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
The presence of the Core i7-4770R in such a small form factor / chassis left us worried initially. We were wondering whether the unit would be able to properly cool down a 65W TDP processor within those constraints. Due to the size of the system, the fan had to be pretty small and rotate at high speeds for effective cooling. With a maximum speed of 4090 rpm, the sound from the unit was similar to what one would expect in a mini-server room (matching the noise from the Netgear GSM 7352S that we have running in our NAS testbed). While running various benchmarks, the speed topped out around 3900 rpm.
To stress the unit to the maximum, we unleashed our Prime 95 + FurMark stress test and recorded the following numbers.
At the outset, the idle numbers are impressive for a system with a 65W TDP desktop processor. Note that this is not a ULV CPU like what we had in the Intel NUC. The load numbers indicate a maximum power consumption of approximately 88W. I did see the instantaneous power consumption shoot up to 92 - 93W initially and attributed this to the Core i7-4770R's turbo mode (where the CPU clock can go up to as high as 3.9 GHz compared to the nominal 3.2 GHz). A look at the temperatures and HWiNFO throttling information, however, confirmed what we had feared.
Gallery: GIGABYTE BRIX Pro
The unit does seem to throttle under full load of both the CPU and GPU (an unrealistic workload, admittedly, but one which some of the other systems we have evaluated have passed with flying colours). Now, the results that we obtained for the four passes of our x264 benchmark run were pretty consistent. It might turn out that normal workloads don't trigger the throttling and it is something we hope to evaluate further down the road.
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ryrynz - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Will the Brix be able to run beyond 1600Mhz RAM speeds?ryrynz - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Seen on Gigabtyes website the G.skill F3-1866C10D-8GRSL is supported to run at 1866Mhz hope you guys manage to chuck something that speed or 2133Mhz in for testing.dwade123 - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
Yeah... I rather get a PS4 for less the price.ryrynz - Monday, January 27, 2014 - link
Please test the AMD based GB-BXA8G-8890 as well.luukp - Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - link
What I'm interested in is the difference in performance and noise between the 4570r and the 4770r. I notice that they have the same TDP, but the 4570R has lower clock speed, less features (no hyperthreading) and a higher maximum operating temperature. Based on that, in my mind the 4570r should be able to run much quieter and also be much less likely to throttle. Does that make sense, or am I missing something?ibex333 - Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - link
ummm... lol? For this much money I can build a computer that is only slightly larger and heavier but which will completely obliterate these boxes in gaming performance. Do you want to pay several hundred more just for smaller size and less weight or do you want to have MUCH more performance instead? Is that even a hard decision?DriesV - Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - link
I'm interested in CPU performance only.I need another quad core render node, but my office is cluttered as it is. I don't like to put systems on the floor and I don't have a spare 'server room'.
Then the Brix Pro is an extremely compelling solution. I'd happily pay (I already did actually...) for the much smaller desk real estate required.
DriesV - Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - link
There's always a market for everything. :-)Andresen - Friday, January 31, 2014 - link
"In the second part towards the end of the month...."I'm holding my breath now!
ryrynz - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
And.. you're dead.