Brix Gaming UHD (GB-BNi7HG4-950) review: A lot of performance in a little PC - turnerdebut1997

Believe it or not, the gamer who buys Gigabyte's in style Brix Gambling mini-PC has a circle in common with the gamer who rolls a full-sized tower stuffed with overclocked parts. Some have the same lust for power.

It's a quest to maximize what you can get forbidden of the space available, and given just how miniature this ultra-compact tower is, the Brix Play UHD does a pretty make love-up job. It looks good on a shelf or a desk, it isn't likewise loud, and it offers best performance than a traditional gaming console (patc having a much smaller footprint).

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The Brix Gaming UHD (top left) with the Alienware Alpha R2 (top rightist) and the Intel Skull Canyon NUC (bottom).

That said, the Gaming UHD adds to the solid options for tiny gaming PCs sort o than overthrowing the existing top dogs. Other systems mightiness have slightly better graphics or be more compact, but this one's a adjusted go through across the control panel.

Spectacles and Cost

A $1,000 ante gets you the unadorned-bones arrangement, which sports a quad-core Skylake Core i7-6700HQ processor and a Nvidia GTX 950 screen background part with 4GB of Chock up. A Core i5 version of the Brix UHD exists, but Gigabyte says it has no current plans to deal it in North The States.

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That initial outlay also nets you an Intel Wireless-AC 8260 card featuring 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, and a set of ports that let in three mini DisplayPort, gigabit ethernet, full-sized HDMI, two USB 3.0 Eccentric A, two USB 3.1 10Gbps ports (one Type A, the other Typewrite C), differentiate headphone and mike knucklebones, and a Kensington lock expansion slot. Both the HDMI port and all three of the mini DisplayPorts support up to 4K resolution (hence the "UHD" cite in this Brix's name) at 60Hz.

Of flow, you'll spend many than that, since you still have to add your own storage and memory. Our revaluation building block, which arrived equipped with a Transcend 128GB SATA III M.2 SSD, Western Digital Blue 1TB 2.5-edge HDD, and 8GB of DDR4/2133MHz RAM, runs about $1,165 at current street prices. Expect to dispense about $1,285 if you plan to run a retail copy of Windows.

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You can pony up still more hard currency, though, if you really lack to move out all out. The Brix Gaming UHD has four slots for storage: two PCIe-NVMe M.2 (one also supports SATA 6Gbps), and two 2.5-column inch SATA 6Gbps. There are also two SO-DIMM slots that sack take back busy 32GB of DDR4/2133 RAM.

So, for illustration, if you wanted to put in a 512GB PCIe-NVMe SSD and 16GB of DDR4/2133 RAM to match the same conformation as the Intel Skull Canon NUC we reviewed sooner this year, the Brix Play UHD would be about $1,400. Max out the RAM at 32GB and toss in two 1TB 2.5-inch hard drives (because why let that space attend waste?), and you're looking $1,615.

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Performance

Price isn't the whole story, of course. Sure, that Skull Canyon NUC starts at $650 for the unsheathed-bones organisation and is very much much portable, but it too lacks discrete graphics. You can (in essence) add an external picture wit to the system using a Thunderbolt 3 console like the Razer Core, but that'll start running you as untold as a Brix with a lot of storage. Plus, you know, you'll actually induce to nonplus your manpower on such a dock.

Then in that location's the $950 Nitty-gritty i7 version of the Alienware Alpha R2, which offers better gaming performance for about $200 less than this Brix. Nonetheless, it gets pretty loud. As in, "put happening some headphones to drown out out those shrill fans" loud. That alone can make up a sell-breaker for roughly people. Besides, with its wider footprint, the R2 is also more of an immoderate small-anatomy-factor PC than a miniskirt-PC.

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From top to bottom (zag-zag): The Alienware X51, Gigabyte Brix Gaming UHD, Intel Skull Canyon NUC, Alienware Alpha R2, and Gigabyte Brix BXA8-5557.

The Brix Gaming UHD undergo falls 'tween those two, but not exactly midmost. On one hand, its discrete GTX 950 creamed the Skull Canon's integrated Iris Pro 580 past as much as 227 percent in our gaming benchmarks. On the other, that Lapp GPU has a 10- to 18-percent drop by gaming performance relative to the Alpha R2's GTX 960. The Brix UHD's fan make noise is softer and take down-inclined than the R2's, though.

Let's probe the numbers:

3DMark Fire Work stoppage

3DMark's Fire Strike benchmark simulates DirectX 11 gaming on ultra-high settings at 1080p. These numbers primarily reflect GPU performance, so the CPU in all arrangement doesn't have as much effect as IT might in real-globe games.

I've included results from our PCWorld Zero Point desktop (which runs a GTX 980) to show a fuller cast, but the key information points are those of the Alienware X51, Alienware Alpha R2, and the Brix Gaming UHD. The X51 runs a full background variation of the GTX 960, while the Alpha R2 sports a tailored GTX 960—some belong to the grade to a higher place the Brix Gaming UHD's GTX 950 in the Nvidia GTX 9-series lineup.

PCWorld

The X51 does only a bit better than the R2 here, which you'll get word repeated again to varying degrees in the incoming set of benchmarks. The real comparison here, however, is between the R2 and the Gaming UHD, because the X51 is non a mini-PC. (Plus, it's interrupted.) Opting for the Brix Gaming UHD as an alternative of the Alpha R2 means a drop of about 14.6 percent in performance. Atomic number 3 you'll see below, that usually whole shebang resolute most 10 frames per second surgery indeed in actualised games.

If you're prying active how the Brix Gaming UHD's GTX 950 would do against the desktop counterpart, I unfortunately didn't have uncomparable on hand during testing. All I can share is that Gigabyte has said this GTX 950 is a custom part, and its specs look very similar thereto of the GTX 965M.

(For reference book, the background GTX 950 has 768 CUDA cores with a base clock of 1,024MHz and a further clock of 1,188MHz, while the Gaming UHD's 950 has 1,024 CUDA cores with a slower base clock of 935MHz and a boost clock of 1,150MHz.)

It's beautiful much a granted, though, that the desktop GTX 950 volition outperform the Brix. Larger parts in larger chassis can run hotter, so thermal constraints along performance North Korean won't be as severe. You can look at the difference between the X51 and the Alpha R2 for a very rough idea of what that delta would be.

Tomb Raider

At this point, Tomb Plunderer is an aging biz, merely altogether the better to see how the Brix Gaming UHD will handle a backlog of older titles purchased during Steamer gross revenue. This particular game leans a bit more on the CPU, so if you somehow get your hands on the Core i5 version of the Brix UHD, performance won't be exactly cookie-cutter as with this model.

PCWorld

With the settings cranked to Net, the Brix Gaming UHD falls subordinate the golden minimum of 60 Federal Protective Service, though 46.7 FPS is still evenhandedly playable. If you don't mind dropping down to Ultra, the framerate jumps up to about 68 fps. The Alpha R2 too can't quite make it to 60 fps on Ultimate, but it's a good deal closer at 54.9 FPS.

BioShock Unnumerable

This three-year-hoary game can still give the GTX 950 and GTX 960 a run their money on Ultra settings with DDoF reversed along.

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The Alpha R2 just manages to smasher over 60 fps, while the Brix Gambling UHD manages a little over 50 fps. While that unscheduled 10 frames per second might sound like the amend deal, don't block approximately the piercing sound of the Exploratory R2's fans under load.

For its part, the Skull Canon NUC gives an old college attempt with 16.4 fps. We still have to wait ahead integrated art can manage even 30 fps in immature games with everything cranked upbound. It'll beryllium interesting to see how AMD's Zen Buddhism APUs care.

Central-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Here we begin to see the limits of the GTX 950 and GTX 960. With the 4K texture pack installed, this newer title buttocks ask a fair amount of money of a GPU.

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What's all but surprising is that the Skull Canyon NUC's Iris Pro manages about the same grade of performance here as in BioShock Infinite and Grave Raider. The measure fallen for the Alpha R2 to the mid-40-FPS range, and the Brix Play UHD to just now low 40 fps, is to a lesser extent surprising, but it does begin to show the business deal-off of carrying into action for size up. The newer the game, the Sir Thomas More you'll have to dial down feather artwork settings to fetch smooth gameplay at tolerable framerates.

Grand Thieving Automobile V

That movement is clearest in GTA 5. For this benchmark, I cranked down totally the settings, then used FRAPS to gaining control the framerate as I played the first delegac. It's not the prettiest, but IT's playable. The Skull Canon NUC manages 50 fps, while the Brix Gaming UHD steams on at over 100 fps.

PCWorld

However, if you rev up the graphics uncomparable pass on all settings and wind up MSAA to a factor of x2, the Brix Gaming UHD's framerate drops in fractional to an average of active 52 Federal Protective Service. That's not bad in the least, but I'd be much more gung ho if I weren't spending much time with the new mobile versions of Nvidia's 10-serial parts. This system could pack a much stronger punch with a GTX 1050 operating theater even 1050 Ti—if Nvidia ever makes mobile equivalents of those parts.

Undiversified Performance

You won't find any surprises along the CPU broadside of performance. The Brix Gaming UHD's CORE i7-6700HQ spars comfortably with the socketed 35W Core i7-6700T in the Alpha R2 as well with the Core i7-6770HQ in the Skull Canyon, which is almost the same buffalo chip but with fitter integrated graphics on with a large embedded DRAM squirrel away.

In PCMark 8's Work Conventional bench mark, which simulates workaday tasks comparable web browse, video chew the fat, word processing, and bright spreadsheet manipulation, the Brix Gambling UHD fell somewhat beneath the Skull Canyon NUC and the X51 (the last mentioned of which uses a socketed Core i7-6700K C.P.U.), and slightly edged out the Of import R2's 6700T. With about 100 points between the UHD and its competitors, information technology's likewise small of a difference to matter much. All of these systems will feel for snappy during basic work.

PCWorld

The gulf widens predictably when you lean more happening the CPU. In Cinebench R15's 3D rendering test, which takes barely a few proceedings, the 91-watt Core i7-6700K in the X51 takes a clear, dominating lead over the lour-watt parts. Here, the Brix slips slightly behind the Exploratory R2, which is belik collectible to its lower time speeds. The 6700T has a base speed of 2.8GHz and a Turbo speed of 3.6GHz, while the 6700HQ has a base speed of 2.6GHz and a Turbo speed of 3.5GHz.

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Under longer CPU loads, though, things flip. In our Handbrake benchmark, which involves converting a 30GB MKV file into a smaller MP4 exploitation the Android Tablet planned, the Brix repeatedly edged out the Alpha R2. It's a small margin—barely a minute—so it implies that the 6700T's higher time speeds count more only during short bursts of intense activity. Unfortunately, I sent the Brix backmost to Gigabyte before I had a unplanned to attend at the clock speeds under load you bet long they held. I'll hazard a guess that the 6700T might not hold that peak of 3.6GHz for longstanding in front falling down to just a hair below the Brix's 6700HQ.

PCWorld

At length, to round out our benchmarks, I looked at the uttermost world power draw. One of the appeals of having a mini-PC alternatively of a bigger system is the lower berth exponent use of goods and services. That may be of No occupy to someone whose rig could function as a gravy holder in the event of a cataclysmic flood, but information technology does interest those of us who like to plug everything in the house into a Watts Up meter and make a spreadsheet of the resulting data. (Ahem.)

Measuring max ability draw is an inexact science. To bring these results, I ran two contrasting distortion tests: Furmark, which pounds on the GPU, and Prime95, which hammers on the Central processor. For the systems with discrete GPUs, spurting Furmark drew the most mogul, but the Skull Canyon NUC was the opposite. Its leave in the chart is from running play Prime95.

PCWorld

It's fulgurant that the Brix Gaming UHD consumes just 30 Watts more than than the Skull Canyon NUC but can push extinct so many many frames patc gaming. Thing is, newer parts could probably do better. The GTX 1050 desktop part is rated at 75W, which is already lower berth than the 950, which was rated at 90W. A usage 1050 equiprobable would have a lower TDP than the GTX 950 as well.

Final thoughts

If you've picked up on a recurring comment—that this miniskirt-PC could be more amazing with an Nvidia 10-series GPU—then you already know the only thing I could point to as an issue. Buying the Brix Play UHD now might not pay you the most bang for your buck. For instance, if you're willing to go big, Zotac has launched GTX 1060 and 1070 versions of E series bald-bones systems, with a GTX 1080 model connected the way.

Granted, the GTX 1060 and 1070 Zotac machines are only equipped with Core i5 processors, and all of them are about the size of the Alienware Alpha. Still, those systems reinforce the idea that newer components are already available to get a just-rightmost mix of performance, size, and acoustics even better. Hopefully, GB will release a replacement to this Brix Gaming UHD sooner rather than later—with a Kaby Lake processor and a GTX 1050.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/410889/brix-gaming-uhd-gb-bni7hg4-950-review-a-lot-of-performance-packed-into-a-little-pc.html

Posted by: turnerdebut1997.blogspot.com

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