Gigabyte announces the BRIX Gaming, a powerful mini-PC

For many, size matters. We’ve seen various desktop components bundled together in the last few months in the form of SteamMachines. More and more companies are competing by struggling to provide reasonably priced, plug and play PCs for gaming and entertainment. Gigabyte makes no exception, and the company has just revealed that it will be launching a new model in the BRIX ready-made computer line, called the BRIX Gaming. Unlike its previous BRIX models, Gigabyte is really going for 1080p, high-quality gaming with the BRIX Gaming.

The Mini-PC is built around the GPU, as should be the case with any respectable gaming rig. To achieve great performances while keeping costs within the reasonable, Gigabyte opted for a custom-built Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 GPU. The size of the board had to be tailored to fit the smaller case of the BRIX Gaming. So far no images have been revealed with the insides of the mini-PC, but judging by its size, this has to be a really small GPU with exceptional cooling if it is to work properly. Gigabyte also produces one of the most popular variants of the standard GTX 760, so we trust in their capabilities to tinker with the original GPU and make it work well within such a small environment. However, clock speeds are most likely going to be lower than the original card in order to compensate for the lack of heat management. Still, even an underclocked 760 should be more than enough to handle today’s games at the highest settings and in 1080p. The GeForce GTX 760 can handle games at 1920x1080p perfectly, getting way above 60 FPS with everything maxed out in Wolfenstein: The New Order for instance.

The Gigabyte BRIX Gaming also comes with an i5-4200H CPU, clocked at 2.8 GHz on stock and at 3.4 GHz with Turbo mode enabled. The Do It Yourself kit provided by Gigabyte also includes a motherboard and power supply, as well as head and cable management, however it does not include RAM and a Hard Drive. Thus, it’s up to you to pick these out. You’ll have two DDR3L slots to fill, as well as an mSATA SSD, a SATA 3 regular HDD bay, 4 USB 3.0 slots and two HDMI ports. The BRIX Gaming also comes with 802.11 AC WiFi and a Bluetooth 4.0 Mini PCIe Card. Overall, Gigabyte is providing a solid base kit with some good customization options, the core parts to handle modern games and the attractive size of a console. It’s most likely not going to be cheap, but hey, it’s small (59.6 x 128 x 115.4 mm) and it looks good. You can also slap on a SteamOS on the BRIX Gaming and call it a SteamMachine.

The BRIX Gaming will be made available shortly, and an upgraded version with an i7 CPU will be made available in August.