Gigabyte GB-BXBT-2807 Barebones Mini PC w/ Intel Celeron N2807 (RAM and HDD Not Included)

The GB-BXBT-1900 is a low cost member of Gigabyte's Brix family. I did some research comparing current (circa 2014/2015) options for small form factor green computing for 24x7 use, and this had the best specs in terms of compute power and energy efficiency for the cost. Better than the low end Intel NUC offerings. Up until recently the GB-BXBT-1900 was not offered for sale in the US market. Hence not many reviews on Amazon, though quite a few elsewhere and on youtube, though often not English.Size is quite small, not much wider than a laptop hard disk. Rear power input is 12VDC with AC/DC adapter included. The adapter is configurable with 4 different plugs for use in other countries. Screws for mounting internal HDD or SSD are included, along with a VESA mounting plate and screws for back of a monitor. It's actively cooled, meaning it has a small fan inside. I have to put my ear right next to the Brix to hear it running. Very quiet. On/off button on the top. VGA and HDMI output for video. Three USB connectors (one USB3 and two USB2).It uses an Intel J1900 SOC which has 4 cores. The BIOS is reasonably simple. Mine was shipped (5/2015) with BIOS version F5. It easily upgraded to the latest F6 version. The latest firmware is on the Gigabyte website. Look for instructions online to create a bootable flash stick. As far as I can tell not much changed in F6 so perhaps it's fine to leave it at F5. I only upgraded out of habit. The BIOS allows selection of Windows 7 or 8. I left it configured as 8 and installed Linux.Gigabyte website lists only a few compatible SSDs. Don't know why that is. I bought a 250GB Crucial MX200 SSD: CT250MX200SSD1. It wasn't on the list but works greats. I also added 8GB memory (max is one SODIMM up to 8GB): Crucial CT102464BF160B. This is 1600MHz memory though works fine at 1333MHz which is spec'd for the J1900.The latest Centos 7 installed easily. All on-board devices were recognized and came up fine except for the included mini-pcie wireless card which uses a Realtek RTL8723BE. Drivers exist for it on the latest Linux distributions (fedora, ubuntu, and arch-linux to name a few). I read somewhere kernel 3.15 and later has the correct driver.The processor supports virtualization (VT-x). With KVM (virtualization in Redhat/Centos/Fedora Linux) I created one VM (1CPU, 2GB ram, 10GB disk) and installed Ubuntu 15.04 desktop. The window manager was sluggish and used 100% of one core. To be fair this would not be a common configuration. Setting to 2 cores the virtual desktop ran better. For my needs I disabled the window manager and the CPU ran effortlessly loaded only a few percent.Downloading Ubuntu 1.1 GB iso image took just over 2 min. IIRC performance monitor showed around 8 MBytes/sec transfer speed, most likely limited by broadband speed as the CPUs were not working hard (not above 30% for any one, and total across all 4 was much less).The design is similar to Gigabyte's J1900 mini-itx board which is one of many low cost J1900 based boards hitting the market. Reviewers/commenters elsewhere found the Brix to use around 5-10 watts at idle and ~18W at max load, measured at the wall. The mini-itx based systems are higher, up to 28W at load. While they are all low power, by that measure the Brix is basically 50% more efficient overall. Cost-wise, the Brix is $40 more than the equivalent mini-itx board, but it includes cooling, case, PSU and wireless. mini-itx boards get you a second Ethernet port, more usb, and some have serial.Bought from/shipped by amazon with prime, great as usual.I'm sure there are many important details left out -- I'll update this if I think of anything else.

I purchased this Gigabyte Mini-PC with the 4-core Intel Celeron J1900 CPU for a specific task to run under one of the popular Linux distros. I added 8GB of G-Skill memory, and a SSD. Installation of the memory and drive was easy. This is really a bargain for those who primarily browse the web, and for email. The installation of the Linux distro was uneventful, and unlike previous reviews, I found the BIOS not only easy to understand and to use, but to enter the BIOS by hitting the Delete key upon boot. The BIOS had enough options - for example, being able to disable the Fast Boot - especially important for a Linux installation. The brief instruction pamphlet only shows compatibility with Win7, Win8, and Win10, but initially I temporarily installed several Linux distros to test broad Linux compatibility, and each worked without a problem before the final install.I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this product, and BTW... The warranty is 3 years.Update: 10/26/18 -- I would probably subtract one star from my earlier review because of a very strange anomaly with this mini-PC. Every once in a while, and totally random, it loses it boot priority order, or the default boot order. I have it set to boot to the C: drive - in this case a 120GB SSD with Ubuntu installed. But, randomly upon boot, it acts as if the CMOS battery is dead, and you have to shut it down and reboot into the BIOS setup page and reset the boot priority. I know the CMOS battery is good, in fact I've replaced it twice with known good - and tested (with my Fluke 77 DVM) batteries. I'm beginning to think that there's a problem with the CMOS battery circuit itself. And, one observation about the BIOS itself with this mini-PC... it is a bit strange as compared to other BIOS setups out there, as this BIOS offers 5 options for the boot priority - and this may be where the problem seems to be. Plus, the BIOS is not terribly intuitive either. I'm still pleased with its operation, but I sure wish I could not have to deal with constantly resetting the boot priority from time to time.