GIGABYTE BRIX Pro: A First Look at the Intel i7-4770R with Iris Pro HD 5200
by Ganesh T S on January 7, 2014 8:00 PM EST
The presence of the Core i7-4770R in such a small form factor / chassis left us worried initially. We were wondering whether the unit would be able to properly cool down a 65W TDP processor within those constraints. Due to the size of the system, the fan had to be pretty small and rotate at high speeds for effective cooling. With a maximum speed of 4090 rpm, the sound from the unit was similar to what one would expect in a mini-server room (matching the noise from the Netgear GSM 7352S that we have running in our NAS testbed). While running various benchmarks, the speed topped out around 3900 rpm.
To stress the unit to the maximum, we unleashed our Prime 95 + FurMark stress test and recorded the following numbers.
At the outset, the idle numbers are impressive for a system with a 65W TDP desktop processor. Note that this is not a ULV CPU like what we had in the Intel NUC. The load numbers indicate a maximum power consumption of approximately 88W. I did see the instantaneous power consumption shoot up to 92 - 93W initially and attributed this to the Core i7-4770R's turbo mode (where the CPU clock can go up to as high as 3.9 GHz compared to the nominal 3.2 GHz). A look at the temperatures and HWiNFO throttling information, however, confirmed what we had feared.
Gallery: GIGABYTE BRIX Pro
The unit does seem to throttle under full load of both the CPU and GPU (an unrealistic workload, admittedly, but one which some of the other systems we have evaluated have passed with flying colours). Now, the results that we obtained for the four passes of our x264 benchmark run were pretty consistent. It might turn out that normal workloads don't trigger the throttling and it is something we hope to evaluate further down the road.
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elian123 - Thursday, January 9, 2014 - link
I wonder whether 3200x2000 may be the max resolution with single stream transport and that multi stream transport does allow for 4K?Gadgety - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
So I'm expecting to see a Kaveri APU equivalent available for less.zodiacfml - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Wow, one powerful machine. I did not consider NUC kits before, until this one.It's inevitable to see a kit with the heatsink as part of the case which should give better performance or fanless designs.
theuglyman0war - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link
vesa mounted behind a center monitor the mount/heatsink design dpesn't care how noisey the stock fan is/was! Time to dust off the dremel...philipma1957 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
So it is loud and overheats when maxed. I fail to see the value to a home owner. Business it looks pretty good as many stores have a high sound level. It is pricey. 650 + 200 + 100 + 100 = 1050I put 200 for the msata 100 for 8gb ram and 100 for a windows 7 / 8 os.
I use pc's and macs for a home owner's ht the quad core mac mini may be a better deal. I still like the idea of a small system pushing limits. Maybe in 3 more generations it will be a lot nicer for home owners vs businesses .
DryAir - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
The i5-4570R costs only $8 more than the i5-4200U (acording to ARK Intel), but the i5-4570R brix is $140 more expensive than the i5-4200U brix. Why? More plastic? The extra money did not went in the cooling solution, judgind by this results.Ayway, i think that form factor is the better than the ULV one. Still tiny but with a much better processor and 2.5" HDD option.
philipma1957 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
well that is business , you pay more because it is faster and you need the speed. they gouge you because the extra power is worth it to you. I do agree that the small size is nice but I rather it be a little bigger with better cooling. Plus 650 stripped naked is not cheap. The quad mac mini is 679 from apples refurbished store and come with an os 4gb ram and a 1tb hdd. the prcoessor it not far behind the cpu in here.Wall Street - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
It went into the extra 128 MB of cache needed for the graphics, there literally is an additional chip in there for this. If you don't want 'gamer' graphics than don't get the Iris Pro. You are paying for in game FPS, with little benefit from the cache in other uses. If this isn't your use, don't get the Iris Pro, the HD 5000 model for a lot less. Of course this one is louder too because Iris Pro is 35 W instead of the 15 watts for the other models. If you don't need Iris pro, then get the smaller quiet model and don't pay for it. Of course, while Iris Pro is loud during games, the low end NUC computers will be < 20 FPS in a lot of games where Iris Pro is ~40 FPS, so the noise definitely gets you something.tabkron - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Please test Linux on this. Maybe SteamOS, Ubuntu or anything that's using a fairly recent kernel and graphics software.Galatian - Thursday, January 9, 2014 - link
I wish there would be cases with room for at least a slim line ODD. I mean those things are supposed to be used as HTPCs. For me they completely miss their point by trying to be as small as possible.