The VIA VT6307 controller is responsible for the IEEE1394 interface, while the AC’97 ALC650 codec from Realtek gives voice to the system.

The “cold heart” of the system is the VIA C3 processor on the Ezra core. It works at 800MHz clock rate and with 133MHz FSB.

The processor cooler blows hot air right out of the system through the holes at the top panel of the case. Thus, it also serves to ventilate the system case. If it were not for this subsidiary job, the processor could get along with only a passive heatsink.

VIA C3 features low power consumption and heat dissipation and the design of the mainboard confirms it: the CPU power regulator is two-channel and seems tiny compared to voltage regulators of modern desktop processors from Intel and AMD.

Considering the cool nature of the processor, the availability of hardware monitoring circuitry and a thermal diode may look a bit superfluous – how can such a processor overheat? On the other hand, any cooler may fail – in which case it would be nice to hear a warning signal.

Noise and Temperature

Gigabyte TA2 has only one fan in the processor cooler and thus produces little noise. On the other hand, this single fan doesn’t allow us to call this system absolutely noiseless.

As for the thermal conditions, you shouldn’t worry about the CPU, HDD or mainboard components. Only the PSU may become troublesome as its heatsinks are far from airflows and heat up significantly. That said, their temperature even under full load is only about 60-70°C – that’s not dangerous.