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
We have had a quick glance at what the Core i7-4770R is capable of in the BRIX Pro. The initial look has given us various avenues to explore in the second part of the review. After getting back from CES, our first plan is to investigate whether any real-world workloads can cause the unit to throttle. The WLAN card is also pending investigation. At first glance it appears to be a 1x1 802.11ac card from Realtek, but more tests need to be done in order to get an idea of the WLAN performance.
The unit does offer the DIY crowd a little bit of flexibility in fine-tuning the performance. With judicious choice of DRAM and SSD / HDD storage, it is possible to adapt the BRIX Pro to one's requirements. The effect of the choice of DRAM modules can't be overstated in determining the performance of the system. We plan to benchmark the unit with a couple of additional DRAM modules (varying in size and speed). The Corsair Vengeance SODIMMs capable of running at 1866 MHz and the 8 GB per stick ADATA stick capable of running at 1600 MHz are already with us. The memory slots in the BRIX Pro are tuned for DDR3L (1.35V DRAM). It will be interesting to watch what speeds can be hit with these memory modules.
Additionally, as readers requested in our NUC review, we plan to add some basic gaming benchmarks to the mix. Anand has already covered the gaming performance of the Iris Pro HD5200 in detail before, but this will give some additional context for the BRIX Pro as a gaming machine.
Gigabyte's press release for the BRIX Pro went out yesterday. The product has two SKUs, one based on the i7-4770R, and the other based on the i5-4570R. Both CPUs have 65W TDPs, and hence there should really be nothing different between the two versions other than the CPU itself. One of the interesting aspects in the press release was the reference to 64 MB of eDRAM on the Iris Pro HD 5200. Anand's testing of the i7-4950HQ estimated the amount of eDRAM to be around 128 MB as per Intel's specifications. However, Gigabyte continues to hold on to the 64 MB eDRAM number for the i7-4770R and the i5-4570R even after a request for comment was sent. This is one additional aspect that we would like to evaluate in our second part of the review.
The final aspect that we are covering today is pricing. The i7-4770R and i5-4570R cost $392 and $288 respectively (as per the ARK pages). They are only available to OEMs. The MSRP for the GB-BXi5-4570R is $529, while the GB-BXi7-4770R comes in at $649. Considering that no other vendor has brought out a i7-4770R system, Gigabyte can charge a premium and still get away with it. Given the high price demanded by Intel for the CPU alone, the end pricing of the systems don't appear outrageous.
The BRIX Pro is a very exciting system and will definitely energize the NUC / UCFF category. The only worrying point is the thermal performance. Would it have been better for the 47W TDP version (i7-4950HQ) to come in this chassis, with the 65W TDP version sacrificing some of the compactness for a better cooling system? At this point, we don't want to jump to conclusions before digging more into the throttling behaviour. Stay tuned for further coverage towards the end of this month.
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johnny_boy - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Not too interesting really, unless you desperately need something this small with this much power, but I can't imagine who would. It's too loud and throttles. You can get a marginally larger ITX build with far better cooling, much quieter, and never throttles, and doesn't look as cheap.Laststop311 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Shame about the noise level. Other than the noise this is an HTPC dream machine.boto - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I like Linux testing to be done. Also, please see how easily the fan can be replaced for a quieter one. I'm not interested in fanless cases since they're often bigger and very expensive.Andresen - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
The homepage for Gigabye.com is not very accurate about the amount of eDRAM. The version for Great Britain says 128 MB (see http://uk.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx... and the same announcement on the Danish page says 64 MB ( http://www.gigabyte.dk/media/13441 ).In any case the unit could be interesting for a small HPC setup. I hope there will be some computational tests that stress the memory bandwidth in the further coverage.
Ktracho - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
It looks like my comment from a few days ago didn't get posted. I currently have a desktop computer and a small NAS box. Something like this could combine both while drastically reducing physical space and power consumption. Noise wouldn't be as critical as in a HTPC, provided it didn't make a lot of noise while performing light tasks, such as web browsing, e-mail, word processing, etc., which is the bulk of what I would do with it. I don't use my desktop PC very intensively, but there are times when I absolutely need to have it around, and being able to do more than just light tasks is definitely a plus. I'd look into using Windows 8.1 Pro under the included Hyper-V in combination with Linux or a second copy of Windows, with one VM for personal use and the other for the NAS side.As for HTPC, I'd prefer something that can also be used for gaming, so I'm thinking of taking over my daughter's mini-ITX box when she goes to college, and have one VM for HTPC use, and another VM running Windows with its own dedicated graphics card for gaming. It also has a blu-ray player, so I'd eventually be able to get rid of our PS3. In my situation, this box would not work so well for what I have in mind for HTPC.
oviano - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
Is the noise really a huge issue I wonder, for HTPC use?Ok so maybe you need to reencode some video files or whatever from time to time and this will be presumably nice and quick (and noisy) with this vs say the NUC, but for general day-to-day use presumably it's not going to be pushed to the limit?
kgh00007 - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
Any sign of part II yet? :-)DriesV - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
I just ordered mine. Couldn't wait for a final review. :-)Thermal performance under combined Prime95 and FurMark load is not very relevant, I think. You just KNOW that these units are not going to have the best cooling. The question is: will the cooling suffice for everyday (non-OC) usage? I strongly believe it will.
I'll be using mine as a networked render node (KeyShot). So I'm interested in thermal performance @ 100% CPU load in a real-life application.
jgstew - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
Is there a good reason for intel to release Iris Pro as OEM only? Are they worried about motherboard compatibility / specific tuning to take advantage of it, or perhaps worried about supply issues? I don't see why intel cannot release these parts at retail as well as OEM, at least eventually.lco45 - Monday, January 20, 2014 - link
Shame there's no micro format for graphics cards.I thought mITX would be a nice size reduction for my new system, but these NUC/BRIX form factor boxes are so much smaller than even the most compact mITX system.
If only there were system builder versions of these tiny pcs, especially with a mini GPU option, such as the mobile GPUs that come on gaming laptops.
Basically I want a gaming laptop without the laptop!