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Neither of these products is available from the Egg, so when I decided that the Gigabyte mini-ITX FM1 board was the best one for my purposes, I had to "think outside the Egg". Anyway, i want to share my experiences because i'm really impressed with this combo.
First of all, the system specs:
Motherboard: GA-A75N-USB3
APU: AMD A8-3820
RAM: 4GB Crucial Ballistix (2x2GB, 1866MHz 9-9-9-24)
HSF: Silenx EFZ-100HA2
Case: In Win BP655
HD & OD: on hand from previous box
Dual gfx card: MSI 6570 low profile
Total new part cost: ~$350
The build
I wanted a semi-portable box that could handle Cryengine2 at highish settings and this will do that. The A8-3820 (2.5GHz, 2.8GHz turbo) is a sleek thing; I went with the 65W TDP part because of the small box and PSU (200W).
The socket on this board sits near the 16x PCIE slot and the RAM (which is at the very back edge. The Radeon card barely fits without trimming down the tab on the HSF mounting lever, and I had to trim the fins a bit with a dremel to get the HSF to fit in with the optical drive. The RAM was fortunately just short enough to clear the HSF, and would also fit under the optical drive, but there's no need for the latter as it ends right at the edge of the RAM heat spreader. So, all in all a tight fit.
Unfortunately, the design decisions put the ATX power plug on the mobo right in front of the PSU fan, and the front audio cable of the In Win case runs diagonally across the board to the socket on the bottom right side of the mobo. Also, the ATX12V connector reaches over the HSF. Nevertheless, I think it's a pretty clean build considering the space constraints.
Operation
The Gigabyte mini-ITX board handles clocking well. I locked all the voltages at stock and was able to bump it up to 133 MHz bclock, while dropping the multiplier to keep the APU at ~2.7, 3.0 GHz. It could finish hyperpi fine that way, but I decided to go with 110 MHz bclock, which gives a nice 10% OC, and was able to drop Vcore about 10% (-0.125V in BIOS) at the same time. This is a nice compromise to avoid throttling while getting a good speed bump, something I was able to confirm with speedfan and fusiontweaker. The cores alternate between p0 (turbo -- ~3GHz in this case) and p1 (~2.75GHz) while hammering with four instances of superpi, and stay around 60C (cover off). With the voltage at stock, the core temperature would soar to 65C quickly, and the APU would throttle to P2, for a noticeable loss in performance. By using a 110 bclock, I was able to drop the RAM multiplier and get 1760MHz instead of 1866MHz, but with tighter 8-8-8-22 timings, which I read (but have not verified) is probably more useful for llano than the extra 100 MHz at over 1600MHz.
I also dropped the gfx core voltage -0.125 along with its 10% overclock.
Dual graphics works fine (i'm using Windows 8 preview), and with the relatively low-powered gfx card, there's no problem keeping it cool in this case. Be sure to not mix Win7 and Win8 AMD drivers or you'll have a mess (or so I hear...
). That's all to report for now. I may try to push the voltage lower, but i'm really happy with the results already. This seems like a great setup for a powerful but cheap budget mini-ITX build, especially if you can pick up used parts as Trinity desktop looms.
Summary
All parts fit with a little dremeling on the hsf fins, and a 10% OC, ~10% undervolt gives a nice boost up to 3GHz for a nice tiny mid-level gaming box.
3DMark11: P2120
Pics on request.
First of all, the system specs:
Motherboard: GA-A75N-USB3
APU: AMD A8-3820
RAM: 4GB Crucial Ballistix (2x2GB, 1866MHz 9-9-9-24)
HSF: Silenx EFZ-100HA2
Case: In Win BP655
HD & OD: on hand from previous box
Dual gfx card: MSI 6570 low profile
Total new part cost: ~$350
The build
I wanted a semi-portable box that could handle Cryengine2 at highish settings and this will do that. The A8-3820 (2.5GHz, 2.8GHz turbo) is a sleek thing; I went with the 65W TDP part because of the small box and PSU (200W).
The socket on this board sits near the 16x PCIE slot and the RAM (which is at the very back edge. The Radeon card barely fits without trimming down the tab on the HSF mounting lever, and I had to trim the fins a bit with a dremel to get the HSF to fit in with the optical drive. The RAM was fortunately just short enough to clear the HSF, and would also fit under the optical drive, but there's no need for the latter as it ends right at the edge of the RAM heat spreader. So, all in all a tight fit.
Unfortunately, the design decisions put the ATX power plug on the mobo right in front of the PSU fan, and the front audio cable of the In Win case runs diagonally across the board to the socket on the bottom right side of the mobo. Also, the ATX12V connector reaches over the HSF. Nevertheless, I think it's a pretty clean build considering the space constraints.
Operation
The Gigabyte mini-ITX board handles clocking well. I locked all the voltages at stock and was able to bump it up to 133 MHz bclock, while dropping the multiplier to keep the APU at ~2.7, 3.0 GHz. It could finish hyperpi fine that way, but I decided to go with 110 MHz bclock, which gives a nice 10% OC, and was able to drop Vcore about 10% (-0.125V in BIOS) at the same time. This is a nice compromise to avoid throttling while getting a good speed bump, something I was able to confirm with speedfan and fusiontweaker. The cores alternate between p0 (turbo -- ~3GHz in this case) and p1 (~2.75GHz) while hammering with four instances of superpi, and stay around 60C (cover off). With the voltage at stock, the core temperature would soar to 65C quickly, and the APU would throttle to P2, for a noticeable loss in performance. By using a 110 bclock, I was able to drop the RAM multiplier and get 1760MHz instead of 1866MHz, but with tighter 8-8-8-22 timings, which I read (but have not verified) is probably more useful for llano than the extra 100 MHz at over 1600MHz.
I also dropped the gfx core voltage -0.125 along with its 10% overclock.
Dual graphics works fine (i'm using Windows 8 preview), and with the relatively low-powered gfx card, there's no problem keeping it cool in this case. Be sure to not mix Win7 and Win8 AMD drivers or you'll have a mess (or so I hear...
). That's all to report for now. I may try to push the voltage lower, but i'm really happy with the results already. This seems like a great setup for a powerful but cheap budget mini-ITX build, especially if you can pick up used parts as Trinity desktop looms. Summary
All parts fit with a little dremeling on the hsf fins, and a 10% OC, ~10% undervolt gives a nice boost up to 3GHz for a nice tiny mid-level gaming box.
3DMark11: P2120
Pics on request.
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