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Gigabyte BRIX i7-4500 Barebones Mini-PC Review (w/ G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz 16GB)

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

  • Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
  • Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
  • Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
  • Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
  • Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

  • SMP – Multi-Processor
  • MC – Multi-Core
  • SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
  • MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
  • GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
  • NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
  • AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
  • IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

sandra arith

sandra-arith

sandra multimedia

sandra-multimedia

sandra mem band

sandra-mem-band

Sandra's CPU-measuring benchmarks show the Core i7-4500U to offer modest performance by desktop standards, but fairly competitive numbers when compared to other ultra-low voltage laptop processors.

G.Skill's 1600MHz CL11 Ripjaws modules deliver a memory bandwidth result around the 20GB/s mark. This result shows that the BRIX should be a capable system when it comes to memory-intensive tasks such as basic number-crunching and working with large spreadsheets.

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6 comments

  1. That is a spectacular looking little system, love it.

  2. Its like their version of the Mac Mini, but more powerful and better priced. very impressive. Only thing is its a shame they didn’t ship with slightly more powerful graphics, but nothing much they can do about that in the space I suppose.

  3. Ideal for a media centre or office machine. bit expensive though by the time you factor in the SSD etc.

  4. Like the Sapphire EDGE, but a more practical shape for behind a TV or something.

    Worth a look in the new year, when I finally get my new TV. Dont want to use my desktop with the tv to watch my MKVS!

  5. @Ben: The Mac mini is a generation old at least, and it’s cheaper. The i5 version @ 2.5ghz dual core is comparable to the Brix ( albeit likely faster. ) If you decide to compare Apple’s i7 instead of the i5, you’d be comparing a quad core chip at a significantly higher clockspeed. For about $80 more, the Mac Mini would outperform the Brix, whether it’s multi core or single core.

    The Mac Mini is right on par with the expected specs of a micro build, except it’s just a bit better for the price … maybe. The Mini is reaching its end of life, where the components in the Mini are not entirely satisfactory ( see: the slow HDD included. )

    Not sure what makes you think otherwise.

  6. is this a latest upgrade…mc.mini gigabyte…..sooo cool…can i have this 1….^_^