Gadgetory

what's up guys Eber here with hurricane X and you may recall a review of the asrock d-box s a compact basic bare-bones PC that featured intel's ultra-low voltage sound generation Core i5 processor if you missed out on a video we will leave a link down below for you to check it out today we're taking a look at get another compact PC but this time it's from gigabyte is what it looks like in fact we have two of these in the studio one of them featuring a skylake processor and the other one being kb lake in our original cable lake review Intel's newest architecture didn't provide any massive benefits over skylake and a desktop environment but we mentioned it could have a significant impact upon the mobile and ultra small form-factor spaces but does it let's find out but first a message from our sponsor you can only rely on the pros do the job with every keystroke satisfying like the millions before quality fuel every team regardless of good faith hula master master keys bro make a clicking make a good okay just before I proceed with specs I want to clear something off my shoulders this is a bare-bones kit which means you have to populate your own choice from memory hard drive and the operating system the other components like the CPU motherboard cooler and the networking card are already installed within the chassis also most Brooks units aren't as feature-rich as VV bucks s a good example of that would be the lack of a dedicated remote with all the basic controls you need like volume adjust play pause skip tracks and navigating buttons something that does come with the B box ass both bricks units here at the table are powered by Core i7 processors the only difference between the two is their microarchitecture on one hand we have a unit with a skylight core i7 6500 you CPU clocked at 2.5 gigahertz that can turbo up to three point one gigahertz and the other featuring a cable a core i7 7500 you clocked at 2.7 gigahertz that can turbo up to 3.5 gigahertz the rest of the specs are exactly the same this includes the cache bus speed and even the in company integrated graphics subsystems on both ships are caught similarly at this point you may be wondering whether or not cabling is going to bring anything to be small pcs and the first hint behind the answer is the significantly higher clock speeds that the newer processor can achieve another thing I need to mention is the price even though there are several Brix models with different specifications this one with the i7 7500 you processor goes for about $500 once you add in storage memory and the operating system it could one easily near a thousand dollars that's the price of an entry level gaming PC but I guess this systems compactness sells taking a look at the physical aspects of both these models they are mostly the same except for a few changes the build quality between the two are similar and the brushed aluminum chassis looks and feels durable with the move over to Kaiba lake the footprint hasn't changed whatsoever what has changed from last year's model is the i/o situation the front panel on the cable 8 unit features USB 3.1 type C and Taipei ports and a headphone splash mic combo jack whereas the sky league unit has two USB 3.0 ports and a dedicated headphone / mic jacks the rear i/o has also been revised the cable unit comes with a Canton lock standard power input HDMI 2.0 mini DisplayPort Gigabit LAN and two USB 3.0 ports the Scala connect shares the same i/o except they have added a USB type on one type C port and shifted the two USB 3.0 ports on the white side of the chassis you'll also notice an SD card reader on the Skellig unit but unfortunately they've alienated that on the new revision both of these also have an integrated into a Wi-Fi card so you won't have to worry about running a network cable or buying a wireless adapter now considering the form factor of these species you can easily mount them behind a monitor gigabyte provides appropriate base the mounting brackets that support both 75 and 100 millimeter configurations which is awesome opening up the Brix is fairly a simple process once you remove the four screws holding the back plate you can easily get access to the RAM slots and there's a single m dot two slot that supports the two two eight zero configuration do not that the cable a grain operates at full PCI speeds whereas the skylight model limits itself to theta now if you want to install a traditional two-and-a-half inch hard drive or SSD gigabyte has pre mounted the hard drive bracket onto the backplane so it's just a matter of sliding the drive inside and tightening it up with the included screws and that was what we opted for before moving on to testing I found something odd with the new bricks equipped with the Kiwi Lake processor out of the box so the unit didn't recognize our SATA drive but after rebooting into the BIOS and enabling legacy support we were up and running in no time considering these units are meant for first-time users this is simply unacceptable but we're told gigabyte is looking into the problem and will likely issue an update for our test procedure we use Corsairs value select 16 gigabytes odium ddr4 kit plus and 20 133 megahertz and their to 40 gigabytes force le two and a half inch SSD for the operating system otherwise both systems are exactly the same so the top of the benchmarks and see what kind of performance cable-like brings to the table compared to skylake our first round of basic synthetic tests shows the cabling model dishes out roughly 90 percent more performance compared to skylake programs like Cinebench r15 in the multi-core test takes advantage of these 7500 you really well the OpenGL test doesn't really show a major difference between the two in terms of frame rates but that was expected PC mark and the rest of the test favored the cable aches and fascinate you it's really interesting to see how the increase in CPU clock speeds along with some minor architecture updates can result in such a gap between the two generations the same story applies for our real-world tests while both these CPUs share the same microarchitecture Intel has optimized its speed chip technology so it can now reduce response times from performance requested by intense applications like GIMP luxe mark handbrake Wenhua R and so on we also push the integrated graphics on both models and all I can say is that the cabling performs quite well in its low-voltage form it really is a welcoming upgrade from its predecessor but with that being said I would not recommend gaming on the brakes because it's not meant for that task and this brings us to our last test power consumption while this might seem like a surprise lower energy needs is something that you should expect from a refresh line of processors Intel has done a terrific job balancing performance and the power efficiency of these new mobile cable HCP use and they should translate well into notebooks as well ultimately that's what we're trying to achieve with every generation oh hey there ncx comm is Canada's leading a tailor for anything your mind desires just keep within those categories which are plenty and be attempted by the weekly deals visit ncx dot-com for all them sweet deals apart from the benefit of the new and updated processors the gigabyte Brix is an interesting solution and I can see its appeal for people who are searching for a very basic PC personally I find it a bit too expensive especially since after you add in the memory the hard drive on the operating system its price can get near some very thin and light notebooks however as a compact PC for a home environment this thing can do its job really well while the benefits of KB Lake are pretty apparent in an apple - apples performance comparison what do you guys think about the bricks would you consider buying one of these pcs to use as a media server or something else let us know in the comments down below i'm ebar with hurricane x thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one