GIGABYTE BRIX Pro: A Second Look at the Intel i7-4770R with Iris Pro HD 5200
by Ganesh T S on June 14, 2014 5:00 PM ESTConcluding Remarks
Intel's Core i7-4770R, despite being announced along with the rest of the Haswell family, had been impossible for consumers to source throughout 2013. Earlier this year, GIGABYTE became the first to come out with a PC based on that. The fact that they managed to cram the silicon into a NUC-sized motherboard in the BRIX Pro was no mean engineering feat.
After evaluating the BRIX Pro in detail over the last six months, we can say that it will turn out to be a trendsetter for compact gaming PCs. It has already made boutique PC vendors sit up and take notice. Recently, both iBUYPOWER and CyberPowerPC introduced SFF gaming PCs which use the BRIX Pro and provide consumers with options to complete the build (and create an off-the-shelf solution). In addition, GIGABYTE has already exhibited a number of different configurations in the same form factor.
However, with great power, we end up with much noise too. We simply can't recommend the unit for users who want a quiet HTPC for madVR capabilities or casual office work. But, the unit definitely excels as a compact machine for gaming with medium quality settings. In fact, it comprehensively beats what qualified as a bonafide mini-PC targeting gamers (the ASRock Vision 3D 252B) less than a couple of years ago. The powerful CPU makes sure that extensive multi-tasking as well as heavy duty office work can be carried out without any problems (as long as the acoustics are not a matter of concern). In terms of internal components, it is good to see that the 2.5" drive support is much easier to utilize compared to the Intel D54250WYKH NUC kit. We were a bit worried about the Realtek WLAN solution being foisted on consumers, but it turns out to be a surprisingly good performer (particularly with the Broadcom-based Netgear R7000 in our testbed).
On the whole, the GIGABYTE BRIX Pro has plenty going for it. The only aspect that we would like to see addressed in future versions is the thermal solution. Even while maintaining the same motherboard size, it might be possible to go in for a larger heat sink at the cost of increasing the unit's height. This might allow for better acoustics and extract even better performance from the processor by avoiding the throttling. In our opinion, the target market (gamers) would probably not mind it.
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dylan522p - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
Fair enough. The SSD market moves so fast can't blame you on that.Yorgos - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
It doesn't matter which is inferior when we are talking for a small percentage in performance, actually in those speeds I don't think it makes any difference. What matters is that samsung offers the best silicon in the market and has the least problems with its ssds so most of the builds will prolly have samsung instead of crucial.cubee - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
How much impact will DDR4 have on iGPU performance?schizoide - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
Alienware alpha (steam machine) will be out in a couple months for $550, which is less than the barebones Brix Pro, with no RAM or storage. The Alpha is an i3 with 4GB RAM and a "maxwell" (real 750ti-ish) GPU and a 500GB HD. It will actually be capable of 1080p gaming, and costs less. It is quite a lot larger than the brix, but still small compared to any other computer. Oh, and you get an x360 controller and a win8.1 license too.Morawka - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
750ti wont run 1080p but in about 1/3rd popular titles.. A 760 is really needed to run 1080p comfortably with a decent list of settings.Qwertilot - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
The sort of people buying this sort of thing/ a 750ti aren't setting obsessed :) 750ti well ahead of this things performance of course and about the minimum you want to be taken half way seriously as a gaming desktop.Interesting to see how close Broadwell K can get though, with the improved/larger GPU stuff and I'd presume a somewhat larger overall power budget to boot.
schizoide - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
Yeah pretty much this. It won't run 1080p on ultra settings in all titles, but if you turn down the options a bit they will run smoothly.tipoo - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
I'm curious in the lower end of the BRIX, especially for a parent computer. The one at $250 with the AMD APU. Seems like a whole lot of compute power for that much money.schizoide - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
The low-end brix/nucs are a lot more interesting, yeah. Either as perfectly fine little desktops, steam streaming clients, or HTPCs. The high-end ones suck, because the GPUs are not comparable to the current console generation.TiGr1982 - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
As a funny fact, this little box (based on Haswell i7) is faster than Core i7-4960X (Ivy Bridge-E) in single-threaded CPU performance (because the latter haxacore is based on older uarch).