Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
DIY-APE has reached an important stage in development Background components Ecosystem for PC DIYers. BTF3.0 (via Unico devices) is designed so that no cables are needed between the PSU, motherboard or graphics card, reducing cable management for extremely clean builds. The DIY-APE team shared some information and video footage of the various new components working together and separately Chinese social media.
As a gentle reminder, DIY-APE’s BTF designs have previously been adopted by important PC component makers such as Asus and MSI. BTF designs seek to reduce cable clutter by placing connectors around the back and favoring direct, cableless connections between components. We’ve seen some great examples of previous BTF releases at trade shows, but it takes time to penetrate the market. Hopefully, with some next generation of new processors/platforms, BTF will become mainstream.
Now that BTF3.0 is finished, what does it promise? The new BTF3.0 motherboard has a 50-pin connector for up to 1500W, which replaces the traditional or dual 8-pin EPS connectors for the CPU and the 24-pin connector for motherboard power.
image 1 to 3
To match the motherboard, which was a prototype of Colourful’s Z890 chipset, the DIY-APE team had an Asus graphics card like the TX Gaming RTX 4070 12G-BTF, with the company’s nifty GC-HPWR connector. (Up to) 1500W will be fed from the motherboard through this connector (and PCIe slot) to the GPU, which seems sufficient. It would also put an end to Melting the GPU power cable problems.
Another essential component of this important setup is the PSU. However, we do not know who the seller of this component was. In the embedded video, at the end, you’ll hear it snap into place satisfactorily for mobo and GPU operation. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t get one to match the motherboard and GPU, but that’s a mistake.
With these three main components and equipped with M.2 drives instead of SATA SSDs (there are four M.2 slots in the sample Mini ATX board shown in the picture), all your PC needs to plug in is a CPU cooler, system fans, RGB cables and front panel connectors.
Congratulations to diyape! BTF3.0 completed, no cables between psu, mobo and gpu. It needs completely new types of psu, mobo and case that are compatible with btf3.0. All the connectors on the mobos are on the back of the pcb.12vo The mobo has been confirmed with a new header that has 50pin to replace… https://t.co/ZhWRzaatBs pic.twitter.com/Hp0iM0hNQNJanuary 2, 2025
Finally, the DIY-APE and Uniko team shared some information about the cases. Different case makers use different thicknesses and cutouts for the Mopo tray, which may affect how things connect, and requires some design/build workarounds. In other words, case and component makers must follow more stringent standards before BTF3.0 or a similar standard becomes a mass-market standard.
We look forward to the future of clean BTF but don’t want to bet on the time when BTF PC DIY becomes mainstream.
