I don't know if this is the correct thread to give reasons why I am not happy with the new SAM but I will give a short synopsis. First, and this has been my experience with the building with the X5040 and the SAM460LE if you do not buy complete system from Acube or Amedia, you will get zero technical support. The only place to turn to is Forums and it seems that I rarely get any answers from this forum about 4.1FE 2. The dealers will say they cannot guaranty the experience if it isn't thoroughly tested by them with their components. I think this is total bunk. I cannot even get them to recommend components so I go off their build if I bought a complete system from them.
So it seems the "Systems" being sold X5040 or SAM have a Radeon RX550, 240GB Crucial BX500, and Kingston RAM. The SAM you need a SATA controller.
So I started with an original AmigaoneXE board. I did get a lot of good advise on making that stable from this forum but it would still crash and CPU choke. Candy killed it and could hardly run it. Everyone said you need to get an X5000 or SAM. I was an "Early Adopter" since Jan 2020. May of 2022, I gave up on the A1222 and started looking for a new machine. I found Amedia was the only one offering the X5040. Then Acube annouced they were offering the SAM in Sept which wound up being January 2023. So I ordered both. The X5040 arrived in Aug-Sept 2022. It still crashes from time to time for no apparent reason, can't browse Facebook or Youtube or any graphically intensive site. Wait. Isn't that pretty much ALL media sites now? I figured a 4 core PPC should have no problem running anything but OS4.1FE only supports 1 core?
? Ugg! I hope they have changed this on the A1222 but doubtful!
So I got and built the SAM in Jan 2023 with all the components from above. First, the Radeon RX550 recommended and shipped with complete systems does not support the kickstart boot screen or get this HDMI. So no mention of this anywhere, I thought I had a bad MB or bad RX550. I built my X5040 with a Sapphire R9 280X 3GB. So I swapped cards between them and I now had kickstart screen but no HDMI only vga. Now I may be wrong about the RX550 that HDMI works on the SAM but it definitely does not have Kickstart boot. Then trying to get someone to tell you what Warp/Radeon driver you needed for what card was just totally aggravating as well!
So with either Radeon card, the SAM totally chokes on intense graphics. Candy kills the CPU and it seems to have a very bad lag. If somebody wants to work with me and get it fine tuned, I would be more than happy to get it working properly. It has been collecting dust for months! I have almost $1700 US in that system.
You may ask why I dont buy a complete system. I live in the US and it is easier to ship me a mother board safely than a complete tower system. If the tower gets damaged in shipping, it is a total nightmare of shipping back and forth. At least that is my logic.
Sam 460LE
Sapphire R9 280X 3GB
PNY 500GB SSD - maybe an issue since it seems Crucial BX500 240Gb are being shipped in systems.
2GB - OWC6400DDR2S
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX SB1570 PCIe 5.1 Sound Card
4 Port SATA RAID to PCI Card Adapter Converter Silicon Image Sil3114 Chipset