AMD Llano A-Series APU Sabine Notebook Platform Review

Notebook Layout and Design Thoughts

AMD sent over a 14.0-inch notebook made by Compal to test out their new A-Series APU. We’ll quickly cover this notebook design to show you what types of notebooks you can expect from this new platform design.

On the left side of the Compal notebook we see the the
Power (DC) Input, CPU cooler
exhaust vent, VGA output, RJ45 ethernet jack, HDMI port, and a
single SuperSpeed USB 3.0 header. The cooling solution that Compal uses for the AMD A8-3500M APU is very quiet and we’d dare to call it nearly silent at with the notebook in an idle state. If you are playing games or really cranking on the system the fan does get a little louder, but it’s not any louder than other notebooks in this class.

On the right side of the laptop we have the Security Port that
allows the laptop to be secured to a fixed object with a 2mm metal
cable, the Super-Multi DVD Optical Drive, two USB 2.0 Ports, a
microphone-in jack and a headphone-out jack. This is a pretty standard configuration and one we’ve seen on many notebooks in this 14-inch class before.

The front of the Compal laptop has the 4-in-1 card reader (SD/MS/MS
Pro/MMC) off to the left side, which appears to be a typical location
these days. Just above the display on the inside of the notebook is a 1.30MP webcam.

The bottom of the Compal notebook features smooth plastic and four rubber pads close to the corners. You’ll find the battery here and two covers that can be removed. If you remove the left cover that has two Philips screws on it you’ll find the storage drive and if you remove the cover on the right you’ll gain access to
the DDR3 memory slots, 802.11n WiFi card, processor and the cooling fans.

In the picture above from left to right you have the A8-3500M APU, A70M FCH, HD 6630 discrete GPU. The Compal AMD Llano 14-inch reference notebook came with 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory shipped in a 2GB + 2GB dual channel configuration. We were shocked to see that the CPU cooler APU cooler isn’t really that beefy, but remember the A8-3500M processor has a TDP of just 35W. Between the APU and the discrete Radeon HD graphics chip is an 802.11 b/g/n wireless card. By removing four screws you have easy accessibility to most of the hardware should something ever need to be replaced. Lust to the left of this cover you’ll discover the location for the 2.5″ SATA storage drive. The hard drive used is the Hitachi Travelstar 250GB 2.5″ 7200RPM SATA notebook hard drive. This particular hard drive
has part number HTS5725025A9A364.

The battery that comes with the Compal notebook is a six cell battery that
is rated at 5200mAh, 58Wh. It will be interesting to see how this battery does in the tests!