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Gigabyte Technology has introduced its first ultra-small form-factor personal computer designed specifically for gaming. The novelty boasts with a quad-core accelerated processing unit (APU), discrete graphics processing unit, optional solid-state drive and a hard disk drive as well as other necessary hardware.
Gigabyte Brix Gaming ultra-small form-factor PC is powered by quad-core AMD A8-5557M (four Piledriver cores with 2.1GHz/3.1GHz clock-rate, 4MB L2 cache, Radeon HD 8550G graphics with 256 stream processors with 554MHz/720MHz, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller) accelerated processing unit as well as AMD Radeon R9 275X discrete graphics processor with 2GB GDDR5 memory (1280 stream processors, 80 texture units, 32 raster operating units). The kit comes with a pre-installed miniPCIe module featuring 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and the latest Bluetooth 4.0, providing connectivity for low power Bluetooth devices and peripherals.
End-users can install up to 16GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, a solid-state drive in mSATA form-factor as well as a 2.5” hard disk drive with Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface. The Brix Gaming box, which is only 59.6*128*115.4mm large, sports Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111G), stereo audio (Realtek ALC269), four USB 3.0 ports as well as miniDP and HDMI display outputs.
For such a small gaming PC, the Brix Gaming offers quite a lot, including decent discrete graphics as well as high-performance/high-capacity storage. Unfortunately, quad-core AMD APU hardly offers truly high performance in modern games. A good thing is that such chips are relatively inexpensive and hence the Brix Gaming promises to be more affordable than some of its rivals.
Exact pricing of Gigabyte Brix Gaming is unknown.
KitGuru Says: Ultra-small form-factor gaming systems are on the rise today: everyone wants a small PC that can render video games at high-speed with all the eye candy enabled. Problem is, high performance required for demanding games is not exactly compatible with ultra-small sizes wanted by many. Therefore, there will always be a compromise between performance and form-factor.
