Aria Gladiator Trident X3 PLUS OC Gaming PC review

Simply looking at its specifications it would be easy to write off Aria's Gladiator Trident X3 PLUS OC Gaming PC as it has an Athlon II triple-core processor, rather than a Phenom II or Core i5 quad-core processor. However, rather than running the Athlon II X3 425 at its native 2.7GHz, Aria has overclocked it to 3GHz.

While the overall score in our benchmarks of 94 shows that this PC is quick, it lags behind those with Phenom II or Core i5 processors. That said, using this chip means that Aria has saved money to use elsewhere in the PC.

While most desktops at this price have an ATI Radeon HD 5750, the Gladiator has the quicker Radeon HD 5770, which is currently our favourite graphics card. Performance from it was very good with 64fps in our Call of Duty 4 test and 24fps in Crysis. Sadly, the processor lets the side down slightly, as the 5770 graphics card managed 33.6fps when tested in our Phenom II X4 920 reference PC.

As with the majority of new ATI cards, the 5770 supports DirectX 11 and has four outputs (two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort). You can power up to three monitors at once in Eyefinity mode, provided that one of the three outputs is DisplayPort.

Aria provides a 23in Digitmate DGM L-2362WD monitor. It has a full HD resolution of 1,920x1,080 and DVI and VGA inputs. Sadly, the DVI input doesn't support HDCP, so you can't play protected content using this input; if you upgrade the DVD writer to a Blu-ray drive, you'll have to watch films using the VGA input. Quality is pretty good, although the backlight is a bit uneven and turning the brightness up too far completely washes out the image.

It's good to see a 1TB hard disk installed, as this provides a huge amount of storage space for even the biggest of media collections. Should you want to upgrade and add a second disk, there are six free 3.5in drive bays available, although you may want to leave one of the external ones for a memory card reader. Upgrading in general won't be a problem with this PC providing plenty of free upgrade ports and slots, including three 5.25in drive days, three PCI-E slots and two PCI slots.

The system comes with a Microsoft Basic wired keyboard and mouse set, which are basic but well-made and comfortable to use. The Gladiator Trident X3 Plus OC Gaming PC is a decent desktop, but it's let down by its relatively slow processor and budget monitor.