.
 
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ATX is an example of something which is 'good enough'. From a thermal POV it's still a good design, with the airflow traveling over the components in order of coolest to hottest, thus maximizing the thermal potential between the air and component and/or its heatsink.

BTX on the other hand is terrible because it first carries the incoming air over one of the most hottest components, namely the CPU, thus reducing the thermal potential for the following components, such as RAM, NB and VRMs which thus will experience higher temperatures and reduced service life (as well as lower OCing potential).

If there's a better form factor for mainstream/enthusiast systems I would like to see it, but BTX isn't it, nor was WTX, if anyone still remembers that one.
 
My thought is that we/someone needs to kick video card manuf in the ass and get them to work on die shrinks and optimizations and end this silly size and power requirement increase we have seen over the last 5 years. We now have 6 cpu cores AND a memory controller in the space and TDP envelope of a high end obsolete P4 and any one of the cores would perform better. I know the video guys are working on it because it is starting to be a problem for them but they need to work harder/faster/something. Easy enough to say I guess.

But really, if you had your 3 graphics cards eating 200+ watts each shrunk into a single card using 300W with the same performance would not this huge power supply issue go away ?
 
My thought is that we/someone needs to kick video card manuf in the ass and get them to work on die shrinks and optimizations and end this silly size and power requirement increase we have seen over the last 5 years. We now have 6 cpu cores AND a memory controller in the space and TDP envelope of a high end obsolete P4 and any one of the cores would perform better. I know the video guys are working on it because it is starting to be a problem for them but they need to work harder/faster/something. Easy enough to say I guess.

But really, if you had your 3 graphics cards eating 200+ watts each shrunk into a single card using 300W with the same performance would not this huge power supply issue go away ?

I think that a GPU by nature actually does far more more "work" in the given die space than a CPU does - generally speaking. It's not that they simply haven't implemented the latest process, or are disregarding power efficiency.
 
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