Today we review easily the smallest and possibly the cutest gaming computer that I have ever graced in my life. The Gigabyte AMD Brix Gaming, specifically the BXA8G-8890. This is practically represents the limit in smallest available form factor that can squeeze gaming grade components. Now I know this is not the only Small form HTPC based PC, there are others like the ASRock VisionX (with a Radeon R9 M270X and the older Radeon 7850M), Zotac EN760M/860M with GeForce GTX 860M and 960M, but this is basically as small as it gets and IMO the most practical of the whole lot.
This model was marketed by Cyberpower PC and I liked the dark grey scheme a LOT more than the red one by Gigabyte by Default as it will match most color themes of your room and your TV / Monitors and will not stick out the way red does.
Gigabyte is no stranger to the BRIX line. They have manufactured numerous models and types. The Brix went as small as a basic one with a i5 5200U Broadwell, to a Quad-Core i7 4770R with Hyperthreading and Iris Pro Graphics. Only 3 were contenders for gaming, this one, the 4770R (but the Iris Pro can't do too much either) and the model with a full desktop GTX 760, which proved to be a HORRIBLE idea.
First Look:
Unboxing of Cyberpower PC's rebranding of the AMD Brix reveals very simple stuff.
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| There was supposed to be a bag of screws for the VESA mount but I think I lost em' lol. |
AMD A8 5557M Quad Core Accelerated Processing Unit (2.1 - 3.1GHz Boost, 3MB Cache)
2GB DDR3 RAM (Low Voltage)
120GB SSD (Kingston V300 SSDNow)
R9 M275X / Radeon 8890M
Now synopsis was that initially prior to the Pentium G3258 Machine I built for my brother, I wanted to build a AMD system on the idea as a scrapyard wars recently as a small bedside computer with an mATX or mITX board. I was thinking along the lines of a AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and the Radeon 5850 which is still in service in the G3258. I had been wanting an AMD system for a whole year now. But when I saw this on eBay going for so cheap, I knew I had to have it as it was within that budget I was targeting to spend for the AMD Build and this was a lot more practical too. So that said, I finally fulfilled that project a year later.
Now I purchased this as it was only at 470 USD on eBay including importing and shipping. A Fully assembled one and laptops with that GPU will be twice as expensive. I know it only had 2 gigs of RAM and one 120GB SSD but these can be swapped out either for upgrades or replacements should either part goes bad. In all honesty, this is how otherwise a MacBook Pro should have been, ease of upgrades. For that sort of money, factoring in Windows 8.1, I really can't say no to that and the form factor of it makes it awesome.
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| S4 vs the Brix in terms of size. |
If the size reminds you of something, the length and depth is very similar to a NUC only taller. Tiny she is, it's like a toy. As you can see, the unit in comparison to the size of my Samsung Galaxy S4 along with some things around it, including a bottle and a Brother Printer and the AOC E2250SWDN Monitor that is being driven by that, it's so Cute! Easily, one of the cutest Brick Computers in existence. But don't let it fool you. It packs some respectable hardware. And despite the size, it is real hefty and weighty. But it is still way within how we can call portable.
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| Size Comparisons to all my Computers I have: In terms of gaming, the BRIX is the smallest, but ranked 2nd of my rigs that I use to game with in terms of raw GPU power. |
Ports:
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| Small enough to be held in my hand. |
The assortment of ports is good. 4 USB 3.0s (2 front, 2 back) is the ideal number. HDMI and miniDisplay are your display outputs. The latter natively supports my Apple Thunderbolt - DVI adapter out of the box.
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| Front: 2 USB 3.0, Headphone Jack |
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| Back (L to R): Power Jack, HDMI, mini Display, Gigabit Ethernet 2 USB 3.0 |
Upgrades:
Having a removable base allows some maintenance and upgrades. Taking it off requires the 4 screws to be taken off the feet before it could be removed. For me, one of the screws was awful jammed in there so I had to take the feet out before I used my pliers for the best grip and least effort to take it out. Apart from that, removal of the base gives you access to the RAM Modules, mSATA slot and the 2.5" Drive Caddy. Currently the caddy is populated with a Kingston 120GB SSD. Of course with the base out you can dust and clean the BRIX with little complaint. And because this machine really depends on as-little-as-possible dust for thermal management with such hardware in there, I recommend doing so ever so often when you have time.
First Boot:
I did run into a little snag with regards to the memory, since the memory stick I shoved in there is of the 1.5V Voltage type. The machine uses DDR3 Low Voltage 1.35V RAM, which was why it was why POST Message was complaining. But you can skip the setup prompt and I was able to proceed to boot it with all 6 Gigs of RAM in, just have to keep skipping that prompt on every boot. And I checked the EFI BIOS and it does see all 6, and so did windows. But the first thing I did was to turn the mode from Operation to Turbo Mode on the BIOS first because I heard performance can be hampered quite a lot as Op Mode will limit max Clocks to 1.8-2.1 GHz. Turning on Turbo will greatly increase the clocks to the specced speed of 3.1 and it will noticeably improve performance.
Speaking of Windows, it does boot the OS really snappy despite the Low Power of the APU but it's partly because of the Kingston SSD it has on it. Boots up fast, shuts down fast. This comes with Windows 8.1 install which is actually a good place for me to see how the OS environment feels like. I used Windows 7 and 10 TP but not Windows 8/8.1. So now at least I'm finally using the missing puzzle of all Microsoft OSes all the way since Windows 3.11. Got Start 8 App for the Start Menu (which is obvious in the screenie below).
I really appreciate that the CyberpowerPC's branding of the BRIX doesn't use nearly any bloatware at all. Drivers are of course needed online, but this way I can customize how I really want to set this thing up. Wireless speeds are abit sluggish, partly however due to where I placed it. But it does work well enough for what I use the machine for.
Storage: Kingston V300 SSDNow
120GB is tiny... just as small as my MacBook Pro. However I'm glad there's at least a decent (however aging) SSD as a nice boot drive. No system that I have right now, runs a mechanical Hard Drive as my operating drive. All 4 systems I have use SSDs as boot with others as secondary. But if I need more, that's where the upgrading features comes in. If I want to populate the mSATA Slot, I can in the future, with another 120GB. So really, in all fairness, this is really a desktop version of my Aftershock X11 but with expandable storage.
Machine Uses:
Being small and so portable allows the users to bring it along elsewhere, so long if the area has a monitor / TV to plug into. The form factor makes it a Great LAN Party machine. And in a HTPC environment, the bigger your TV and the more powerful your sound system is, the better. Just plug in your HDMI or mini Display port or adapters that you have to a compatible monitor / TV and away you go. This class of computers can also fall in the class as a STEAM Machine.
And of course if your desk or workspace is really limited this will fit just fine plonked on your desk or behind your screen.
Gaming on the BRIX:
The R9 M275X is based on the Radeon 8890M which is a heavy 200 Mhz overclock to the 8870M. There aren't any official pages of the 8890M so I assume from the Gigabyte Product page that it is the 8890M rebranded. This GPU is based on the GCN architecture but primarily based on the old Cape Verde Chip and with the same Core Config as a Radeon 7770. The Radeon 7770 and 8890M are almost near identical, with the 7770 only being 75 MHz faster than the 8890M. That said, the APU might pose as a bottleneck to the system, bringing the performance closer to the GTX 550 Ti. To me, that's good enough for many of the older titles that I often play on my MacBook Pro and it'll sure perform a lot better than the Iris 5100 that I've been playing on the last couple of months.
And it shows, Diablo III easing its way through at full maximum settings at 1920 x 1080 at a comfortable 40 FPS, and with places maintaining my VSync fps at 60. And somehow, stuttering is far less apparent here than on my GTX 970 SLI desktop though it runs at 200+ fps or 60 with VSync all the time. Path of Exile somehow uses the 8550G unless I force the switchable graphics but it still works alright though. Dota 2 is absolutely fine at full settings at full 1080p.
Below is Diablo 3 running at Full Maximum HD settings. No problem.
Which goes to say, basically MMOs, RPGs and MOBAs, the Gaming BRIX fits its bill just fine.
Metro Last Light:
Did quite a few runs within my current bedside configuration at 1440 x 900p. As long as you turn tessellation off which hits the performance hard, High Settings on 900p is possible. Already this extremely demanding benchmark brings any high end GPU to its knees, let alone a GPU specced similarly to a Radeon 7770.
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| 720p Medium with Tessellation: Just short of 30 fps. |
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| 720p 16:9 without Tessellation - Medium |
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| 720p 16:9 without Tessellation - High |
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| 1440 x 900 in my current Bedside Monitor - Medium |
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| 1440 x 900p: High |
3DMark Benchmarks:
I ran the full suite except FS Ultra which really is not needed since it's not meant to be a high end machine. But 3D Mark Fire Strike scores surprisingly well, to my surprise. The score of 2316 and a GPU Score of 2820 is not something to be scoffed at. This score brings it in league with a GTX 670MX and a GTX 765M, excellent. I was actually not expecting this. The scores owes a bit of gratitude by setting the BIOS to Turbo though.
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| A Respectable Score on Fire Strike for the GPU especially. |
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| Fire Strike Extreme: Not bad scores really. |
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| A less intensive and more forgiving Benchmark for Mid Ranged PCs. The R9 M275X scored a respectable over 9500 for the Graphics scored. Notebookcheck doesn't really run this particular benchmark at all. |
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| Cloud Gate scores. The GPU scored really well here but is heavily bogged by the relatively weak APU despite being a quad Core. |
Catzilla and GPU Switching:
Ran into a snag and abnormally when I first ran the test initially scoring low till I forced the Maximum Performance on CCC. The 720p test with the 8550G scored a measly 1800+. After manually dedicating full GPUs for the App, scores are a lot more acceptable. As aging as Catzilla is, it is still good for those low end GPUs. But that said, the automatic GPU switching from AMD needs to be reworked.
PassMark 3D Graphics Benchmark:
CPU Bencharks: Cinebench R15
We're starting to see an increasing trend of the weak APU that really doesn't need much more complaints than it already has. This benchmark is more representative of how balanced your computer is and it's already obvious on how big a bottleneck the APU is.
Geekbench:
Outside of Windows, the APU is relatively a weak Processing Unit, as seen by the Geekbench results below. The single core score of 1668 was far off than the general baseline average of 2500. Multicore didn't really do so much either. Of all the scores it scores kinda bad. Even my Samsung Galaxy Note (2014) 10.1 Tablet isn't super far off despite scoring 916 and 2829 respectively.
Ranking of all my devices I got after testing Geekbench excluding my desktop that I just ran today:
1. Aftershock X11 2216 8236
2. MacBook Pro 2810 5951
3. Gigabyte BRIX 1668 4332
4. Samsung Galaxy Note 916 2829
5. Samsung Galaxy S4 626 1655
But then again, you can't expect to fit an Core i7 4900MQ or an FX 8350 in there for that size.
Now if you want to see how this GPU roughly performs, the VisionX 420D by ASRock is the closest PC that can replicate such results. AnandTech has compared that to the GTX 760 Brix and others in the following articles.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8527/gigabyte-brix-gaming-bxi5g760-review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8406/visionx-420d-review-asrock-continues-to-impress
Noise:
As expected in such a form factor, the fans will spin up. So it is plenty loud when exerting a full load like Fire Strike. However, to me that one was totally expected, so no surprises that it'll be noisy in Gaming Loads. All honesty, that said, I had worse. It's noticeable but not too annoying since I game on Big Speakers all the time. And if you put this in the living room, and any good sound output will definitely overpower the noise big time.
Value:
Now the System I bought from eBay cost 400 USD (500 SGD) + Shipping. Now if I factor in Windows 8.1 and the SSD at 150 USD, the entire package along with accessories and VESA Mount cost only 250 USD, that was unbelievable. For the price I really couldn't say no to it. Should be mentioned though that this is from another eBay user so it was not straight from CyberPower. But it always already freaking mint without any scratches so it is New.
Bottomline:
"Not a kid's toy" is a fitting name for it, seeing that it's cute enough to be one. For this Tiny but mighty machine packs some serious horsepower in a chassis no bigger than a triple-decker club sandwich, And it shows the absolute limit in shrinking a gaming computer. It also pretty much can do what a full desktop can offer you, with the added feasibility of bringing it to LAN parties or presentations. Of course, compromises have to be made for thermals and noise, which is to be expected and the Quad-Core A8 leaves a lot to be desired. Upgrade paths are an important welcome addition to any computer, really it's what my MacBook Pro should have been.
Gigabyte has made this BRIX combining the best of AMD, and frankly speaking the most optimal of all the BRIX Gaming they did so far. Of course, you can build better systems yourself but this is a niche product that fulfill specific roles. There's still that sense of a DIY-ness which should still please PC builders as this can be found in places online where it's being sold as a barebones unit.
Pros:
- Good GPU performance, ready for most mid-range games given its cost and size.
- Access to upgrades and maintenance.
- Super Compact and easy to place.
- Well within portability though it still carries some heft.
- Snappy SSD though tiny storage.
- Versatile Machine for almost any role a full Desktop would fill, made more flexible with its size.
- Large performance per cost and per watt.
- Excellent port selection. Enough USB 3.0s for the job.
- Little Bloatware
- Just looks So Damn Cute!!!
Cons:
- A8 APU isn't exactly strong. Presents a bottleneck.
- Unsightly amount of cables. You see more cables than you see the system LOL
- DVI / VGA connector would have been nice.
- Audio ports at the back would be nice to ensure a clean look on the front side of the Brix
- Loud Audible Fan at full blast, can also result to thermal throttling.
- RAM Upgrades require some thinking for the Low 1.35 Voltage though standard 1.5 voltage RAM will work; just that POST display will complain of incompatibility issues.
- Catalyst Control Center Auto Graphics Switching needs work.
Rating: 8.5 / 10
