J.D. Hodges

With Intel’s NUC you are stuck choosing between Gigabit Ethernet -or- Thunderbolt, and you get zero USB 3.0 ports 🙁 GIGABYTE arrives on the scene with their BRIX small form factor PC and it appears to improve upon the NUC by offering a faster CPU (up to 2GHz [w/3.1GHz turbo] on the BRIX vs 1.8GHz on the NUC) and (2) USB 3.0 ports.

Photos courtesy of GIGABYTE

One of the only drawbacks on the BRIX is that lack of Thunderbolt support. However, with so few Thunderbolt peripherals available (and the prices so high) the loss of Thunberbolt will probably be acceptable to most users. 😉

It is rather surprising that the BRIX arrives with Ivy Bridge considering Haswell is almost upon us. 🙁 Hopefully soon a BRIX v2 with Haswell will arrive as well as Haswell based NUC! 🙂

BRIX Specs from GIGABYTE (for their top of the line model)

Dimensions	29.9 x 107.6 x 114.4 mm
Motherboard	100 x 105 mm
CPU	Available with: Intel® Core™ i7-3537U 2GHz / 3.1GHz
Chipset	Intel® HM77
Memory	2 x SO-DIMM DDR3 slots 1333 / 1600 MHz Max. 16GB
LAN	Gigabit LAN (Realtek RTL8111E)
Video	Intel® integrated graphics
Expansion Slots	1 x mSATA slot 1 x Half-size mini-PCIe slot occupied by the WiFi card
Front I/O	1 x USB 3.0
Rear I/O	1 x HDMI 1 x Mini DisplayPort 1 x USB 3.0 1 x RJ45 1 x DC-In 1 x Kensington lock slot
Power Supply	Input: AC 100-240V Output: DC 19V 3.42A
VESA mount	Bracket included Supports 75 x 75 and 100 x 100 mm