To open this device you first have to flip it on its back and find the four ‘hidden’ screws that are located in each of the feet. Only by removing these four screws will you be able to successfully remove the top lid from the chassis. We say ‘successfully’ as while technically you could pry the top off before removing these screws getting it back on will require duct tape and a boat load of crazy glue- so be warned and read the instructions which come with the device!
When you properly remove the lid and look inside you will see a very simplified layout similar to past generations of BRIX units. As with previous generations the lone 2.5″ storage port is located on the top panel itself and requires a custom SATA power and data cable be connected to the PCB. Since Gigabyte includes a nice pull tab for this port – and rather long cabling, this is not that big a deal as you do not have to remove and disconnect your 2.5″ drive before accessing the RAM, MSATA, or M.2 slots.
The internal layout is basically broken down into two large zones; on one side are the M.2 and MSATA ports, with the M.2 port basically sitting right underneath the mSATA port. In its default ‘out of the box’ state, the lone M.2 port is populated with an Intel M.2 wireless 802.11AC card that also features Bluetooth 4 abilities. Specifically it is an Intel 3160 card that is rather small (30mm) and a touch under powered – as it is a 1×1 network controller that limits connectivity to a max of 433Mbit/s. If you do decide to use a USB based wireless network controller, some of which are more powerful 2×2 devices, make sure that your SSD of choice is 30 mm long. IE it is a 2230 form-factor SSD. Anything longer than this will simply not fit. This is a shame as 2280’s are the common length used for M.2 solid state drives, and M.2 SSDs are much easier to find than older MSATA drives. Hopefully the next generation will do away with MSATA and instead include two M.2 ports.
The other half of the PCB is dedicated to the two SODIMMS. As this is a 5th Gen “Broadwell” based system this means the two low profile DDR3 RAM slots that are capable of DDR3-1866 speeds. This may not sound all that impressive but 1866 is actually higher than the Intel specifications of 1600Mhz and ‘overclocking’ is usually not even on the table when it comes to Intel NUCs. Color us impressed.
The Gigabit Ethernet controller Gigabyte has opted for is the Realtek RTL8111 NIC. This controller is a touch under powered (and outdated as it is a circa 2013 controller) compared to the Intel i218v (or even newer i219v) but is still a very reasonable option that will provide plenty of power. Just make sure to use the latest drivers as some earlier versions that came with the Windows OS disc are a tad unstable.
Audio comes courtesy of the Realtek ALC283 controller which allows for up to 7.1 surround sound via the HDMI port. It is unfortunate that Gigabyte does not include an TOSlink or S/PDIF port for audio but this is par for the course for all NUCs.
Since our unit is the entry level, value orientated version the CPU soldered directly to the PCB is intel i3-5010U. This Broadwell CPU is a dual core variant that has HyperThreading enabled. Of course as it is a i3 it does not have TurboBoost and instead runs at a max of 2.1GHz (21 base clock ratio). It also is a locked Intel processor and as such overclocking would be limited to base clock tweaking…and that is a sub-optimal solution to say the least. Of course as this is a ultra low power processor with a TDP of only 15watts,and the BRIX does not exactly have a high performance cooler, “overclocking” is not even on the table.
On the positive side this CPU does only have a TDP of 15watts and this is a reduction of 13% from the previous generations 17w TDP. It may not sound like much but this is a 13% reduction which in conjunction with a minimum processor state of only 600Mhz makes keeping the Brix a low noise device even easier than ever before. To keep the CPU cool, Gigabyte uses a squirrel cage fan and heatsink combination that you would find inside any modern laptop. During idle periods this system was basically silent and even during high IO periods it was not loud by any stretch of the imagination.
Also on the positive side it does come with an integrated Intel HD5500 graphics processor unit. This ‘video card’ has 24 execution units that run at 300-900Mhz and shares the DDR3-RAM with the system (default is a paltry 128MB but this can be changed to up to 2GB). While this is not enough for gaming at anything above 720P, this processor is more than powerful enough for video up-conversion in KODI / XBMC….and more than enough processing power for day to day tasks like PhotoShop, Word, Excel, and Water/Cyber/FireFox, IE, Chrome, and any other web browser you care to mention. The only real limitation – besides lackluster gaming abilities – is it is limited to HDM 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2. This too is not that much of a concern but if you do need a unit capable of HDMI 2.0 an NUC is not the device you are looking for.
