Brix

[bwdalofzell]

So I have one tosh already and want to try another one; something that can fit on my desk and not take up alot of room. Simple gaming and more of a place to access the internet or server from my room to stream videos.

Saw the new post about the
GIGABYTE GB-BXi5H-5200 (rev. 1.0) Black Mini-PC Barebone

and decided that is the perfect size and should do what I need it to do when the new broadcom chip comes out (or use my existing Ethernet cable thats in the room and not worry about it.)

So.....I think all that I need hardware wise including above are the following:

SAMSUNG 850 EVO MZ-M5E500BW mSATA 500GB SATA III Internal SSD Single Unit Version
[URL="http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-4902415-10446076?url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231704"]
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) Laptop Memory Model [/URL]

SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 ST1000LM024 (HN-M101MBB/EX2) 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare ...


Am I missing anything else?

Please and thank you for the assistance.

 

[weaksauce12]

If you need wireless, there's a $30 802.11ac adapter that works pretty good, just installed one the other day on a MacBook with a defective built-in card:

http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7711MAC-Adapter-Performance-10-7~10-10/dp/B00LGN8HWS/

You've got your RAM & drives, that's pretty much it! Just make sure you have a small screwdriver set handy for installation. Also if you have dual monitors, make sure you get the appropriate video adapters (comes stock with an HDMI port & a MiniDP port). I've been poking around M.2 to mPCIe adapters, might be worth doing if you really want internal wireless & won't be using the 2.5" bay (so you can loop the adapter around), but...meh.

The only real catch with this project is price creep. A brand-new Mac Mini goes for $499; your config is already at $712 (based on Newegg pricing at the time of posting), so you have to decide whether having a Hackintosh makes financial sense in this situation. For that amount, you could get the mid-level Mini, which has a more powerful 2.6ghz i5 (3.1ghz turbo) versus the 2.2ghz in the BRIX (2.7ghz turbo...granted, 4th-gen vs. 5th-gen CPU's), plus has Thunderbolt & a card reader built-in. So aside from getting a nice SSD with your BRIX, you're basically paying more money to get less features & worse compatibility.

I'm a huge fan of the BRIX & like the idea of doing it, but once you really look at the numbers, it starts to get a bit iffy. Plus the mid-range Mini has Iris graphics (base has HD 5000), whereas the BRIX has HD 5500 graphics; I'd be curious to see some Haswell vs. Broadwell and HD 5500 vs. Iris number comparisons. So...some food for thought. The BRIX is extremely easy to work on (you can literally have everything physically installed in under 5 minutes), which is a big benefit if you like to DIY.

 

[shhhhh]

The only real catch with this project is price creep. A brand-new Mac Mini goes for $499; your config is already at $712 (based on Newegg pricing at the time of posting), so you have to decide whether having a Hackintosh makes financial sense in this situation.

I've been thinking about this too, and I too had noticed that you can get up to $700+ pretty fast with a brix configuration. The thing is, once you factor in upgraded hard drive cost on the mac mini and realize you can't easily change out its hard drive on your own (literally have to take everything out of the mini chassis) you're better off going with the brix.

I'm configuring the broadwell i3 brix as an ultra-quiet HTPC with a 1TB SSD from mushkin, a 120GB msata SSD (I like having my boot and media drives separate) and 8gb of ram, total cost ~$732. Closest configuration on a mac mini would be $900 easily.

 

[trs96]

I've been thinking about this too, and I too had noticed that you can get up to $700+ pretty fast with a brix configuration. The thing is, once you factor in upgraded hard drive cost on the mac mini and realize you can't easily change out its hard drive on your own (literally have to take everything out of the mini chassis) you're better off going with the brix.

I'm configuring the broadwell i3 brix as an ultra-quiet HTPC with a 1TB SSD from mushkin, a 120GB msata SSD (I like having my boot and media drives separate) and 8gb of ram, total cost ~$732. Closest configuration on a mac mini would be $900 easily.

If you look at the specs of the I3 Brix model compared to the I5 version it looks to me that the
I3 version is the better value. It costs about 85 USD less and the graphics performance is exactly
the same. Faster DDR3 ram (1866 or 2133 MHz) will be a good addition to a brix.

On the Intel site they give the specs and the retail price of each CPU, which happens to be $281 for both. So if you don't need the small turbo boost of the I5 the I3 version is the best way to go. Good Choice. The I3 Brix actually sells for less than the retail price of the I3-5010U.

I5-5200U ~~~~~~~~~~vs.~~~~~~~~I3-5010U


For HTPC use there won't be any major difference in cpu performance.

 

[bwdalofzell]

All well and good on the mini catch. Didn't realize they were that low. However I like the fact that the brix is more upgradeable. I would be buying this all in stages well that would be the core and then add more ram later maybe a bigger msata when I would justify the price to the misses lol.

 

[shhhhh]

Faster DDR3 ram (1866 or 2133 MHz) will be a good addition to a brix.
Good Choice. The I3 Brix actually sells for less than the retail price of the I3-5010U.

Hahaha, thanks for the validation!
You mentioned faster ram might be a good addition, but the brix spec page only lists 1333/1600 support. You sure that would help? (plus I've got about a dozen sticks of compatible 1333 I've torn out of MacBooks over the years)

 

[trs96]

You mentioned faster ram might be a good addition, but the brix spec page only lists 1333/1600 support. You sure that would help? (plus I've got about a dozen sticks of compatible 1333 I've torn out of MacBooks over the years)

It's the same with the Intel NUC (1333/1600) yet some have gotten up to 1866 MHz.
So it should be possible in a Brix as well. You can still probably use the 1333 ram but
as always newer will give you better performance with a Broadwell system.

 

[ameno86]

While this is a nice machine, I wouldn't take the Buyer's guide to mean out-of-the-box happiness. While I may well be doing something terribly wrong with my Brix 4200 series (http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/162985-intel-4400-gpu-compatibility-gb-bxi5h-4200-a.html), I've not been able to get the it into a useful state. As far as I can tell, the Intel 4400 GPU in it is, at best, sketchily supported.

I'm waiting to see if the folks in the Graphics forum have some ideas on getting things running, but I really would have to say that including the 4200 on the Buyer's Guide is a little bit disingenuous. Yes, it *technically* installs OS X with only minor boot-time tweaking. But it's not a remotely usable installation. But no one said getting a hackintosh running was going to be easy.