Aria Gladiator Sparta i5 Overclocked Bundle Review

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Although we could show you the box that it arrived it, we thought you might like to know how much care is taken by Aria to ensure your pre-built bundle arrives in mind condition. It’s so well packed that the cooler wont move, and with the motherboard box providing some extra stability there is far less stress upon the motherboard even if you live at the end of a ploughed field. 

Within the box you get all the manuals, disks and add-ons that you would receive if you purchased the items separately. It’s worth noting that the reduced price of the HD3 is demonstrated in the quality of the IO shield. We don’t know how much they cost, although we’d assume pence, but you can nearly always tell the price of the motherboard by the IO shield. Here we’re not only devoid of paint, but of any markings at all. You also get a serious set of magnetic screwdrivers included to make installation easy. You haven’t known frustration until you’ve screwed a motherboard in with non-magnetic screwdriver tips and lost the screw in the inky blackness of your case.

      

For such a frugal motherboard you’d expect some cutbacks, and as usual the vertical SATA ports are an indicator of the price point. Again we can’t imagine that the price between six separate ports and one six-pack is that much, but somehow it’s always the case. Otherwise the board looks pretty good. All black, with functional heatsinks and every feature you’d expect to find on a regulation Z87 motherboard.

      

The Nano had RAM that perfectly matched the rest of the ensemble, and we can’t help feeling that some black Vengeance RAM would be better suited here. The white is nice, but nothing else here is white, so it stands out.

      

At least the six SATA ports are all SATA 6Gbp/s, even if they are standing priapically rather than horizontally. Round the back we have all the ports you could require. There aren’t any cut-down features here. Although it is lacking the DisplayPort we’ve seen on some of the more expensive models, nobody will have a DisplayPort only monitor and no graphics card combination, so it’s hardly worth knocking points off for.