Review: Tranquil PC

The specifications are taken from mini-itx com, a leading provider of all smaller form factor PCs and peripherals.

• Black or Silver Tranquil PC Enclosure
• Highly polished clear 'glass-like' blue glow front panel
• VIA EPIA M10000 Mini-ITX Form Factor motherboard
• 1GHz Nehemiah VIA C3 CPU
• VIA CLE266 Chipset
• Passive cooling solution utilising heatsink linked to finned chassis
• 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM (configurable up to 512MB)
• 80Gb Seagate Barracuda IV Hard Drive (configurable up to 120Gb)
• Slimline CD, DVD or Combo DVD/CDRW Drive
• 6-Channel Audio and SP/DIF
• VGA and TV-Out (RCA and S-Video)
• 10/100 Base-T Ethernet Port
• 4 x USB 2.0 Ports
• 2 x IEEE 1394 Firewire Ports
• Serial, Parallel, Mouse, Keyboard Ports
• 32MB Integrated VIA "Castlerock" Graphics with MPEG2 Decoder
• Full-length PCI Slot for PCI Expansion (full height for the first 75mm)
• External Universal 110V - 240V Power Supply

Software

• Windows XP Home with SP1 (pre-configured)
• 6.13.10.0021-01.19.01 display drivers
• Power DVD XP 4.0 and DivX 5.02 and 5.05
• HDTach 2.61
• CPU-Z v1.19

Notes

Our normal testing methodology consists on putting various components or systems through a gruelling set of 2D and 3D tasks. We normally review products that fall between midrange and high-end specifications. Our tests, therefore, are geared towards beating 3GHz+ systems to a pulp. That kind of benchmarking punishment is ill suited to the Tranquil PC. One must endeavor to review a product with due respect to its intended uses and market. The Tranquil does feature a 3D accelerator that shares 32MB of bandwidth with the rest of the system, but its architecture, comprising of a lone rendering pipe with dual TMUs, all clocked at lowly levels and run off a 64-bit engine, isn't really suited to modern gaming.

Similarly, even though VIA's new Nehemiah CPU is now clocked at 1GHz, it doesn't even have the oomph of a budget AMD Duron. This is not a gaming or power system, let's be abundantly clear about that. The selling points are based on supreme quietness, compact and chic appearance, decent multimedia connectivity, and portability. The Tranquil PC arrived pre-configured with Windows XP Home Edition SP1. All devices and features worked first time.

Our testing methodology will have to adapt to meet the special features of the Tranquil. We'll list a number of intended uses and see just how well the Tranquil fits our requirements criteria. Before we do that, though, we'll investigate the role played by some of the on-board features.