Aria.co.uk Gladiator i5 4.4GHz Z68 Bundle

Aria.co.uk Gladiator Z68 Core i5 4.4 GHz Bundle

Introduction

At the beginning of this month we took a look at one of the cheapest overclocked bundles available. This was the Aria.co.uk Gladiator based on the MSI P67A-GD45 Motherboard equipped with a 4.4 GHz overclocked Core i5-2500K and 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3. It was outstanding value for money, especially when paired with out standard test bench GTX570. For a penny shy of £330 you really couldn’t go wrong.

Of course not everyone can afford to stick a beastly GPU in their rig. Maybe you just want one as part of an HTPC, capable of High-Definition playback and some light gaming?

If so then you’ll be interested in today’s review of a very similar specification bundle but based upon the newly released Z68 Chipset. This particular board comes complete with integrated graphics. Perfect for a low-cost home theatre system.

Technical Specifications

Anyone who saw the specifications of the P67 Bundle will recognise many elements here. We have the outstanding Core i5-2500K processor as the heart of the bundle. Overclocked, for free, to 4.4 GHz and kept cool by the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13.

One of the slight niggles we had about the P67 version was the 1333 MHz RAM which, whilst still good enough, was a little bit of a weak link and so it’s great to see that in the Z68 variant it’s been replaced by some excellent Mushkin Copperhead running at 1600 MHz CAS9.

The major change is in the platform. Whereas the P67A-GD45 was a good value plain board, here we have a Gigabyte Z68MA D2H which has integrated graphics.

Specifications:
• FREE CPU Overclocking to 4.40GHz
• Intel® Core™ i5-2500K (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
• Integrated Intel HD3000 Graphics
• 4GB Mushkin Copperhead #996778 (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
• Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H Intel Z68 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler
• Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
Features:
• 4.40GHz Quad Core CPU
• Intel® Z68 Chipset
• 4GB 1600MHz Dual Channel DDR3
• DirectX 10.1 via the integrated Intel HD3000 GPU
• Multi VGA Outputs: 1x D-Sub, 1x DVI-D, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
• 4x USB3.0 Ports
• 12x USB2.0 Ports
• 4x SATA 6GB/s Ports
• 4x SATA 3GB/s Ports
• Gigabit LAN
• High Definition 8 Channel Audio CODEC
• ATI CrossFireX™/NVIDIA SLI Technology
• Expansion slots: 3x PCIe 2.0 x16 Slots (dual x8/x8) & 1x PCIe x1 Slot

Enough waffle. Let’s take a look.