Back in January, at the Consumer Electronics Show, AMD allowed a peek at a new standard it would be bringing out soon. Well, other irons have been in the fire, and so the DTX form factor was put off by a few months.

Today the first real designs were released, showing how the form factor will be smaller than microATX, better than mini-ITX, and will allow powerful components, in small, standard, and inexpensive boxes.

This has been the biggest problem with really small systems until now. The power of the system was barely enough to get the job done, any job. The expandability was very compromised with mini-ITX, with only one PCI slot, usually not able to accommodate a full length card. Also, when any non-VIA chip was put on these motherboards, heat became a distinct problem. Heat dissipation by the CPU was a problem for case design, and power supply beef.

With DTX, AMD shows the promise of really fast processors, that are very efficient, and onboard graphics that allow some level of gaming without excuse. All of this will be wrapped in a compact case with two expansion slots.

 the DTX specification - flexibility allows design freedom - lower costs overall

DTX is smaller than microATX, but larger than mini-ITX, and will break the cost penalty of mini-ITX boards and cases.

Cases will be small but flexible, and this case can be used horizontally or vertically -

The case allows lots of power, in a size relegated to thin clients before.

Someone clearly thought about this design. Lots of expansion ports, and this will fit with audio and video equipment, or make a really nice small PC for medium duty computing. As Borat would say, ‘Thatsa nice!’

Crowded but neat, and easily worked on.

This prototype uses a Athlon64 X2 BE-2350 dual core processor with 45W thermal dissipation - at maximum draw! The AMD 690 graphics is a very powerful on board solution, also with little thermal output.

This is the type of system we can look forward to, and for those like me, who like to stuff lots of things in a system, a larger case can be used, like one of the HTPC cases offered now, so that more items will fit and thermal stability will still be no problem.

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