~Toughbooktalk~

I have been slowly upgrading the gaming machines at home and decided to do a lightweight gaming desktop for travel at work. I got the parts ordered so expect some photos and benchmarking soon.

Motherboard is 6.7" x 6.7" Trying to keep it all AMD. I wanted to experiment with the newer AMD APU. Graphics/CPU on one die. The onboard graphics can play games like skyrim and bioshock 3 with out dedicated graphics. Not looking for baddest machine of the all. Just good travel machine. First going to try it with it's current set up, then with a 7770 double wide card. You can even you crossfire hybrid graphics to boot performance.

GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI FM2+ / FM2 AMD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128663

DIYPC V3plus-R Red Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811353024
Physical Spec
Dimensions
8" x 9.6" x 8.4"
Weight
3 lbs.
No crappy power supply also, takes a full size ATX power supply. So with a modular power supply I can save some room.

AMD A10-6800K Richland 4.1GHz (4.4GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition AMD Radeon HD 8670D
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819113331

Should be a interesting build. I could get a even smaller case with no dedicated graphics card, but that wouldn't work well for cooling. Going with a large aftermarket air cooler. Waiting till it comes in and I have the cpu mounted before ordering one to make sure if fits.

I got a monitor I can use on the rig and will be carrying video glasses, roll up keyboard, gaming mouse and Belkin gaming pad for general gaming use.


I have come up with two other motherboards and cpu for a mini gaming pc. Got the boards and processors for under 60 bucks for both motherboards and two CPU's. It take laptop core 2 duo cpu and ddr2 laptop ram. The bonus on these mini motherboards is it has one pci x 16 slot. If these work out I will let you know what to get in private so the prices don't jump up.

Cute!

The parts got in and between working on a desktop for the ex-brother in-law. Last night I started test fitting parts and got it all together today. I still think I need a aftermarket CPU cooler, but will need a low profile one. I dropped a 550w power supply in it with a huge fan and pointed it toward the mother board to help cool it. The other fan is the one directly on top of the CPU heat sink. It has rooms but I don't think 4, 10 mm fans would do that much.

The case is lot sturdier than I thought it would be. I have had it together and apart several times to get it all to fit right. It's a good aluminum case, the buttons, etc that came with the case I will just have to see over time.

This is what I am getting out of the X25 in this little beast. I am typing on it now. Last night I was having problems with it heating up. It finally got hot enough to shut down so I left if off for the night. Today I took it back apart and pulled the heat sink. The factory paste put on the heat-sink at the factory was a JOKE. I could read the processor numbers though it, very crappy looking. I put Arctic Silver 5 on it and the temps at idle are around 52c, then jump around from time to time up to a max of 82c. This should be wrong as the shut off temp is 74c.

All drivers are installed. Doing small benchmarking and testing. Got some lighter games to test out. Then I am going to drop some larger games on here to see what the 8670 Radeon that is build in can do. It shares the 8Gb DDR3 1600 with the CPU. This motherboard can go up to 2133 speed ram, but looking up on testing other places have done there was a big jump in performance going from 1333 ram to 1600 but from there up to 2133 their was a gain, but no big jump. So 1600 up is the happy spot.

On Skyrim and Bioshock 3 I am suppose to get 28 to 32 FPS. We will soon see.

Also this is my only PC with USB 3.0. I may try some speed tests though that port to see what I am getting.

One of the "new"heatsinks I ordered came in today. For low profile I got a stock AMD FX cooler. The large one that looks close to aftermarket for the 8 core processors. The temps at idle are down and speccy was showing it shoot up from there back up to the 74 to 80. 74 is suppose to be the shut down temp. I installed AMD overdrive today and it shows the same temps for the motherboard and GPU that speccy does, BUT shows the temps down to about 22 / 23 at idle then when I hear the fans surge up when I start a video they slowly go down from a increased temp and stabilize. I have heard that on the APU that many monitors don't work right but AMD one does, so it looks like I will be using it to keep tabs on my cpu temps.



This is my old cpu cooler, AMD really dropped the ball on this one. Small, and the main part doesn't even fully cover the CPU. Just have some fins on the edges.



New CPU in place. It doesn't float in the middle like the small one did, it fills up the slot and I get to keep the stock hold down.

Height is about the same, have about the distance as the stock cooler does from the fan on the power supply. The fan from the power supply blows on the motherboard, the CPU fan sucks air from there into the heatsink.