Tranquil T2e Atom PC
After all the pre-announcements and
all the hype, we didn't expect the first Atom processor to arrive in the PC Pro
Labs to be found in a desktop PC. Nonetheless, silent PC expert Tranquil is
first past the post with its T2e Atom PC - and it's a excellent blend of
cutting-edge parts and Ingenious design that really captures the Atom's
strengths.
Tranquil's familiar T2 chassis remains
menacing to behold, with its array of cooling fins and glass-plated, glowing
front panel. As befitting the name, there's no whir of fans here; no noise can be heard from it when it's on.
Unsurprising given the almost complete lack of noise-producing parts inside.
Clutter, mess and confusion in this
chassis simply isn't an issue, with ample space for upgrades; there's a spare
bay for another hard disk and room for up to three more PCI cards as needed.
And all this space helps keep the heated parts low, too: during our testing the
heat fins barely even rose beyond lukewarm, and one of the Tranquil spokesmen
joked they could even have left the Atom CPU bare if they'd really wanted to
make a point - it's the GMA 950 graphics chip that produces 70% of the heat
coming off the Intel 945G motherboard.
All the heated parts are cooled by the
case itself, with heat pipes discreetly protruding in the right places for
chips, and fins all around the drive bays to not give away the fact there's any
cooling going on at all. There's a little audible hard disk noise, true, but
even that's one of Western Digital's Caviar GreenPower models, which allegedly
gives a 4-5W power saving over most of standard hard disks.
The CPU in the Tranquil is just one of
Intel's desktop series of Atoms. Listed as an Atom 230, it's a single-core chip
with a thermal design power (TDP) of just 4W. It runs at 1.6GHz, with 512KB of
L2 cache and a 533MHz front side bus. It supports Intel's Hyper-Threading, hence
its emergence in the Task Manager as two Distinguished CPUs.
Also with 2GB of desktop DDR2 RAM to
keep things running nicely in Vista Home Premium, it managed a staggering 0.32
in our benchmarks. Not pioneering in that sense, then, but the foremost point
is that it's unbelievably economical in producing that performance. With the
whole thing sitting idle we calculated the Tranquil consuming just 30W, and
under full benchmark load this still only rose to a maximum of 36W, scarcely
surpassing 33W more often than not.
To put that in viewpoint, the
Celeron-based Eee PC 900 scored around 0.33 in the tests we got running on it
in XP (so lower that score a little for the dreaded Vista effect); while the
VIA C7-based MSI Titan 700 managed just 0.36 yet has a more increased TDP of
20W. To say that the Atom makes up at generally 11% of the Tranquil's entire
peak power draw really highlights its competence - we can't wait to test the
battery life of the first Atom-powered laptops.
The Tranquil T2e Atom does have a small
number of foibles that do need to be mentioned, though. Sadly that pretty front
panel leaves gaps for nothing but the DVD drive, so you'll be required to use
the four USB ports on the rear to connect any peripherals. The 10/100 Ethernet
port is attached by rather redundant parallel and serial connections, rather
than anything principally useful. Therefore, you'll need to add £7 for a PCI
riser and get yourself a cheap graphics card if you want HDMI or even DVI.
But a look through the options on
Tranquil's site helps to relieve any disappointment, with a dual-DVB-T TV tuner
for a mind blowing £69, as well as Wi-Fi for £28. Just an extra £30 buys you
the complete Media Center remote control package, while there are also options
for XP Home (deduct £10), Ubuntu or even no OS at all (deduct £69).
To be expected, you pay a trivial payment
for that silent running, so the Tranquil won't be for every person. although
the superb heat-pipe technology is the ideal foil to the implausible competence
of the Atom.
Whether the Atom is appropriate for
use in a desktop PC is a dissimilar question, and one for which our answer is a
little a lesser amount of positivity. We criticised the current MSI Titan 700
for its VIA processor and benchmark score of 0.36, and the Atom doesn't really
improve on that - multitasking in particular seems to be one of the real
weaknesses.
As a step forward in efficiency the
Atom is actually a accomplishment, but we're not swayed a PC is the right home
for it. As a entirely silent, broodingly modish web browsing and word
processing machine, we love the Tranquil T2e Atom PC. We just wouldn't want to
throw anything much more demanding at it.
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