GIGABYTE Mini PC Barebone Intel Core i3-6100U 2.3GHz Intel Graphic 520 GB-BSi3HAL-6100

Purchased as an inexpensive platform for a pfSense firewall sitting in front of a gigabit internet connection. Installed RAM and a M.2 SSD and it was good to go. So far, it has been a low-maintenance, low-heat, and low-power workhorse with zero issues. Setup was easy, and it is plenty fast for my needs. The dual Gigabit Ethernet ports make it a fantastic option for a lot of different networking use cases. I would not want to use it as a primary workstation, but if you need a reliable, compact PC that can run an x86-64 OS, then this is an excellent​ choice.

It's the perfect pc even for using it with photoshop and illustrator. I fitted it with a Samsung ssd and ddr4 ram 16gb from crucial. Work fast with no issues with windows 10Only downside is when it goes to sleep and comes back on. Sometimes the sound is gone and i have to restart the pc. You can prevent this by preventing auto sleep

So far works, fast and without problems, good PC for the price easy to set up and configure! I install windows 10 pro and kali Linux on it

After installing RAM (two 16GB Crucial DDR4-2133 260-pin SO-DIMM), linux mint 18 "Live" was running from USB stick in a few minutes.Everything: WiFi, streaming audio/video, bluetooth, Dell U2515H screen connected via DP just worked.There are 4 USB ports: 2x 3.0 in back (blue plastic); in front, there's 1x 3.1 type A (red) and 1x 3.1 type C (black). I was quite keenly interested to see which ports would recognize my (old, vanilla, $5) USB keyboard at the boot stage. [the reason for my interest: the new Intel NUC6i5SYH that I'm returning (with four external USB 3.0 ports, and two internal headers for USB 2.0) didn't recognize any kbd from any port (to use the internal USB 2.0 headers, you'll need a "USB A Female to 1 X 4 Pin Internal USB Connector 1.25 mm Pitch", Sold by: Micro SATA Cable). BTW I have a Haswell NUC that's been running linux just fine.]At boot time, only the front 3.1 type A (red) USB port recognized any USB keyboards. With OS installed, all three type-A USB ports see the kbd.The BRIX "Quick Start Guide" had an interesting 'Note: Due to a lack of legacy (EHCI) controller support from Intel on the 6th generation CPU, the USB 3.0 ports of the BRIX unit are not compatible with USB 2.0 devices. To help you install your operating system, GIGABYTE provides a tool which is preloaded on the driver CD called "Windows Image Tool". This tool helps you to create an installation USB dongle which includes the driver necessary for backward compatibility. To install Windows 7 using this tool, please follow these steps: ....'. (No mention of linux support that I could find; the drivers CD is "all Windows" AFAICT). I wondered if the NUC was in a similar bind (there are many posts suggesting the addition ofThen I installed a MyDigital BP5e 2280 M.2 SSD and Samsung 850 EVO SSD (both purchased for the NUC6i5, as was the RAM) and went through the OS installation process.There was no POST light or sound when I turned on the BRIX _before_ putting in the RAM, but it worked fine after I put in the RAM.The NUC has numerous POST-code lights that can tell you "trouble with RAM" if you turn it on without RAM.The BRIX has some fan noise (I'd say "slight"; couldn't hear it when the refrigerator was making noise).System Monitor shows four CPUs, as does lscpu .Posted by Charlie via my wife's account (through which I placed the order).

False advertising on warranty. Brix = BRICK. Stopped working in less than 6 months. Attempted RMA for the "3 Year Warranty" but was refused despite following all directions to the letter. Got an RMA #, original packaging was used, vendor provided RMA label and survey properly affixed. Still refused. No explanation. I now have a $600 paperweight.

From a capability perspective, this thing was way overkill for what I planned on doing with it...but, I'm often given to changing my mind and/or re-purposing "tech," so I figured why not splurge.I bought this BRIX to work as a small office/home office ("SOHO") appliance - I wanted one box to do the following:* Gateway* Firewall* Routing* Authoritative DNS* LDAP server* VPN serverThere are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions out there that include both hardware and software, but their expandability (and re-purpose) potential is pretty low. I went with this particular BRIX because I could load it up with memory (a must), storage (if I wanted to) AND it had dual NICs (a must when acting as a gateway). I'm currently running Zentyal 4.2 (because I'm an Ubuntu type) and the box is humming along without a hitch.Not only where the necessary "specs" there, previous experience with Gigabyte components has solidly formed the opinion that their build quality is top shelf. This BRIX maintains that notion quite well.Was it too much box for what I'm doing? Absolutely. But, I might be doing something else with it tomorrow.

I got this to install pfSense and it runs no hotter than 29.7 C each time I have checked. It performs fast, stable and handles the network traffic extremely well. Would recommend to anyone looking to do something similar for inexpensive

Windows Hyper-v Server 2016 installed no problem. Runs like a champ.