14 DAY TRIAL // A new member has just joined the family of Brix mini PCs by Gigabyte, the Braswell-powered GB-BACE-3000.
The tiny computers from Gigabyte are known for their reliability and, most of all, for their affordability. Coming at a price of around $150, the new mini PC arrives with a low-power 4-watt 14nm Intel Celeron N300 Braswell dual-core processor, accompanied by a passive cooling system. Yes, this means absolutely no sound from the box whatsoever.
However, this quiet box isn't silent for no reason. The Braswell isn't as powerful as you'd expect from a Haswell or Broadwell, but it's still much superior to Intel's Atom, so it makes sense giving credit to where credit is due for the device's silence.
Another advantage of passive cooling solutions is space economy. The entire device measures 56.1 x 107.6 x 114.4 mm and can easily accommodate a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, and while you carry it, it'll turn any monitor into a readily available low-performance PC.
Good for low budget computing tasks
However, while you might feel that the CPU is dragging you down, not the same can be said about the available DRAM slots. The GB-BACE-300 will easily handle top-tier systems that will accept memory module kits of up to 8GB DDR3L-1600 on a PCIe 2.0 motherboard, which isn't bad at all for a mini PC.
Connectivity-wise, the GB-BACE-300 has 4x USB 3.0 ports, 1x microSD connector, 1x HDMI port, 1xVGA port, 1x Gigabit Ethernet port, and even one M.2 connector for those cutting-edge SSDs from Intel or Kingston. Internet connectivity is given by a dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, and the unit also boasts Bluetooth 4.0. The GB-BACE-300 also has headphone and mic jacks for audio connectivity.
This little device is ultimately perfect for your extremely low-budget computing priorities, but don't expect any of the latest games to work on the GB-BACE-300, as it comes with an Intel Gen 8-LP GPU integrated graphics card.