Review on GIGABYTE Ultra Compact Mini PC with Intel UHD Graphics 600, M.2 SSD, HDMI 2.0A, and DP1.2A Component - GB-BLCE-4105 by Joshua Morales

I was looking for a small media server build box, stumbled upon it along with newer Celeron processors and decided to give it a try. Added 240GB M.2 and 16GB RAM. Created a Mint 19.2 O/S Flash (mainly Ubuntu) and booted from it. Installation went smoothly! Earned very quickly. They had a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth card built in, which is as expected, and both seem to work fine with the Linux install I did. One problem is that 4k video doesn't work well over a standard HDMI connection. I found out that it might be necessary to use a displayport and you should be fine. Otherwise, this is the only error I've encountered. I tested this by running it in my non-air conditioned garage office (over 90ft during the day) for a week with the Seti@home (Boinc) process running at 100% CPU. No issues and just a slight fan noise while running. My goal is to create a small cluster of these while having 4 of them in the build process. The key here is very low power consumption and low noise levels. Interestingly, they come with a VESA mounting plate to attach to the back of the monitor. I used them as a mounting plate for the cluster chassis which again helped a lot. The upgrade path is good as they make Brix similar in size in i3, i5 and i7 (more $$ overall and more power), but it's a good way to counter the nameless brands that are all over the internet. Finally, I looked at some of the newer ARM (Pi4/oDroid) boxes, but when you can expand them with huge memory and large storage, they seemed to be the best. way to go. And run most commercial Intel-based OS distributions with full support. I repeat to others, this does not come with an operating system, memory or storage (SSD). It came with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which I didn't really need or expect, but it was nice to get the machine working! So far very satisfied.