Gigabyte BRIX Pro GB-BXi7-4770R (Steam Machine)

Hey there!

My roommate got home from the Steam Dev Days and showed me the Gigabyte BRIX Pro which can be used as a Steam Machine. Just wanted to share the specifications, see below. It's in our living room for testing now, it's super cute and tiny, but also makes a lot of noise coming from the internal fan. Of course I wondered if a Hackintosh would be possible on this thing. I haven't been active in the community for a while -my last built Hackintosh was 3 years ago- but I thought I should share!

Chassis: Gigabyte Brix Pro
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770R, 4 core, 3.2GHz
Chipset: Intel 8 Series Chipset Family
Memory: 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3L 1600MHz
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
HDD: Seagate SSHD Hybrid 8GB + 1TB
Power Supply: External AC Brick
Peripherals: Realtek RTL8111G Ethernet, Azurewave AW-CB161H Wifi Combo + Bluetooth 4.0

Let me know if you want to know something.

Hello!

This looks very promising indeed. I'd like to ask you a few technical aspects of the set up:

1) Which motherboard exactly is (model & manufacturer)? What chipset?
2) Does the processor come soldered?
3) Do you think the whole board can be mounted in a fanless chassis?
4) How much space available inside? Do you see a way to modify things to put not one but two 2.5" SSDs for instance?

Thanks!

capfuturo said:

Hello!

This looks very promising indeed. I'd like to ask you a few technical aspects of the set up:

1) Which motherboard exactly is (model & manufacturer)? What chipset?
2) Does the processor come soldered?
3) Do you think the whole board can be mounted in a fanless chassis?
4) How much space available inside? Do you see a way to modify things to put not one but two 2.5" SSDs for instance?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I have the GB-BXi5-4570R mostly same except processor and a stylish red case instead of black!
1)motherboard is listed inside the case as M4HM87P in the bios the product name is listed as M4HM85P-00
2)the processor is mounted on the top side of the motherboard, I have not taken the whole thing out of the case to look. I will say that my unit is super quiet almost no fan noise at all only during serious stress do I here the fan spin up but nowhere near server room levels that were reported by anandtech on the 4770p model.
3)it would have to be a custom chasis due to the mother board using both side of the pcb
4)one msata and one 2.5in drive... no more connectors...

Nice! You guys are the first 2 I've seen with the BRIX Pro! These new BRIX Pro units are awesome, as they have full Desktop class CPUs inside- however, I'm sure they have the non-standard Gigabyte UEFI, not the ones that come on the desktop motheboards, so Power Mgmt will have to be patched.

Check out my BRIX testing thread here for some tips on installation:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-h...gigabyte-brix-mini-pc-kit-core-i3-mobile.html

Can I request you extract an .iojones file for me from this build? Just download SJ_UnderWater's IOJones here, and extract and paste the file.

I'd like to hear about any differences in the OS X experience. Good luck!

Thanks very much for this information! I was able to determine the processor belongs to the BGA socket family which is soldered to the motherboard (Gigabyte custom made), therefore there is no possibility to upgrade the processor. There is no fan-less case I have found yet compatible with Brix Pro in the market (unless someone points one to me?). Additionally the Intel i7-4770R doesn't support vPro technology, which is vital for what I need: the ability to remotely maintain home theatre boxes (XBMC) even in the worst case scenarios. Seems that Intel has forgot to release a powerful NUC Haswell with vPro and Intel Graphics Iris 5200 and Gigabyte, that it is slightly nonsense to embed a processor in an expensive premium product such as the Brix Pro leaving customers without chance to upgrade.

Further info: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core i7-4770R.html

How is the fan noise if you're up close to the Brix Pro? I've found that mine is pretty unbearable, almost has a ticking/whine noise to it. Are they all like this or should I do an RMA.

i really love the form factor, and hope it is just a defective one!

on the i5 version the fan is super low... as in I have to press my ear to the device to hear it...

here is the iojones save file.. hope this is what you were looking for...

I have the machine booting with -x I have patched kernel, and had to use chameleon in order to make it boot. kernel patching was done with rehabmans thread... I have also started a thread that documents all my trials.. under GB-BXi5-4570R

Hi guys,

my my hope here with this machine was to build a low budget steam box and also dual boot OS X and finally fun a plex media server. Unfortunately, I can only do one of those three so far. The machine is horribly loud at load and even at idle you can hear the fans spinning. I would not recommend this for an HTPC, gaming is actually pretty cool, 720p 30fps, but mostly on 1-year old games. I don't expect this to run crysis at 1080p, but even games like Tomb raider need to have graphics turned down, and you will hear the machine from a mile away.

as a plex server, it does quite well, and I've been loving the new plex update along with my chromecast, like the two were meant for each other . But when trancoding you'll hear the fan and frankly my Mac mini transcoded faster.

i haven't tried dual booting windows and OS X yet, I'll wait for you geniuses to make it easy for me as that's not really my specialty. I'm amazed at how this community solves problems.

I'm going to try to upgrade the fan and see what happens, hopefully I don't "brix" it.

Hey RRkumar,

I have the i5 version and the fan noise is not noticeable at all I have the graphics working now in osx too.. just need to get audio working.. although for this device many may just use the hdmi audio...

Good luck on the Fan hack.. let us now how you make out..

I loved the idea of this box but it failed on execution. It's sort of like the old Xbox 360, loud and warm. I thought this would be a 3rd gen NUC and they would got the kinks figured out but it's still a very poor design. Maybe because Haswell runs so hot due to the integrated GPU. Maybe having a dedicated GPU on the side may solve the heat issue by spreading the heat around. Like the 2011 Mac Mini has a dedicated AMD GPU, it was able to run cooler and quiet than this.

I returned the Brix because I really can't justify the high price and not really working out better than a mini ITX setup which I can have the similar system build cheaper.