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I'm ticked off that it is practically impossible to actually purchase an AMD mobile CPU. It seems the only way to do it is to buy a laptop. So if I want to do something half-way creative like build a low-power, low-noise, desktop or server, AMD is effectively not an option.
this is just nonsense. why exactly would you buy a mobile CPU when you can just undervolt a desktop chip? take something like a BE-2400 or 4850e (45W), undervolt it down to the lowest stable voltage at whatever speed is sufficient for the tasks the PC/server is intended to spend most of its time executing (~2GHz for most people), you can usually take the voltage sub-1.0V at this speed, a 20% reduction in voltage will reduce power consumption by 40% or more, so TDP is now in the <25W region, which is exactly the same as the mobile chips.
mobile on desktop (MoDT) is dead, desktop chips have caught up so much in performance per watt that the added expense and hassle of MoDT doesn't pass any sensible cost/benefit analysis.