wwenze
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And here's one funny thing to take note of for those actually planning to build a system.
The size of the chassis, and hence the expansion slots, and the size of the power supply go hand-in-hand. The form factor of the power supply largely decides how small the casing gets. Those using external power bricks are limited to an internal DC-DC converter in the 100+W range, although finding a large-enough power brick is a bigger challenge.
The A10 system when not overclocked measures 149W from the wall at load. After factoring for PSU inefficiencies we're left with perhaps 120W DC, but for reliability's sake you should really get at least a 150W PSU.
AMD A10-5800K Power Consumption | bit-tech.net
And not forget that this heat needs to be exhausted from the casing.
Which means small casings with 100+W PSU (internal or external) are out when considering A10.
And if you go for a casing with at least 150W~200W, it would be large enough to fit at least a low-profile HD 7750 or similar.
And if you go for such less-used casings, which are relatively expensive for their weight in metal, and consider the cost of the entire setup plus any required cooling/noise requirements, the small price increase from APU to GPU is insignificant versus the large performance and efficiency increase. Remember that the current cheapest i3 bundle is priced quite a step lower than the cheapest A10 bundle.
Simply put, APU fails at its niche market when you actually try to build something with it. And for other applications why would you use it in the first place.
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