New, cheap, A8 APU

[Giraffe]

Looks good for the price - is it?
http://betanews.com/2015/07/20/amd-l...tent+Feed+-+BN

[Domestic_Ginger]

Depends what you're doing with it I suppose. Appears to be £75. Mobos are £30-35. I'm not up to date on AMD sockets. Great time to buy ram, 16gb for about £75. You will probably only want 4-8 though and you need the faster stuff to get the most out of it. So ~£200 with a case and ssd?

The selling point is an okay igpu and okay processor. Power consumption may be a little high; some itx cases come with an inbuilt PSU but these may be a bit too low. The itx boards seem to start at £65 on Froogle. Too much for a budget build.

IMO if you are only going to use the igpu then its definitely viable. I would want to put it in a little case. However the lack of cheap itx boards is a bit of a show stopper.

[scaryjim]

... Power consumption may be a little high; some itx cases come with an inbuilt PSU but these may be a bit too low.

Unlikely - even a top-of-the-range A10 7850k build draws less than 100W from the wall. A lot has been made of AMD's alledged power efficiency struggles, but actually it's a bit of a myth. They're not quite as frugal as Intel at the minute, but they're a very long way from being power hogs.

... I would want to put it in a little case. However the lack of cheap itx boards is a bit of a show stopper.

Actually the lack of reasonably sized mATX cases is more of a show stopper. The vast majority of mITX cases have more than enough internal space to take an mATX motherboard. Fortunately there are a few out there, my favourite at the minute being the Sharkoon CA-M - smaller than many mITX cases but capable of taking any mATX board (as well as a full ATX PSU). Ideal for a cheap Kaveri build.

My only real issue with a k-series A8 is that it would need to be significantly better than the 65W A8-7600. It's got a resonable bump in the base clock (3.6GHz v 3.1Ghz), but otherwise I don't see anything compelling enough about it to make me spend the extra £10 in a price-sensitive part of the market....