Addtronics W8500 WTX Workstation/Server Tower Case

We've also seen a recent flurry of high-end motherboards announced with a new form factor, WTX. The "W" in WTX stands for workstation, but many of these cases and motherboards will be targetted at the server market.

Basically, WTX is a major extension of ATX, but the big features of WTX include a larger motherboard for greater expansion and enhanced power capabilities that ATX could not provide sufficiently for the workstation market. The larger motherboard makes more room for integrated components on the WTX I/O shield and optionally two additional expansion slots. The enhanced power capabilities are designed to support multiple processors, AGP Pro graphics cards and lots of hard drives. WTX cases are backwards compatible with ATX motherboards, but not vice versa.

The WTX specification has actually been in the works for quite a while, but is just now showing up in motherboard and case products. The first WTX case to make it to the AnandTech labs is the Addtronics W8500, graciously provided by Computer Nerd. They sell the W8500 under the "POW!er Pro Tower" label for $265.

You may not have heard of Addtronics, but there's a good chance you've worked with or at least heard about an Addtronics case without even knowing it. Remember the Supermicro SC750-A? Addtronics designed and produced that case for Supermicro. Supermicro is actually the OEM buyer in this situation and many other "Supermicro" cases are also designed and built by Addtronics.

So what happens when you give Addtronics the chance to work with a brand new form factor designed for the workstation/entry-level server market? A Supermicro SC750-A on steroids? Or would there be bugs with the new form factor? Let's find out...