Gigabyte Single Board PC Is Like Raspberry Pi On Steroids With Quad-Core Intel CPU And Dual LAN

There's no shortage of options in the DIY micro-PC market, one that Raspberry Pi arguably spearheaded over five-years-ago with the release of its first unit. Since that time, a lot of competition has risen to the surface, including none other than Taiwan's GIGABYTE, a company that knows a thing or two about developing motherboards worth using.

The GA-SBCAP3450 is an iterative design that builds on the initial release last year. Notably, the biggest upgrade includes the boost to a quad-core processor, a rather gargantuan leap from a dual-core. That chip, Intel's Celeron N3450, can boost up to 2.2GHz, so it has a fair amount of oomph for such a small form-factored PC.

While this 14.6cm x 10.2cm SBCAP3450 includes the SoC, it doesn't include memory. You'll have to source that on your own, and with a single stick, you'll be able to enjoy 8GB of the stuff. That's not too bad when you consider the fact that many notebooks floating about have the same amount of memory. For storage, dual SATA 6Gb/s ports are offered, as well as an mSATA.

Also on tap are not one, but two Realtek Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual USB 3.1 ports at the back, and four USB 2.0 via internal headers. For display, you can achieve 4K resolution through the use of the HDMI port, but that's unfortunately going to be limited to 30Hz operation. If you want to go higher than that refresh, you'll be able to hit 60Hz at either 1200p or 1080p.

Clearly, this is much more feature-rich than a Raspberry Pi, but its ~$200 USD price tag (based on last year's model) demands that. Either way, if you need a super-small PC that doesn't hold too much back, this is one board worth checking out.