Aria Gladiator Infinity 7790 review

The Aria Gladiator Infinity 7790 looks like most other desktop system, but has a few uncommon components to help make its mark, including an SSD and an Intel Xeon E3-1280 v2 processor. The processor is based on the same Ivy Bridge architecture as the current range of Intel Core processors, but has a number of additional features designed primarily for servers and workstations, including support for ECC (error-correcting code) memory and extra PCI-E connections.

However, the Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D2V motherboard supplied doesn’t itself support ECC RAM and only has one PCI-E x16 slot and three PCI-E x1 slots, which would work just as well if you installed a consumer Ivy Bridge processor. The Xeon also lacks the on-chip GPU of its consumer siblings, but as this PC comes with a graphics card, that’s not important.

Scoring 97 and coming within a whisker of our reference Core i5-3570K running at its native speed, the Xeon CPU is certainly up to any processing task you’ll need, even though the motherboard isn’t equipped to make the most of the processor’s special features. However, with the Core i5-3570K you could also overclock the processor to get even more performance.

There’s 8GB of RAM installed, which should be plenty. If you do want to upgrade, you’ll have to completely replace the existing memory, as the motherboard has only two RAM slots, which take up to 16GB of memory.

We found the motherboard rather limited for upgrades, bar the three PCI-E x1 slots. One of these is blocked by the graphics card, but that still leaves two for other upgrades, such as a soundcard or TV card.

There are also only four SATA ports, all of which are the older SATA2 standard. This is a shame, as Aria has fitted a 64GB SSD as a boot disk, even though the motherboard won’t get the fastest speed out of it. It’s also about as small a boot disk as you can get away with, as there’s only around 20GB free for your own applications and files. A 500GB hard disk is also fitted to give you more storage, but given the price of the PC and hard disks, we’d really expect a 1TB disk.

The graphics card is a PowerColor AMD Radeon HD 7790 with 1GB of on-board RAM. It managed an average frame rate of 24.8fps in Crysis 2 at Ultra Quality. We had to drop it to extreme quality to get a smooth frame rate of 34.1fps, which shows that high-quality gaming is possible with this PC. We were unable to carry out our usual Dirt Showdown test due to a driver compatibility issue.

The PC looks great, thanks to its sturdy, well finished case. We liked the convenient drive trays and rails, which makes maintenance or upgrading easier. There are four vacant 3.5in bays, including one external one, and three unused 5.25in bays.

There are plenty of USB ports, with four at the front and six at the back, two of which are USB3. In addition, you get the usual Gigabit Ethernet and PS/2 mouse or keyboard ports, as well as three 3.5mm audio ports for 5.1 analogue surround sound. The sleek Gigabyte mouse and keyboard set feels a little light but is comfortable and accurate to use.

It’s nice to see a 24in Full HD monitor, although the DGM IPS-2402WDH is very chunky, with the main unit measuring around 8cm at its widest point. It has HDMI, DVI and VGA inputs and we liked its non-reflective matt finish and clear, natural looking colour reproduction. In our tests, it proved to have a good contrast ratio of 898:1, which is borne out by the clear visibility of subtle details in dark images. The monitor’s default colour colour gamut is better than your average LCD display, at 94.8 per cent of the sRGB standard, although it’s a little below average for an IPS monitor.

The Gladiator Infinity 7790 has a good graphics card and a great monitor, but the rest of the PC is a strange mix. The Xeon processor is quick, although a regular Core i5 would been a more versatile choice. The motherboard is very restrictive and it’s disappointing that there are no SATA3 ports, particularly for the SSD. The Chillblast Fusion Sprite is a better buy.