A nameless motherboard with the A9-9820 APU (via @momomo_us) has emerged on AliExpress with a $125.30 price tag. It is believed that the A9-9820, which comes with Radeon R7 350 graphics, and should offer similar performance to that of Microsoft's Xbox One S console.
The A9-9820 is a real processor, but you won't find it anywhere on AMD's database. The model name insinuates that the chip belongs to AMD's 7th Generation A-Series family of APUs. The APU appears to come with an eight-core, 16-thread configuration and a boost clock speed of 2.35 GHz. The AliExpress sellers claims that the A9-9820's performance is comparable to the Core i5-7400. On the graphics end, the A9-9820 reportedly sports the Radeon R7 350 unit that brings 512 shaders clocking up to 935 MHz.
Chuwi, a popular computer manufacturer in China, uses the same A9-9820 APU in the brand's AeroBox mini-PC. A representative from the Chinese company has gone on record as stating that the AeroBox uses a similar motherboard that's inside the Xbox One S. The statement spurred speculations that the A9-9820 could be faulty dies that don't meet requirements for the Xbox One S. As a result, the APU could perform close to what you can expect from the gaming console.
The merchant alleges that Biostar is the manufacturer of the motherboard, and that it adheres to the CEB form factor. For reference, the ATX form factor comes in at 12 x 9.6 inches (305 x 244mm), while CEB measures 12 x 10.5 inches (305 x 267mm). That means the motherboard is just a bit wider than that we're normally accustomed to.
Power goes to the motherboard through a standard 24-pin power connector and 4-pin power connector. The APU obviously comes in a BGA package. Despite housing an AMD APU, the motherboard comes with a mounting pattern for Intel's LGA115x socket. Its other attributes include four DDR3 slots, four SATA III ports and even a PCIe x1 expansion slot. The seller didn't provide an image of the rear I/O, but it seems to house two PS/2 connectors, maybe a HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a couple of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, as well as three 3.5mm audio jacks.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.