Reviews - Gigabyte Brix Pro (GB-BXi7-4770R)

[HEXUS]

Quad-core Intel Haswell CPU with Iris Pro graphics in a teeny-tiny box.

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[AETAaAS]

Price and that cooling are off-putting. As someone who uses a gaming laptop, I know the noise those fans can get up to and still have poor cooling performance (the Brix review shows temps climbing to the ragged edge of 97*c). I think if they had made it a little taller with a 80/92mm fan (slim fans perhaps) sucking through a top mount filter, blowing down onto the heatsink, noise and temps would improve.

I really like the Brix idea, and hope to see how the Kaveri models pan out and if they represent good value. Certainly the 4770Rs are on the opposite end of the pricing scale.

[Tunnah]

why would you put such a high end proc in this..

[Ksyruz]

You can get a laptop with better price performance than this. These companies need to start adding laptop gpu's into these systems, instead of super power hungry cpu's that can't out perform a itx system of the same price, because that hundred quid saving you can upgrade the people specialist to an i5. Gigabyte should have used that method they used on the 7970 super oc with the fans on the side.

[xslavic]

i imagine the Video noise it will have, my recent HTPC is a z87e-ITX + 4130T

[M_Taylor40]

Nice and informative review, however I'm looking forward to a review of the Gigabyte Brix Gaming model using an AMD A8-5557M APU with R9-M275X GPU!

Really tempted to go with one of those as my next light gaming HTPC.

[Butuz]

"And that, really, is the Brix Pro's stand-out attribute: instead of making do with a low-voltage processor, it opts for a 65W Intel Core-i7 4770R with integrated Iris Pro 5200 graphics."

I guess we can see why no one else has offered anything like this. Maybe with a slghtly bigger case, and a custom water cooler, and no price increase it would be viable.

As soon as I saw that leaf blower cooler I chuckled to myself and knew what I was going to see when i got to the temps/noise page

Butuz

[DriesV]

I bought one of these. I'm using it as a 100% CPU stressed network render node. And I'm loving it!
At stock settings the noise under load is what I would describe as 'almost unbearable' in a typical office environment.
However, I disabled Turbo Boost in BIOS and lowered VCORE through Intel XTU (-35 mV @ 3.2 GHz). Performance is 10% lower, but power consumption is 25-30% less now!
The result: core temps rarely exceed 90°C under full CPU load (which is perfectly within Intel spec) and max fan speed is 3000 rpm. Noise levels are perfectly tolerable...

[DriesV]

Let me be clear:
I DO think the current BRIX Pro is a bit overpowered by the choice of 4770R. It is simply way too loud (I'm not convinced it's too hot, though. These Haswell CPUs can take the heat, as they do in notebooks...) to use comfortably under any moderate load.
BUT, disable Turbo Boost and then noise levels suddenly become much more tolerable.

[cjs150]

Great concept, inept execution.

First thing they need to look at is passive cooling, or at worst stick a proper fan on that very large heat sink (do slipstream still do a thin fan?) rather than a blower - blower fans are always nosier than a normal fan.

[Biscuit]

Too expensive, too hot, under load power draw is the same as a discreet solution.

Balance of GPU/CPU just doesn't quite hit the same note as Kaveri IMO. Be good to see some comparisons when equivalents are released.