Consoles uses APU and is capable of running games up to 4k with decent fps. Why can’t APU be used in desktop or gaming PC builds?
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An APU is literally a GPU and a CPU glued together. It is used in consoles and also on laptops in order to save on space and components. However it offers less in the form of modularity and heat dissipation. So for PCs where the user wants to spec the device themselves, buy the components individually and then build them together into a custom setup for the perfect performance, APUs do not fit into the equation. I did mention you found them in some laptops though and you may find them in some smaller embedded PCs.
>Why can’t APU be used in desktop or gaming PC builds?
It can be, but at that point you’re eschewing the primary benefits of a gaming PC form factor.
Phones, consoles, laptops, desktops, embedded systems – all of these different form factors are essentially computers with the same, broad hardware base; They all have a CPU, they all have some form of graphics processing, some RAM, some boot storage etc. What makes each one different are the restrictions placed on them by both the physical size and the economics of the market they’re targeting. An ultra thin-and-light laptop might be expensive, but it has very little space for cooling equipment and likely a requirement to operate relatively quietly, which limits your choices on hardware. A console can (and in the case of the PS4, **did**) sound like a jet engine but they need to be viable @ $500 a pop. An embedded system needs to run reliably, 24/7, for ages which also puts restrictions on hardware choices and temperature thresholds.
The major benefits of the desktop PC form factor are that you have control over basically all of these aspects – you can make it expensive or cheap, small or big, quiet or loud, energy efficient or a total monster. But *gaming* PC’s are those tailored to the needs of gaming hardware, which will usually mean they aren’t limited by the size of components or their cooling requirements (like a laptop), they don’t need to run away from a power socket (like a laptop and a phone), they’re very easy to upgrade (unlike any of the others I mentioned), and the total price doesn’t need to hit a generalised figure but rather whatever you’re willing to spend on it.
An APU doesn’t make use of any of these benefits; They tend to be efficient, with low power requirements which means their cooling requirements are also very low. They’re not great for upgrading because if you want to replace the CPU, you also need to pay again for a new GPU (or another APU). They’re typically not going to be the balls-to-the-walls fastest CPU on the market and certainly not the most powerful GPU. And they don’t make much use of the fact they will always be connected to a wall socket. So it’s not that you _can’t_ make a “gaming” PC with an APU, it’s more that the various factors that would lead you to want to get a gaming PC in the first place would then steer you away from using an APU for it. If you aren’t making use of the primary benefits of the gaming PC form factor, it might be worth re-evaluating whether it’s the correct form factor to begin with.
(One exception to the APU upgrade issue is if you’re planning to get a GPU later on but want a PC in the meantime that can do a bit of gaming – this was a more potent argument back when GPU prices were especially inflated and you might expect them to go down in the future, but your existing PC was dogshit and needed replacing. In that situation buying an APU and accepting that in the future you’d cease to use the GPU part of the APU when you bought a dedicated card may well have made sense. But now, whilst GPU’s are still outrageously expensive, there’s much less reason to think their prices will fall substantially from where they are now so this argument possibly doesn’t work so well anymore.)
An APU is a compromise, you sacrifice the vast majority of your performance for smaller form factor and cheaper components. While you can use an APU in a PC (most Intel CPUs are technically such sicne they include a weak GPU and AMD has their G marked APUs in their product lineup with Vega 8/11 iGPUs) but the most powerful of those barely trade blows with the 6 year old low end of discrete GPUs (the GTX1050 non-Ti).
They exist and ARE somewhat used . Most CPU today have an integrated GPU. They can run cheap games to 4k with “decent fps”. At some point in the past AMD made some CPUs with a GPU part that had some more gaming capabilities.
Turns out it was a disaster.
People who did not care about games did not buy it.
People who cared bought GPUs that had much higher processing power. Because this is how PCs are built, you can change parts, so there is no demand for integrated stuff.
So it is not that they cant be used. There just is no point using that.
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