'Backwards' mobos...?

[Charlie98]

I just finally put my Dell Dimension 5150 to rest... after 7 reliable years. *sniff!*

It has a pretty nice case... it's steel so it weighs about as much as my Define Mini cases (maybe more!) but it's a reasonable case. I'll be building a replacement PC soon, and I thought... Gee, why don't I just reuse the old Dell boat anchor? Except... the mobo in it is backwards... i.e. it's a mirror image of any other mobo I have seen recently. This certainly DX's the Dell case for reuse... but I'm wondering... was the 'backwards' mobo typical up until recently? I know Dell loves their proprietary hardware, but this is sort of extreme, don't you think? Do/did other OEM builders still use this sort of setup?

 

[Ketchup]

BTX. It never caught on. I have two Gateway cases for BTX motherboards just sitting in my storage building.

So nowadays I see a lot of OEMs putting the ATX case in upside down, with the case opening from the right side instead of the left.

Thermally, both make sense to me, but you are going to have a hard time finding customer cases for either. I know Silverstone has some nice cases that use the latter design, but mucho $$$.

For your reading pleasure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

 

[996GT2]

There were a few cases which have an inverted ATX design, which is similar to the BTX layout (but without the special motherboards, of course).

My last case, the Lian-Li A05, had this design and was one of the smallest cases to fit a full ATX motherboard and long graphics cards. The intake fan was at the rear, and the exhaust fan was at the front. I added a side intake to feed the graphics card.

 

[Charlie98]

BTX.

For your reading pleasure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

Indeed..! It was a funky setup... with the intake fan/CPU cooler (with, honestly, the biggest copper heatsink I've ever seen... I suppose to cool the fire-breathing Pentium D that was in it... ) and the big snorkel.

The intake fan was at the rear, and the exhaust fan was at the front.

Being an engineer at heart... I always wondered why they didn't put the air intake at the rear, feeding right to the CPU fan (in the case of an aftermarket CPU cooler, ) and easy enough to filter. I know Dell uses a side intake to cool some of their current CPUs, same idea, sort of. I suppose the exhaust fan at the front might be a little noisy, however.