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When I initially reviewed the Sapphire EDGE VS8 back in December 2012 I left feeling very positive about the diminutive PC. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the most capable EDGE system, thanks to the fantastic all round performance generated by the power sipping AMD A8-4555M APU.
It wasn't all peaches and cream however, because while I praised the EDGE VS8 it exhibited a rather major and inexcusable performance concern. Sapphire crippled the overall performance of the system by installing a nasty 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch hard disk drive. This had the negative effect of slowing down absolutely everything, from booting the system, to even opening a basic application.
If I blindfolded an enthusiast user and sat them in front of two screens, one running the EDGE VS8 as we reviewed it last year, and the barebones system I tested today with the Solid State drive and ram enhancement, I am confident they would feel one of them was probably an entry level Core i5 system for day to day tasks. The differences really are that colossal that it rams home the point I always make in reviews … a solid state drive is one of the most worthy upgrades available on the market today. The boot time was reduced by almost 500% and applications loaded in a fraction of the time.
As I detailed before, the AMD A8 4555M is not a powerhouse chip design, but it is a step up from the last generation and leaves the ATOM and Celeron processors for dead. It is more than capable of handling general office duties, surfing, daily internet browsing and even light Photoshop work. It is also an excellent choice for high definition media playback as the image quality is at the same level as AMD’s more expensive discrete solutions. Hardware acceleration also ensures ultra smooth playback of Bluray and H264 contained video.
There are limitations with such a system, and while they seem obvious to me, it is worth pointing them out again. The EDGE VS8 is not designed for gamers who want to play the latest Direct X 11 games at high resolution. It will struggle with intensive duties such as 3D rendering and video editing. That said, we did notice that our video encoding task was reduced by almost two and a half minutes because of the wider memory bandwidth and Solid State performance, when paging the data.
While the main selling point will be the tiny physical dimensions of the EDGE VS8, it also produces very little heat and noise. Under most situations you would be hard pressed to hear the fan spinning and demands under 30 watts most of the time. You could leave the VS8 on all day and it would barely impact an electricity bill over the course of a year.
The Barebones VS8 is without question the EDGE you want to buy. At time of publication we don't have confirmed pricing in the United Kingdom, although we have been told that it will cost around $120 less than the ‘complete' VS8. Right now, the EDGE VS8 costs £399.95 from Overclockers UK, if they can get the price down to around £330 for the Barebones unit, then it will make sense.
Obviously you need to factor in the price of the Solid State Drive and the memory, but we proved today that it doesn't have to cost a fortune. For £115, we were able to get a 120GB SATA 3Gbps Solid State drive and 8GB of high grade dual channel SO-DIMM memory from Kingston. With the cost of a Windows operating system factored in, the total cost would be around the £500 mark. If you already have an operating system license at hand and opt for a cheaper, smaller 64GB Solid State Drive such as this, then the price would drop closer to the £400 mark.
The VS8 barebones is clearly designed for the enthusiast user with modest knowledge of system building. We fear installing an SSD/HDD, memory and then an operating system with drivers may prove to much for the ‘average punter', alienating a large portion of the potential audience.
We still believe Sapphire should release a VS8 ‘Ultimate' edition complete with Solid State drive, 8GB of memory and Windows 7 with all the drivers pre-installed. We think it would sell like hotcakes to an inexperienced audience who yearn for something different.
This page will update with availability and pricing, when the Sapphire EDGE VS8 ‘Barebones' becomes available.
Pros:
- extremely tiny.
- almost silent.
- very low power drain.
- runs quite cool.
- capable of handling a lot of everyday tasks.
- BareBones unit is the one to get – just budget extra for a Solid State Drive!
Cons:
- need to budget for an operating system.
- no optical disc support without extra cost (USB pen drive or DVD drive).
- a complex install for the ‘average punter’.
Kitguru says: An extremely capable, attractively designed system that really shines when partnered up with a good Solid State Drive.
Yeah, very nice. tiny little thing. Quite a lot of cash, but you pay for the size.
I didn’t like any of the others as the drive performance was rubbish and I wasn’t paying cash for a 5,400 rpm drive.
This is tempting, but ill be interested to see how much OCUk land it for. They have been quite expensive lately thats why im buying from SCAN now.
How did I miss all the edge reviews before! I read this site all the time.
This looks great, personally id need to put the money into a new gaming system, but great idea from sapphire. very cool.
I think this would be a great little office machine, my only concern is the asking price for the VS8 generally. £300 for a barebones unit isn’t a bargain.
I appreciate paying extra for the size, but I think the price tradeoff might prove hard for Sapphire. good review though
Zardon does a good job of selling this, however im sadly not sold. Not because I dont like it, or value the size and power saving. I just think the pricing is way out of whack.
Id want a 240GB SSD as I need a lot of applications installed. The HDD version they include is too slow so thats out. Then 8GB of ram and id need another Windows 7 license.
The OS license is my big sticking point. I dont want WIndows 8 so id need to fork out another £100 for Windows 7.
This would end up well over £500 (even £600). id rather build something in the Bitfenix Ghost chassis for the same cost with a core i3
@Alex,
Isnt the A8 4555m better than a core i3 for graphics though?
People are missing the point, the AMD A8 mobile chips are very low power demanding designs. Building a system into this is very difficult due to the size. its even smaller than a netbook.
The cost is a little higher, but if Apple made one of these and put an aluminum cover on it, they would sell it for £800-£900 with a basic SSD and 4GB of memory. People would accept it as a great deal.
@ James M. but apple would set it all up and put the OS on it, with all the ‘drivers’ and even some useful software.
Sapphire will only drop the price of the barebones by £70-£80 (depending on exchange in UK and OCUK). So people need to get something of their own choice in regards to HDD and memory, then an OS< install it all, make sure it all works, then install the drivers.
Its quite a cost really ,even though i like it myself. If they had brought out a version with a 120GB SSD, WIndows 7, 8GB of ram for £499.95 and had it ready to rock out out of the package without any user intervention it would make more sense.
They are caught between targeting the educated enthusiast user who could do all the install stuff, but who won't want to pay the price, as other, faster options are available at less or similar money.
the size is the main thing people will love, but im not too fond of the appearance, would have looked better out of aluminum or shiny materials.