AMD announced a week ago that it would be updating its entire Ryzen Embedded lineup with the Zen 2 architecture, and Gigabyte wants in on the action, bringing new slim and tall versions of the compact BRIX units, equipped with Zen 2 SoCs to market soon.
AMD's new Ryzen V2000 embedded CPUs are a huge upgrade over the older V1000 series, based on first-gen Ryzen (there were no Zen+ variants made). Not only are they on the new models on the Zen 2 architecture, but AMD also doubled and tripled the core counts. You now get 8 cores and 16 threads for the top trim V2748 and V2718, and six cores plus 12 threads for the lower end V2546 and V2516. Compared to four cores and two cores respectively on the V1000 series.
Gigabyte hasn't announced any specific models with the new chips yet. All we know is that they're coming soon. But it wouldn't be surprising if Gigabyte stuck with the same form factor as current BRIX units. Gigabyte's original BRIX, based on first-gen embedded Ryzen SoCs, featured a ton of connectivity, dual LAN, six USB ports and quad HDMI outputs. That made it a great little machine for multi-monitor setups and for light workstation duties.
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The only major cons were its weak performance lack, of modern connectivity standards like USB 3.2 Gen 2 and any Type C ports (due to 1st-Gen Ryzen's older architecture). If Gigabyte addresses both issues with the new V2000 CPUs, that would certainly make the Ryzen powered BRIX a really potent machine for office productivity duties or as a light entertainment machine while sucking down very little power.
