Aria Gladiator HD2-K Review
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Published: 20th June 2011 | Source: Aria | Price: £1399 |
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The HD2-K is housed in the excellent Corsair 650D chassis which is a fantastic starting point for any rig. Good air cooling performance is important in any system, and certainly one with twin GPUs. The black internals really marry well to the black Be Quiet cooler so it all looks gorgeous through the window. Cables are extremely tidy, the NZXT extensions helping Aria to route them through the many cut-outs of the 650D so everything is sleek as you like.
Twin HD6870s provide the graphical prowess of the HD2-K and also look great against the Sabertooth, where you can see how much prettier the ASUS Thermal Armor makes the whole rig look.
Speaking of looks the all-black Be Quiet Dark Power perfectly matches the rest of the system.
With everything being so black it's a bit of a disappointment to see the rainbow effect from the PSU connectors.
Round the back there is definitely no lack of connection options with the multiple headers on the rear of the Sabertooth, the two XFX HD6870s and the ASUS Xonar soundcard.
Round the front we have the superb Samsung BH123L Blu-Ray drive which is a Lightscribe DVD writer and Blu-Ray reader.
Obviously having cable extensions allows for the front to be very tidy, but equally there is a lot of extra cable that needs to be hidden away and Aria have done a good job in tucking them all round the back.
Most Recent Comments
Is 1.4v a 24/7 safe voltage for an i5 2500k?
would be even better underwater
well done aria
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Originally Posted by BigIan88
Monster of a machine and not that different from my current setup Is 1.4v a 24/7 safe voltage for an i5 2500k? |
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Originally Posted by marsey99
Brains sure can build a nice looking system can't he |
I'm looking forward to building these though
Aria means air...
Anyway, it’s a good system. Though I’ve had my problems with it. Firstly the secondary HDD wasn’t connected or initialised for use. That's a bit shabby imho.
Also I’ve suffered frequent of crashes & BSOD's when using it. It’s completely frozen with monotonous regualarity whilst watching blu-ray discs & while gaming requiring a full power off at the plug. It suffers from the ‘sleep problem’ that afflicts these sort of systems & while pressing buttons trying to 'wake up' the system I've had bios reports of overclock fail. Oh and & well, it’s a bit noisy. Especially if you turn the fans up on the graphics cards but that might just be me, I guess it’s what you’re used to. I usually build my own.
On the plus side it does run at a very good lick & games look stunning on my TV when it's buzzing away happily.
But….the worst thing about this system isn’t the system itself but the….you guessed it….customer services. Or lack of it.
12 days after emailing 4 named members of Aria staff (from their website forum) & the generic customer services address I’m yet to get a reply....from anyone, apart from the automated ‘we’ll try & reply within a day’ drivel ofc.
So I’m just going to assume I built this thing myself & sort out it’s problems, I’m used to it but if you’re after a problem free expensive games station & you're thinking of buying just be aware that after you’re money has gone out of your account more than likely you’ll be on your own unless you know what you're doing. You could always ring the 60p per minute technical services number. I daresay thay have someone on hand to respond to you.
Having spent £1200 or even £1400 if you did at the full price you’d be entitled to expect to be treated a little better than that. I don’t recall customer services being all that unavailable when they were emailing me & calling me to arrange the purchase & delivery.
Just a word of truth from a(nother) slightly disgruntled customer, and it's not the first time for me either but I won't go into that.
Peace, and have fun.
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