Gigabyte GB-BXi3H-5010-BN Review
Today we are reviewing an Ultra Compact PC from Gigabyte better known as BRIX. The Gigabyte BRIX GB-BXi3H-5010-BN, a small form factor PC based on Intel's Broadwell micro-architecture is perfect as an ultra-low power office or home PC, as a HTPC or Media hub. With an extremely integrated system-on-chip (SOC) solution this compact smart looking box have enough power to satisfy all your entertainment and basic office PC needs. And best part is that Gigabyte sold BRIX as a DIY PC kit, allowing users to choose system memory and storage (mSATA, SSD or HDD) of their choice.
Now let's see what this new ultra compact PC from Gigabyte have for us.
Package
Gigabyte BRIX comes in a beautiful black box package with Gigabyte logo and actual product picture at the front. At the rear of the box, we find that Gigabyte goes into great detail on the specifications of the product.
Inside the box
Features
- Features Latest Intel® 5th generation Core Processors
- Ultra compact PC design at only 0.58L (46.8 x 107.6 x 114.4mm)
- Supports 2.5" HDD/SSD, 7.0/9.5 mm thick (1 x 6 Gbps SATA 3)
- 1 x mSATA SSD slot
- 2 x SO-DIMM DDR3L slot (1333/1600 MHz)
- Intel® IEEE 802.11 ac ,Dual Band Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 4.0 NGFF M.2 card
- HDMI plus Mini DisplayPort Outputs (Supports dual displays)
- Intel® HD Graphics 5500
- 4 x USB 3.0
- Gigabit Lan
- Headphone Jack with Microphone
- VESA mounting Bracket (75 x 75mm + 100 x 100mm)
- Support Near Field Communication technology (NFC)
Specifications
Looks
A tiny stylish looking box with power button on top and lot of ports on front and back .
Inside Look
Opening the BRIX for any hardware upgrade is very simple. Just remove four screws and the back cover, you get straight access for RAM and SDD / HDD upgrade. Back cover also holds bracket for installation of one 2.5" SATA drive.
Disconnecting front panel connector, wifi antenna cable and unscrewing two more screw and the board is out. Whole case is having a strong metallic frame giving support the case and acting as a EMI shield. Very dense build at PCB level with a fan and copper heatsink on the other side of the board for cooling the chip.
Removing the heatsink
Component Layout
Board is design with a SoC (System On Chip) technology, so beside few interface chips and a BIOS chip, board is just having passive components and Power supply parts only.
Detail of all components used inside the device
Testing
Test system configuration - Gigabyte GB-BXi3H-5010-BN, Intel i3-5010U @ 2.10GHz, 4GB Kingston 1600Mhz RAM (Kingston KVR16LS11/4), Samsung 830 SSD 256GB.
BIOS
Benchmarks
Pros
- DIY Kit with Custom Upgrade
- Ultra Compact
- Decent Performance
- Ultra Low noise
- Great Price
Cons
- Cant use the bundled driver DVD ( No optical drive option)
Conclusion
Gigabyte GB-BXi3H-5010-BN can be a straight office desktop PC replacement. Offering 2.5"drive bay option alongside mSATA slot makes BRIX a great option for HTPC lovers.
Only problem I faced is with the supplied driver DVD. Don't have a USB DVD drive, so have to download driver from the Gigabyte website. After downloading individual components drive, than have to install them all one by one. Not a big issue, but I would like to suggest Gigabyte to provide one application download which automatically detect s, downloads and installs all the required drives.
Gigabyte has done a great job in designing such a ultra compact PC giving great performance in a low noise and low power consumption package. More over users have a lot of upgrade options in memory and storage section. Finally if you are looking for a small form factor PC that can handle all your daily PC needs, than Gigabyte BRIX GB-BXi3H-5010-BN is the right choice for you and at just Rs.23000/- (approx.).
Manufacturers Info
Site Link
Thanks.