Home mini-systems that our conventional personal computers are transforming into are flourishing nowadays. The driving desire of their manufacturers is to make such systems as close as possible to typical household electrical appliances in design and functionality. Usually, you can build an acceptably powerful machine around such a mini-system, which can be a full-fledged entertainment center for gaming, listening to music, watching videos and so on…

On the other hand, becoming a replacement of the home PC is not the main purpose of all mini-systems. There are applications that don’t require speed in 3D games or broad multimedia capabilities. I mean the dull “office” applications.

One of the typical representatives of this direction in the development of Small Form-Factor PCs is Gigabyte TA2, which is the subject of our today’s review. The company refers to its system built from VIA Technologies’ components as “Mini PC / Thin Client”. However, the TA2 is something more than just a thin client, which purpose is to input and visualize data, rather than process them. The Gigabyte TA2 is a full-fledged workstation with small dimensions and noiselessness of thin clients.

Let’s be methodical, though, and examine the system thoroughly.

External Looks and First Impressions

The mini-system from Gigabyte is not the smallest machine of all that use VIA components, but it won’t take much space on your desk: it is of course smaller than ordinary mini-ATX systems or the popular “cubes” from Shuttle and it stands vertically:

The system looks somber with its black plastic front panel, black metal case, straight lines and sharp edges. There are no intricacies in the design.

The front panel of the TA2 carries the Power button, three LEDs that indicate the system status (power on/off, HDD activity, LAN controller activity), a headphones output and microphone input, two USB ports and two bay openings covered with brackets (for an optical drive and for PCMCIA cards).

At the back panel of the case, among scattered-around vent holes, there are: PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard, two USB ports, an RJ-45 network connector, a set of audio sockets, COM, LPT and IEEE1394 ports, DVI-I and S-Video outputs for the display device.

The system components are not very hot during work, but they still can’t live happily in a dead-sealed sarcophagus. So the case of the TA2 has vent holes in its top, bottom, back and side panels:

The single fan – yes, the system is not absolutely noiseless, to our regret – cools down the CPU and creates airflows inside the case; hot air is exhausted through the top panel.