Supposedly August is when it all comes together. OEMs have the Trinity chips already so they will start showing up in stores in laptops and desktops any day now, but the stanalone chips are a month away.

If the A10 5800K doesn't show the 30% better performance AMD is promissing over current A8 3870K, I wouldn't have any issues buying a A8 3870K for under 100 bucks (129 currently).

But early benchmarks on Toms Hardware look good

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5600k-a6-5400k,3224-15.html

With a 6670 in crossfire, 5800k chip should have no issues doing 30-40 fps on most games in 1080p, with 720p to fall back on in extreme circumstances.

Not bad performance/price with a good enough power consumption.

You can't go wrong with either chip.

That APU setup, is its form factor the same as those mini pcs from Asus or Zotac?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163182 is a case i own and really like not quite as small as the case you posted but fits gpus better, and is very quite to boot.

reviews

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22814

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4533/silverstone-temjin-tj08-fat-case-in-a-little-coat


this case looks very promising and i might try a build in it http://www.techpowerup.com/168520/Cooler-Master-Introduces-the-Elite-120-Advanced-Mini-ITX-PC-Case.html

what ever pus you get, modular is a must… or at least for me its worth it…. and think about an ssd deals can be had these days 

The setup I am looking for is going to be a shade bigger than those zotac's because I want a bluray drive inside...but not by much.

It will also be much more powerul as those machines come with and Intel Atom or AMD E350 at best.

The Silvestone case does look cool, and going micro ATX will allow me to save some money as mITX stuff is expensive...but it's a little too big for a gaming HTPC.

If I go with that, I may as well use an i5 2500K and a GTX 670 or something like that. Since I'm leaning towards the A8/A10 APU's, I can make this work in a much smaller chasis. There is a certain great feeling knowing nothing was wasted when you build a PC... :)

In this particular case, I'd still go with an Xeon E3-1230 v2 or Xeon E3-1240 v2.

This "hidden" crossfire stuff is just yelling for trouble (microstuttering, power consumption etc). The Xeons use considerably less power than any AMD chip, and a better graphics card always wins against this "hidden" Xfire kludge.

Isn't the 690 tehcnically two 680s?  But I guess two 670s would be cheaper.

While those Xeons do use slightly less power and would demolish the AMD APUs in terms of x86 dual threded CPU performance, the A8 3870K APU + 6670 will give it quite a spanking for anything GPU based, including gaming. That is unless you add a dedicated GPU to the Xenon which would make thw whole setup 3X the cost of an AMD APU + 6670. I think for an HTPC with gaming, the Xenon would be overkill.

I've had 4 SLI/Crossfire setups in the last 3 years, starting with GTX 260s, HD 6850s, GTX 560Tis and finally dual GTX 580s and I've not seen too many issues with dual GPU setups. Considering that AMD openly advertises that APU + 6670 work wonderfully together, you'd figure they would have the drivers optimized by now.

2X670's with some slight overclocking would give you about same processing power as a single 690 as well as save you 200 bucks. However they would increase your power usage as well.

Here is an interesting article you whould check out -

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3076197/geforce-gtx-680-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-upgrade

If you are gaming on a single monitor, there is absolutely no need to get a GTX690 (or even a 680). Something like a GTX 570 or a Radeon 6970 should serve you for very well at 1080p for many years to come.

I personally have moved away from my rediculous 3 monitor setups and dual 580 SLI rig.