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Gigabyte Brix: Mini PCs with Intel's 10 nm Pentium or Celeron CPUs

May 14, 2021

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Gigabyte upgrades the Mini-PC Brix with Intel's 10 nm CPUs from the Jasper Lake family. The PC system is thus in direct competition with the NUC 11 Essential, codenamed Atlas Canyon, which is also available with either a Pentium or Celeron SoC.

Mini-PC for the lower performance spectrum

With the NUC 11 Essential aka Atlas Canyon, Intel recently launched new mini-PCs in the entry-level class, which are capable of built-in Atom SoCs with only two or four cores offer comparatively little performance. The advantages of this solution are the lower energy consumption and the lower price compared to the NUC 11 (Pro) with Tiger Lake (test).

In the Brix family, Gigabyte has now also launched budget models with Pentium and Celeron from Intel's 10 nm production, which come up with a low TDP of 4.8 to 10 watts. The entry-level model with a Celeron SoC with 4.8 watts is fanlessly cooled, the two larger ones with 10 watts TDP not.

two and four cores -CPUs with a low maximum clock rate

In the three Brix models GB-BMCE-4500C, GB-BMCE-5105 and GB-BMPD-6005, 10 nm CPUs of the 11th generation specially developed for the budget sector are available Predecessors use Tremont cores that are 30 percent faster. The Celeron N4500 as an inexpensive two-core offshoot as well as the Celeron N5105 and the Pentium Silver N6005 with four computing units each. All are soldered to the circuit board.

All three budget variants of the Gigabyte Brix have in common the comparatively low maximum clock rates of 2.7 GHz, 2.9 GHz and 3.3 GHz, respectively. The Xe architecture newly developed by Intel is not used by Jasper Lake, instead the 11th generation of the older architecture is used, which, depending on the performance class, can clock a maximum of 32 EUs with a maximum of 900 MHz.

Jasper Lake and predecessor Gemini Lake Refresh model cores/
threads clock/
Turbo L2 cache L3 cache Graphics EUs GPU clock DDR4 TDP Pentium Silver N6005 4/4 2.0/3.3 GHz 1.5 MB 4 MB UHD 32 450/900 MHz 2.933 MHz 10 W Celeron N5105 4/4 2 , 0/2.9 GHz 1.5 MB 4 MB UHD 24 450/800 MHz 2.933 MHz 10 W Celeron N4500 2/2 1.1/2.8 GHz 1.5 MB 4 MB UHD 16 350/750 MHz 2.933 MHz 4.8 W

Higher than a NUC 11 Essential

The housing of the Gigabyte Brix measures 117 × 103 × 56 mm (W × D × H) and is therefore smaller in width and depth than the NUC counterpart from Intel. Gigabyte leaves more space in the height so that, in addition to an M.2 SSD with a maximum length of 80 mm, there is also space for an HDD/SSD in 2.5-inch format. RAM can take place in a SO-DIMM slot and is supported up to DDR4-2.933 with a maximum of 16 GB.

With the new Mini-PC Brix, images can be output via two display outputs, once via a rather rare Mini-DisplayPort 1.4b and once via HDMI 2.0b, both of which are specified for a maximum of 2160p60. In addition, there are four USB ports in the compact PC systems, on the front as a Type-C socket. All four offer USB 3.0 at 5 Gbit/s. Thunderbolt does not exist.

The connection to networks can be made via a gigabit LAN port (Realtek 8111HS) on the back or via a WLAN module, which is loud Datasheet Wi-Fi 5 (WLAN 80.2.11ac) and Bluetooth 4.2 supported. A jack socket for headphones and a microphone are also part of the equipment package of the new Gigabyte Brix.

A VESA-compliant mounting kit is included for the hidden installation of the Brix behind a monitor or TV. The power supply is typically provided by an external power supply unit that delivers a nominal output of 65 watts. Nothing is known about pricing and availability.