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The ATX design has several significant advantages over the older motherboard
styles. It addresses many of the annoyances that system builders have had to put up
with. As the Baby AT form factor has aged, it has increasingly grown unable to
elegantly handle the new requirements of motherboard and chipset design. Since the
ATX form factor specifies changes to not just the motherboard, but the case and power
supply as well, all of the improvements are examined here:
· Integrated I/O Port Connectors: Baby AT motherboards use headers which
stick up from the board, and a cable that goes from them to the physical serial
and parallel port connectors mounted on to the case. The ATX has these
connectors soldered directly onto the motherboard. This improvement reduces
cost, saves installation time, improves reliability (since the ports can be tested
before the motherboard is shipped) and makes the board more standardized.
· Integrated PS/2 Mouse Connector: On most retail baby AT style
motherboards, there is either no PS/2 mouse port, or to get one you need to use
a cable from the PS/2 header on the motherboard, just like the serial and
parallel ports. (Of course most large OEMs have PS/2 ports built in to their
machines, since their boards are custom built in large quantities). ATX
motherboards have the PS/2 port built into the motherboard.
· Reduced Drive Bay Interference: Since the board is essentially "rotated" 90
degrees from the baby AT style, there is much less "overlap" between where the
board is and where the drives are. This means easier access to the board, and
fewer cooling problems.
· Reduced Expansion Card Interference: The processor socket/slot and
memory sockets are moved from the front of the board to the back right side,
near the power supply. This eliminates the clearance problem with baby AT style
motherboards and allows full length cards to be used in most (if not all) of the
system bus slots.
· Better Power Supply Connector: The ATX motherboard uses a single 20-pin
connector instead of the confusing pair of near-identical 6-pin connectors on the
baby AT form factor. You don't have the same risk of blowing up your
motherboard by connecting the power cables backwards that most PC
homebuilders are familiar with.
· "Soft Power" Support: The ATX power supply is turned on and off using
signaling from the motherboard, not a physical toggle switch. This allows the PC
to be turned on and off under software control, allowing much improved power
management. For example, with an ATX system you can configure Windows 95
so that it will actually turn the PC off when you tell it to shut down.
· 3.3V Power Support: The ATX style motherboard has support for 3.3V power
from the ATX power supply. This voltage (or lower) is used on almost all-newer
processors, and this saves cost because the need for voltage regulation to go
from 5V to 3.3V is removed.
· Better Air Flow: The ATX power supply is intended to blow air into the case
instead of out of it. This means that air is pushed out of all the small cracks in
the PC case instead of being drawn in through them, cutting down on dust
accumulation. Further, since the processor socket or slot is on the motherboard