Back in January, Gigabyte announced the release of Brix, a tiny desktop PC. The system, about the size of a wedge of cheese, was initially designed to be a cheap, basic home theater PC. With the introduction of the Brix II lineup, that's all changed.
While the form factor of the Brix II is still pretty small (think double cheeseburger, rather than a block of cheese), the larger case has made room for some seriously upgraded hardware. Intel's new Haswell CPUs have been tucked under the hood, along with Iris Pro GPUs — also new from Intel.
Before you go off on a tirade about Intel's GPU history and integrated graphics cards in general, be forewarned: Intel is claiming that these Iris GPUs perform up to three times as well as their current HD Graphics 4000 cards. Together, these upgrades make Brix II a decent gaming PC. Intel is even stating that it'll be capable of running Crysis 3, and that's pretty dang good for a PC the size of a cheeseburger.
Still a bare bone system, the Brix lineup expects you to spring for your own OS, hard drive, and memory. That being said, there are some pretty cool options on offer: you can choose a shiny aluminum fanless model, one with solid-state storage, or even one with it's own built-in projector. Prices range from $199 to $699.
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