Gigabyte adds Kaby Lake CPUs to its Brix mini-PC lineup

 
Three Kaby Lake CPUs to rule them all 

Gigabyte has refreshed its Brix mini-PCs with Intel’s latest 7th generation Core Kaby Lake CPUs, including Intel Core i3-7100U, Core i5-7200U, or Core i7-7500U.

While Gigabyte’s Brix did get shiny new 7th gen Core Kaby Lake CPUs, the design of the Brix mini-PC lineup pretty much remained the same so you are looking at two versions, a 0.46L (34.4 x 112.6 x 119.4mm) version and a 0.6L (46.8 x 112.6 x 119.4mm) Brix version which comes with enough room to fit an additional 2.5-inch drive. The rest of the specifications include USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-A ports, USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.

When it comes to Intel Kaby Lake CPUs, Gigabyte’s new Brix lineup will be coming with three different options, including the Intel Core i3-7100U, Core i5-7200U, or Core i7-7500U. All three CPUs are dual-core SKUs with support for Intel Hyper-Threading and pack 3MB cache for the Core i3 and Core i5 and 4MB on the Core i7-7500U. All three have the same 15W TDP and pack Intel HD Graphics 620 IGP with 300MHz base and 1.0GHz Boost GPU clock as well as a support for 32GB of DDR4-2133MHz memory in two SO-DIMM slots.

The Core i3-7100U works at 2.4GHz base clock but does not support Turbo, while the Core i5-7200U and Core i7-7500U work at 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz base CPU clocks with max Turbo of 3.1GHz and 3.5GHz, respectively.

According to Gigabyte, these new CPUs should provide a 10 percent boost in performance but the main benefit comes from the new video engine with HEVC 10-bit hardware acceleration for 4K playback, which significantly improves both performance and power efficiency, according to some earlier Kaby Lake CPU reviews.

According to Gigabyte, these new Brix mini-PC systems with Kaby Lake CPUs should start hitting retail/e-tail soon but the price was not announced.