Availability of new 45W AMD CPUS?

I also recommend you undervolt a 620, 630, or 635 propus. It's cheaper than the 45w versions, which seem to be available only in the uk or possibly canada.

Although my goal is to build a mini-ITX system which will almost certainly have power limitations, it appears that undervolting/underclocking one of the existing chips, even if it still won't quite get down to 45W, should be enough to fit under a 300W ceiling. Thanks for the wake-up call.

Best answer selected by jtt283.

I just got a i3 530 with biostar micro atx board at frys for around $100 after rebate. It only uses 8-11 watts at idle. This combo would also make a great htpc system.

I've considered i3, and the power numbers do look good, but performance on some benchmarks I've found looks..."unpredictable," and frequently less than one of the considerably cheaper AMD offerings. I'm actually planning to build a very portable, multipurpose machine that I intend to be capable of playing moderately demanding games; GPU may be as low as a HD5670, more likely a HD5750. The case will most likely be either a Sugo SG05 or a Lian Li PC-Q08. I will probably start a discussion thread about this build fairly soon. I'm waiting for a mini-ITX board that supports AM3 and has a PCIE X16 slot on it to become available; Sapphire has one that isn't here yet, and I believe Gigabyte is also about to release one.

I've tried the 620 propus (overclocked at 3.1) but my 530 is significantly faster. I run it at 3.9 with no voltage increases. I dropped the ram speed to 800 and increased the cpu fsb from 133 to 178 and the overclock is very stable. The difference in price between the 635 and i3 530 combos at frys is only about $20. The 530 is much easier to overclock.