ARIA Gladiator Warbird 660 i5-3570K GTX660 SLI OC Review

The ARIA Gladiator Warbird 660 is a system designed to meet the £999 sweet spot. Honestly, for the money we can't imagine you could pick a better selection of components, especially when it comes to graphics performance to handle the latest Direct X 11 games.

ARIA have wisely decided to base the Warbird 660 around Intel's Core i5 3570k … a processor widely used by the educated enthusiast audience. It isn't rocket science to adopt this chip, after all it is reasonably priced yet powerful, especially when overclocked. Millions of people use the 3570k for a reason and if you have read this review from start to finish then you don't need us to tell you why.

The secret sauce in the Gladiator Warbird 660 is hinted at in the product name – the use of not one, but two Nvidia GTX660's. These cards are surprisingly inexpensive, yet when paired up can stand head to head with the leading flagship cards on the market today. ARIA haven't lazily opted for reference boards either, they are using MSI Twin Frozr III GTX660's which are quieter, faster and cooler. A win all round in my book.

Other components deserve a mention, the 650W Corsair HX Series V2 power supply is not only 80 Plus Gold Certified, but a modular design. The 120GB Samsung 840 Series is an ideal boot drive equally capable with compressible and incompressible data. 120GB is a great size for a boot drive and the more serious storage duties can be handled by the additional 1TB mechanical drive.

Thanks to the cooling proficiency of the NZXT Phantom 410 case the system runs nice and cool, even in the heavily overclocked state. If you are sensitive to noise, you may want to drop the fan speeds a little, I know I did – with little reduction in cooling performance. My only concern really with the NZXT Phantom 410 in gloss black is the fingerprint mess that you will leave, even with modest handling. This is the kind of case you will always need a polishing cloth close at hand.

If you are in the market for a new system and don't have a desire, or the time to build your own rig but don't want to settle for a Dell, or mass manufactured pre-built then the ARIA Gladiator Warbird 660 deserves serious consideration. You will need a little experience to install the operating system and to install the drivers, so this isn't aimed at the newb market. You get the choice the configure the ARIA Gladiator Warbird 660 exactly the way you want, with no crapware hogging up valuable resources.

We highly recommend this system, it does face stiff competition but if you value build quality and a fine choice of high grade components then it certainly needs shortlisted. Snag one for yourself over here.

Pros:

• Overclocked nicely out of the box.
• Nice selection of quality components.
• Well routed.
• No BIOS instability concerns.
• Competitive pricing.

Cons:

• You need to set up the operating system and drivers from scratch.
• Piano black case is a fingerprint nightmare.
• Stiff competition from other system builders at the £1000 mark.
• Not the quietest system.

Kitguru says: A high value for money system with fantastic out of the box, overclocked performance.

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