Previews - AMD Athlon 5350 (28nm Kabini)

[Biscuit]

PicoPSU seems a very expensive way of powering such a cheap system.

Something like this http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...id=458&area=en where the fan only spins if things get rather hot would seem a good way forward. About £60 cheaper, probably less efficient but if it burns through an extra 5W how low would it take to get through £60 of leccy?

That one only comes with 3 sata power plugs, would have to use one of the Molex plugs to do the last HDD.

Edit to add: Yes I am considering building a new server with one of these, so just putting out my thoughts so far. My current box sits there with all 4 cores of the FM1 cpu at 800MHz and loaded about 20%, so I think one of these would do fine.

Only expensive if you don't currently have an unused picoPSU

That is a very good companion for these kind of systems though!

[DanceswithUnix]

Only expensive if you don't currently have an unused picoPSU

That is a very good companion for these kind of systems though!

Ahh, the economics of "it's on the shelf over there" rather change things

I notice Amazon now have the 5350 at £39.99, so under the £40 mark. If I find the right motherboard I am so getting one

[scaryjim]

... if it burns through an extra 5W how low would it take to get through £60 of leccy? ...

I'm impressed hexus managed to get a measured draw of 15W from the wall, tbh - the whole system is running at < 2% of the rated draw of the supply, so should be tanking in efficiency terms. Even with a 300W supply you'll still be talking < 5%. I have no idea what kind of efficiency rating you'd expect to see with draws that low nowadays....

But yeah, expected saving from a 1W draw 24/7 for a year is around £1 (probably a bit more now, prices have gone up a few percent since I last checked that rule-of-thumb). So it might be worth spending £10 - £20 to get better efficiency out of your PSU for a 24/7 - but probably not £60. it should be easy enough to pick up an 80W - 90W DC PSU with power brick for ~ £40 though, at which point it's probably worth the investment...

[hardflipman]

I was slightly disappointed with the GPU results. I quite fancied replacing my 3ghz p4 + hd5450 that sits under the telly as it's pretty sluggish to say the least in xbmc. i also thought it would be good if my son could play minecraft on it as i'm fed up with him using my pc or laptop!
so, any idea how this would perform (the 5350 that is) and if indeed the graphics performance would be boosted by using my hd5450?

cheers

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was slightly disappointed with the GPU results. I quite fancied replacing my 3ghz p4 + hd5450 that sits under the telly as it's pretty sluggish to say the least in xbmc. i also thought it would be good if my son could play minecraft on it as i'm fed up with him using my pc or laptop!
so, any idea how this would perform (the 5350 that is) and if indeed the graphics performance would be boosted by using my hd5450?

cheers

The IGP is superior to your HD5450. Instead of 80 VLIW5 cores the Athlon 5350 uses 128 GCN cores.

This review tests MC on the Athlon 5350:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...l-article.html

[scaryjim]

... I quite fancied replacing my 3ghz p4 + hd5450 that sits under the telly as it's pretty sluggish to say the least in xbmc. i also thought it would be good if my son could play minecraft on it as i'm fed up with him using my pc or laptop!
so, any idea how this would perform (the 5350 that is) and if indeed the graphics performance would be boosted by using my hd5450?

As CAT says above, the IGP is faster than the 5450 by some distance. There's a hexus members' 3D Mark thread here: http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware-...re-thread.html that shows a 5450 paired with a 3GHz Phenom II X4 scores 225 in Fire Strike, while the Athlon 5350 scores 402.

But if you're seriously running that rig with a 3GHz P4, I'm not surprised it feels slow. A single thread chip based on decade old technology? Forget it. An Athon 5350 will run rings round that old rig on both the graphics AND the CPU. And at not much over £60 for the CPU and motherboard, it's a bit of a no brainer IMNSHO

[hardflipman]

As CAT says above, the IGP is faster than the 5450 by some distance. There's a hexus members' 3D Mark thread here: http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware-...re-thread.html that shows a 5450 paired with a 3GHz Phenom II X4 scores 225 in Fire Strike, while the Athlon 5350 scores 402.

But if you're seriously running that rig with a 3GHz P4, I'm not surprised it feels slow. A single thread chip based on decade old technology? Forget it. An Athon 5350 will run rings round that old rig on both the graphics AND the CPU. And at not much over £60 for the CPU and motherboard, it's a bit of a no brainer IMNSHO

excellent news! only slight damper is the fact that i'd need a case and PSU as well. unless i can somehow convert the PSU connector and just rest the motherboard inside the case! it's an hp dc7100 SFF that i got for free a while ago... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hp+dc7100+sff&newwindow=1&safe=active&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=YkxNU6TALYiphAe oloGwDA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1268&bih=876

[scaryjim]

There's a case + PSU I recommended in another thread that might work and only adds £56 - have a look at http://forums.hexus.net/review-my-bu...ml#post3252521 which should give you some ideas

[watercooled]

Not to mention you could get some pretty significant power savings depending how much the system is used.

[spark9990]

Can anyone recommend a small case with 2 Space PCie expansion slot?

Thanks in advance.

[xslavic]

Scan has two motherboards for under £30:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-hdmi-mini-itx

Woah woah woah woah woah.

That's a socketed mITX board for £27?

Well played AMD, well played...

I personally like the integrated APU on the motherboard,its still decodes 4k thats just enough for me to buy it( +the part with passive cooling ).