Gigabyte Brix Pro: A Compact PC for Basic Computing Needs | Hacker News Reader

Gigabyte Brix Pro: A Compact PC for Basic Computing Needs

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95 pointswalterbell82 comments

Went down a similar route for a 'mini virtualization server.' HP ProDesk 405 G6 with an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750GE (8C/16T, 3.1GHz base clock, 8 VEGA GPU cores), and tossed in 64GB of DDR4-3200 and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. Real storage is like 55TB of RAID 1 or RAID 10 arrays on the network, where VM backups and snapshots also go (and get shoved out to Backblaze), as well as media and other chunky data. If you got an EliteDesk 805 you can even have a second M.2 socket so you can RAID1 the SSDs. Only downer is no 10GbE ethernet.

Sits at about 12W at idle. With everything under the sun running it hums along at about 20-22W of power consumption. Absolutely silent. Plus being an APU I can even have a Plex VM happily transcode without breaking a sweat. AMD DASH means I also have full IPMI functionality as well (not as good as Intel vPro, but good enough).

1L form factors (incl. Mac Mini, NUCs) are ideal home servers at this point when you need much more power than a Raspberry Pi provides.

>1L form factors (incl. Mac Mini, NUCs) are ideal home servers at this point when you need much more power than a Raspberry Pi provides.

A Synology or a HPE MicroServer might be better since you can use it for storage as well without external HDDs.

Storage devices are so quirky that I've given up on integration of SFF compute with storage.

Compact storage devices make tradeoffs, which may or may not fit your needs, e.g. flash/SSD tier, 10GbE/2.5GbE NICs, memory, TPMs, low-power vs. cores. External storage offers more flexibility, which will increase as USB4/Thunderbolt become widely available and fall in price. For now, USB 3.2 JBOD with ZFS is workable with external enclosures, https://oyendigital.com/multi-bay-storage

Wish there was a NUC-sized device with an LSI SATA controller and external connector. If we're lucky, the https://frame.work "modular laptop" approach will be adapted to compact desktops based on laptop chipsets.

I don't have, "external HDDs". I have a NAS running TrueNAS, with a few arrays in it depending on the performance needed for the storage. Its primary jobs are for data processing and video editing (plus smaller arrays for backups and VM snapshots), and has multiple 10GbE network interfaces (which it can saturate) to facilitate that. It was also built to sip power when there isn't any disk activity. I have no desire for it to run VMs or containers. Its job is to just be storage.

The virtualization server is one of many things that connects to it.

There are benefits to having the storage and the virtualization servers separate, mostly that there's no single point of failure.

What hardware profile runs your true nas? I've been looking to build something open source rather than using Synology.

I'm using an AMD EPYC Embedded 3201. This is an 8-core (no hyperthreading) Zen 1-based processor with a 1.5GHz base clock and 3.1GHz max boost and 30W TDP. It came on a SuperMicro M11SDV-8CT-LN4F motherboard to which I've added a dual port 10GbE network adapter. Most of the four 1GbE ports on the board are disabled save for the one supporting IPMI.

I'd prefer a newer generation Zen CPU, but AMD doesn't currently have a recent embedded-application CPU with anything approaching that low a TDP.

Something like an Intel Atom C3758 would be the Intel comparison point, but the EPYC Embedded uses a bit less power at idle (the base clocks of the C3758 are higher), and the EPYC Embedded's ability to turbo means it has more headroom when required for only about 5W additional power draw. Moreover, the EPYC Embedded has about 170% more overall CPU performance than the Atom.

There are some nice self-build options too - eg I have https://www.asrock.com/Nettop/Intel/DeskMini%20310%20Series/... with a i7 9700 in (8c8t), plus 1x NVMe and 2x 2TB SATA SSDs for VM disk. Works really really well, and it's pretty much silent.

NUCs are just that little bit too compromised, I think - but things like the hp prodesk or the asrock deskmini are a really nice sweet spot.

The power draw of an i7-9700 is around 100W on full load (107W, CPU only, according to Tom's hardware¹). There are relatively quiet solutions, but they're in the ballpark of 30/35 dB, and they may not even cover the 100+W requirement.

22W of full load can be cooled with a passive cooler (large, but still can).

[¹] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-9700k-9th...

I am using a https://noctua.at/en/nh-l9i as the cooler for it and it keeps it in a sensible range. I don't really max out all of the cores frequently, and certainly not with the most power-hungry workloads - eg AVX2.

Noctua only recommend this with the following caveats:

Recommended with good case ventilation only. If power limits are disabled in BIOS, CPU might not be able to keep maximum turbo clock under prolonged AVX loads, suggested maximum power limit: 140W

For case ventilation - the fan draws air straight from outside of the case onto the heatsink in the DeskMini chassis, so that's covered.

My workload is mostly VMs & containers - although it also runs a Gitlab CI build instance.

Practically, I've not had any issues. Typical CPU temps are in the 30s or 40s according to coretemp.

Obviously, YMMV!

edit: for me, this replaced a nuc8i5beh that was very loud under typical workloads. Changed from a laptop-style very whiny fan to the inaudible noise of the noctua, and I got a lot more performance out of it as well.

> it hums along at about 20-22W of power consumption.

> Absolutely silent

Well which is it, "absolutely silent" or "humming"? Does this thing have fans?

I think “hums along” here is meant more as “speeds along” vs actually humming.

Sooo... this machine is fanless and absolutely silent then?

> Only downer is no 10GbE ethernet.

I've been trying to solve this problem in the ~1L chassis size.

I have two problems I'm trying to solve:

- Multi-port 10GbE for a PFSense/OpnSense router replacement

- Reasonable GPU for Plex Transcoding - at least two concurrent 4K HEVC decodes + re-encodes to 4K or 1080p (Intel QuickSync isn't fast enough for this)

Both configurations of them have to be silent, or near silent.

I think the Lenovo P330 Tiny is probably the best option here, as it has a PCIe Gen 3 x8 slot. The factory options let you put either a quad-port 1GbE NIC in, or a Nvidia Quadro P620/P1000.

I think I should be able to put an Intel X710-DA4 (quad-port SFP+ NIC) in for my PFSense box, or upgrade to a Quadro P2000/2200 for the Plex transcode needs.

I've been looking for something similar, but lower power usage is more important to me than silence.

For a custom build it's simply difficult to cram all of that in if you want a very small form factor.

You may want to look at the DEC840 (AMD EPYC Embedded 3101) or DEC850 (AMD EPYC Embedded 3201) that uses Deciso's Netboard A20 and is sold on the OPNSense website's shop. It has two SFP+ transceivers and four 1GbE ports in a 199x186x46mm form factor. It is entirely passively cooled (the enclosure itself is a giant heatsink) and contains zero fans. They don't yet have this available for sale in a 1U rackmount enclosure, but I assume it's in the works.

From what I've heard it tends to use about 15W or so of power at idle and more around 20ish under some real loads. Not bad for something that can supposedly shove 2.3Gbps of IPsec VPN traffic!

It won't cover all of your use cases, as it would require a custom build, but if you're looking for a super beefy router (that you can just connect to an aggregation switch) it's an option. You could probably use it for the next 10-15 years and it'd likely still serve all of your needs.

That DEC840, by the time it lands here in Australia is over AUD$2100 (EUR999, plus Euro VAT, plus Australian GST).

While I'm sure it's a really nice unit, it's just too expensive for my home use.

The Lenovo P330 Tiny (I7-8700T, 16GB RAM, 256GB m.2 SSD) I can get for AUD$750, and a X710-DA4 for AUD$300 - so roughly half the price, and it'll give me more SFP+ ports.

I'll give that having dedicated hardware like that is probably going to be more reliable. I've got a Netgate two-port unit that's been going great for years who's only problem is that it's onboard eMMC storage started going wonky.

But hey, if it doesn't work out as an OpnSense router, well I'll just stick an nVidia Quadro in it and make it the Plex server instead.

Data point: an Intel quad-port GbE NIC did not work for PCI/IOMMU passthrough to a VM in my P330 Tiny, while a Broadcom quad-port GbE NIC did. Root cause unknown. Broadcom may also offer a bit of isolation from vPro.

Cool, thanks for the info.

> AMD DASH means I also have full IPMI functionality as well

could you link some resources about this ?

AMD PRO Manageability: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/security-manageability

Tools for DMTF Dash: https://developer.amd.com/tools-for-dmtf-dash/

There are both CLI tools (including for Linux), a Windows AMD Dash Management UI, as well as Microsoft SCCM plugins. The virtual desktop is basically a VNC server. The only real implementer at this point seems to be RealTek, so you only have the AMD Dash functionality I believe through the onboard RealTek NIC. You can enable Dash in the BIOS. You also need to update the DASH firmware of the RealTek network card to enable DASH to truly work. That's software you can get through a OEM (like HP or Lenovo) from their support downloads.

I've tried it. I can power off, restart, go into the BIOS, have USB pass-through for installing an OS, and VNC in. It's not anywhere as good as Intel vPro, but it works.

I've been using an i5 nuc for the last 5 or so years as a desktop pc attached to a kvm switch for a work laptop when forced by workplace IT.

I'm still surprised how far integrated graphics can get you.

Integrated graphics seem to have gone from "so bad that they're almost useless" to "actually enough to run modern games on low settings at playable framerates" in the last 5 or so years. And if they can run games, they're more than good enough for everything else (except for heavy GPU compute stuff).

I have a Asus PN50 4500U running Manjaro for work.

I drive a 4k screen over displayport.

It's _really_ good!

Only 5 years? I remember playing Rocket League "decently" (1080p, 30FPS) on a Skylake laptop (i5-6200) back in ~2016. I would say integrated graphics were already sort-of-okay during the 5-6th generation of Intel Core's.

I own three. They are great little PCs. I have one setup with win10, cubase and ableton, another is my Ubuntu box, and one I was using as a file server but am now repurposing as my cnc control pc.

Slightly surprised you can get mileage out of these with Cubase and Ableton. Can you tell me a little more about number of tracks and/or rendering time, anything that might give me an idea of the performance on a day-to-day basis?

I admit I only noodle around with DAW software. I think the most demanding thing I've run on this was cubase with about 8 tracks + effects + analog mix in. cpu was at about 50%.

cpu on this specific brix pro (it's old): Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.59 GHz

Still not terrible at all. Thank you.

Any base model NUC is also 'a compact pc for basic computing needs', and the same goes for modern SFF and non-NUC NGFF PCs offered by the likes of Dell, HP and in some cases Apple (Mac Mini).

I would love to have something very low power taking up little space like these. Even after dropping 16gb ram and maybe a 1 TB m2 you are still in the $500 range. I was interested in a Mac Mini but if you want 16gb ram and a 513gb HD you are over $1k. Sure the mini will do a lot more but it’s not the niche I’m trying to fill. I want a small low power computer running my plex server and for doing basic computing/surfing. Ability to play Roblox or Minecraft is a bonus, but I have a gaming PC for that.

The ASUS PN50 MiniPC with AMD Ryzen is great too and can handle more then basic computing needs: https://www.microcenter.com/product/630580/asus-pn50-minipc-...

Seconded - I do wish Asus fix the BIOS for unstable TSC that makes Linux switch to HPET which is much slower. I have also had display flickering issues with W10 but thankfully not on Linux which is perfectly fine. Otherwise a really great mini PC which can pretty much do anything you throw at it minus maybe demanding games.

Lenovo Tiny P330/P340 and 920 have a small PCI slot that accepts an Nvidia GPU with 4X mini-displayport, or a quad-port Broadcom NIC. Flexible and powerful 1-litre box for virtualization. wish there was a Ryzen Pro version.

ASRock 4x4 offers the latest Ryzen mobile CPUs (4300U 4c, 4500U 6c, 4800U 8c) in a traditional NUC form factor. Minimal expansion. Includes serial port header for kernel dev.

I've been using intel nucs as mini hypervisors for years. They are amazing little machines that I can shove in a cabinet somewhere - quiet, low powered, but good enough that you can do actual tasks on them, unlike an Atom (at the time, not sure where atom is at these days, does it even still exist?). Thunderbolt allows me to whack a 10GbE NIC on there and offload all storage requirements to my NAS.

Brix offers a little bit more IO, at the cost of larger volume. Not necessary for me. The only thing I desire is IPMI, so MrFoof's suggestion of using AMD DASH is intriguing. Maybe next time.

Fyi: Akasa sells replacement cases for Intel NUCs. I've used this to ensure my NUC is entirely silent. After this you do need some air circulation around the case. Meaning, a closed cupboard might built be enough. I've put mine under a desk.

Their comparison table makes no sense. The blurb says the Intel option supports up to 64GB of of DDR4-3200 vs. AMD with only up to 32GB of DDR4-2400. The table says both options support only up to 32GB of DDR4-2400.

Sloppy...

It gets worse when you try to look up the spec sheets on these processors and their supporting boards. Since for most at the time of copy writing for manuals before production, 8 or 16GB sticks were largest, so naturally the highest supported ram is 2x that, one for each slot. My motherboard said max was 32GB (2x16GB), tried 2x32GB (for a max of 64GB). It worked.

> The unit can easily hide with other AV Components or not take up much space on the desk.

Small form factor usually means dealing with an external power supply. I know about the benefits like taking a heat source out of the device, but I hate dealing with those bricks, especially when there are multiple externally powered devices and you don't have some object to let the power supplies slip behind.

Are there any neat solutions for cable management in those cases?

The custom SFF PC community has expensive, small, AC-DC power supplies, e.g. https://hdplex.com/hdplex-nanoatx-power-supply-explained

One option is to use PoE. You can have one PoE switch at your router and power nuc's or mini-pcs.

Looks like there are a few nuc specific options: https://shop.poetexas.com/products/gbt-nuc You could probably find slim DC power bricks.

Who would want four HDMI ports but zero (mini)DP?

I'm not sure why, but DP seems to be on the way out. Anecdotally, I haven't seen DP ports on displays or laptops bought in the last year or two.

On Laptops: It's probably because all DPs are routed through the usb-c connectors. No one does hdmi over usb-c, so they're left-over.

You can do usb-c to hdmi with a dongle of course, so even if driving an hdmi display, usb-c will do that.

All high-end monitors very much have DP ports. Same with graphics cards.

DP is still king for graphics - better bandwidth, color depth, variable refresh rates, daisy chaining. The limitation is the cable length, where HDMI is way better, but this probably only matters for conference rooms and home theaters.

Running laptops exclusively for years I had the same impression about the death of dp. Getting a rig (and high quality monitor) for gaming changed my mind about that.

Also, as another said, dp is run out of laptops using USB-c and thunderbolt now. HDMI ports themselves are no longer needed so you won’t see those on laptops much longer, either.

Someone who uses TVs as monitors, especially if you want 3 or 4 it's the most economical option.

On a higher-end box no DP would be criminal.

What is the maximum number of 4k@60 displays this system can drive ?

I see, of course, that it has 4x HDMI ports @ 4k@60.

However, it also has 1x thunderbolt port and at least 4x USB 3.2 ports.

How many displays can it actually drive if you get fancy with cabling and adaptors ?

Could turn into a decent pfSense/openSense box.

Esxi home server - it’s a little under powered in terms of CPU cores, but it’s a great little unit. I like quicksync from Intel for video transcoding, however it’s other features make up for it.

So will the Ryzen version work with ECC RAM?

AsRock usually does with Ryzen, but testing is needed since these NUC-sized boxes are using laptop chipsets.

It's kind of vague and hit-and-miss though, even on non-NUC systems ASRock not always supports ECC. Supposedly it's because of AMD's (lack of) clarity about the matter (according to an ASRock rep, at least)

This is the mail I sent them in January. Still waiting for a response:

> (This is a pretty technical sales question)

> I wanted to know about the ECC compatibility of Asrock Rack X470D4U > In the specifications (https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X...) it says the following:

> "*For Picasso Ridge and Raven Ridge CPUs, ECC is only supported with PRO CPUs."

> However, there is no such thing as "Picasso Ridge". There is however Pinnacle Ridge and Raven Ridge. Perhaps a mistake?

> So I was wondering what AMD CPUs had full ECC compatibility (so both detection and correction)

> Does the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 have full ECC support on that board, for example?

Ryzen in general is all over the place, sometimes ECC works on systems even when the BIOS has not been officially validated to support ECC.

OEMs protect market segments with higher-priced devices, e.g. Ryzen Pro and EPYC/Xeon, which limits where AMD can offer "official" support for ECC.

In 2019 I purchased an ASRock iBOX-V1000 which is fanless and completely silent (and has Ryzen quad core with integrated Vega GPU) and I have run it with 32GB ECC ram with both Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04. Works great. Yes, the ECC works in "ECC mode" and Linux can see and report any detected/corrected memory errors. (Never seen any errors. Some people use hair dryers to heat up the ram to test the ECC, though.) I purchased from mitxpc:

https://mitxpc.com/products/ibox-v1000?_pos=1&_sid=a0e23dd56...

Thanks for real-world report on the V1000 fanless. Hopefully the V2000 fanless version will reach retail soon, was announced in 20Q4.

Still waiting for small form factor PC with built in PSU.

This is the size you're looking at, https://www.antec.com/product/case/isk300-150

Or the rabbit hole of custom builds, https://smallformfactor.net/forum/

Been down this route - thermals and acoustics are a nightmare.

Unless you really can't spare the space for a full tower its better not to

I'd say "it depends". Having a tiny laptop-type thermal solution (high TDP chip, low mass heatsink, tiny whiny fan) would indeed just be as annoying as a laptop, but there are plenty of configurations where it works just fine. The larger NUC-style devices (generally marketed as "this one has room for a 2.5" drive) with low power chips when used for light basic work don't really consume enough power to get hot.

This is even something you can make completely passive; check out some of those ODMs in China that make passively cooled M and U series Intel PCs. Generally marketed as industrial PCs and software routers, they do have 18W parts that work fine in 35°C ambient for years and have plenty of performance. It really depends on what you use it for. (Qotom is one of them, there are a lot of white-label manufacturers, but when they make the boards it's pretty close to the 'actual' ODM instead of just another re-badge)

Do any of those ODM boxes allow open firmware like coreboot? Protectli is one option, would be nice to have other choices.

Protectli is just a rebadged ODM box. Most of the boxes I've seen don't have BootGuard fused so you can run coreboot on it.

On the other hand, you can't run coreboot on most things, including the Gigabyte Brix Pro.

Any good search terms for those ODM vendors? e.g. I couldn't find much for a search about Qotom and BootGuard or coreboot.

There is one explicitly listed on the coreboot mailing list a few times. On the other hand, there aren't a whole lot of up-to-date coreboot setups for Intel anymore. For recent AMD platforms, there is none.

If you really want to use coreboot, your best bet is to first look up what platforms are supported (i.e. 6th generation Intel) and then look for an ODM that is making a 6th gen system. Next step is to simply ask if they fuse BootGuard or not, and if they do fuse it, how much of it. In many cases you can't run Coreboot in pure form anyway, some blobs will remain to get basic functionality working. If you want a deblobbed boot your options are practically restricted to very old platforms, or 2 or 3 commercial offerings.

Agreed, although it differs vastly between models, I'd say it's rather the opposite if you opt for passive 3d party heatsinks(chassis) which are plenty for Intel's NUC, even 80W TDP models (Iris Pro). Passive cooling for desktops is way more complicated. I've been using Akasa for my Skull canyon for years for my dead silent setup.

Akasa's fanless Intel NUC cases are excellent. Hopefully they will create a fanless case for Ryzen NUCs, or generalize an Intel fanless case to support multiple port layouts.

There are definitely computers between the Brix and a full tower. My old computer is a full tower but my new gaming rig is a mini-ITX build that takes very little space on my desk and I plan on replacing the full tower with something like a Mac Mini in the future.

I would love a small MicroATX case without support for DVD-RW or 3.5" drives. MicroATX is inexpensive and effective (cases usually support standard ATX power supplies and PCIe cards without a riser, it's easy to mount a full-size GPU and common heatsinks, etc), but it seems hard to go significantly smaller then my own case (cm 36x36x17). But there's a lot of empty space in the front, so it should be very easy to get the depth down to 25-26 centimeters or something like that.

But I couldn't find anything like that, either you get flatter, HTPC-like cases designed to stay horizontal, or cube cases (which aren't so nice IMHO, since they take more horizontal surface on the desktop), or you need to find a small mini ITX cases (which can get very small, but they may require SFX power supplies and can be harder to cool down).

A desktop is still a nice thing to have. They can be quiet even when the workload is consistently high.

"Basic" computing is now four HDMI ports and an LTE connection. Good to know.

Probably was cheap to add and there's some commercial market they're aiming at.

I've been down the NUC road, and sort of like these kinds of products, but think they're a hard sell. A person could spend $50-$150 (instead of $500 all-in) on eBay and get an ex-corporate small desktop or a Thinkpad, spend a bit more and get a new Mac Mini M1, or view it as a down payment on a decent laptop or desktop. That Brix looks like it's in the middle of a pretty big ecosystem of products.

There's more than a few people that might as well just own a Chromebox. If Raspberry PI 4s were just a bit faster, the non-performance home hobbyists might as well go for those as desktops and stick with computers that are cheaper than 2-3 new hardbound books.

These are much smaller than an ex-corporate small desktop, right? My Intel NUC can easily be mounted behind my monitor. And although this Gigabyte product may be more expensive, the NUC its price range starts around 150 for Celeron based models a.l the way up to Mac Mini levels.

Those corporate boxes go pretty small.

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkCentre-M93-i7-4765T-Win10...

To me NUCs have sort of the same problem as their brethren in this space, you end up with too much money into them.

In terms of cheap desktops, I've settled into older Thinkpads for now. Tolerably quiet (although I do consider fanless desktops now and again), cheap, they appear to be the kings of OS compatibility, as fixable as a laptop can be, built-in battery backup for the shitty power we have 'round these parts.

At some point I'll have to modernize, but find it hard to spend much on computers. That's what employers/clients are for.

The cheaper NUC computers are a good alternative to the Raspberry PI.

The Raspberry seems cheaper on paper, but you have to add a case, power supply, some sort of storage solution and then suffer with the whole thing not quite working properly.

NUCs are more powerful, use more power and still cost more. A 5v 3A power supply is only $6.50 USD on amazon. A tiny SD card and case don't cost much either. Even with 8GB of memory you still come in way under the cost of NUC. Don't forget that there are cheap barebones NUCs that don't have drives in them either.

"The whole thing not quite working properly" is nonsense.

Well, I don't want to build a computer from a bundle of mismatched parts I found by searching for the cheapest seller on Amazon.

This wasn't even fun 20 years ago when PC hardware was more-or-less standardized and commoditized, and it's way less fun today with proprietary SoC's.

Raspberry Pis are one part. You take it out of the box and put a memory card in. Have you ever put one together? There is no mismatching. You can buy the official power supply or an unofficial one, but 5v with 3a is not exactly IRQ configuration.

Have you ever used a NUC? Thermals are a big concern. They usually throttle heavily out of the box and need a lot of configuration in the bios to stop Intel's "turbo boost" as well as get them to throttle at a higher temperature. Even then they will usually run much better with their case off.

I think both are cool devices, but the things you are saying about the pi are bizarre and makes me think you haven't actually put one together.

I believe there's this market of digital signage, and this looks good for that kind of display solution. I see many opensource software for that like https://xibo.org.uk/

For digital signage, a brix is overkill. A raspberry pi 3b+ running screenly (or whatever) is A++.

> Gigabyte has 14 Brix Pro models that vary in both size, and installed hardware.

One of the reason I‘m going to dislike this product. As I would like to compare 14 different models. That‘s going to take to much time.

> Basic computing needs

So they define basic as anything that's not gaming.

Seems fair to me.

Lots of games you can play on this.

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