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Using Gigabyte's attractive Z87-HD3 motherboard, Aria has done a good job in making the Gladiator Sparta i5 an aesthetically-pleasing system bundle. The black touches to Scythe's CPU cooler compliment the equally-dark VRM heatsinks on Gigabyte's motherboard.
In my opinion, Corsair's white memory modules add a well-balanced touch of brightness to the motherboard bundle. On the other hand, I know that plenty of people will disagree with me and criticise Aria for not colour-coordinating the memory modules.
The Gigabyte motherboard is slightly narrower than the ‘standard' ATX form factor, measuring in at 30.5 x 22.5 centimetres. Case compatibility will not be impaired by the narrow dimensions; an ATX-capable chassis will not need to use its right-side column of stand-off points.
Scythe's 161mm-tall Ashura CPU cooler uses a 140mm PWM fan to direct air across a fin array that is fed heat by six copper heatpipes. Given its large height, the Ashura is actually quite accommodating in other dimensions; it doesn't cause any major interference with the Gladiator Sparta i5 bundle's Gigabyte motherboard.
Gigabyte's Z87-HD3 motherboard features a pair of full-length PCI-E slots, but only the top operates at Gen 3 x16 bandwidth; the bottom is limited to a PCI-E 2.0 x4 lane.
Both of the PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots use the chipset’s lanes and therefore share their bandwidth with the x16-length version. When a card is installed in one, or both, of the x1 slots, the full-length expansion will operate at PCI-E 2.0 x1 bandwidth.
Given the bundle’s target audience which consists of single-GPU users, the lane configuration is unlikely to cause an issue, but helps to reduce the motherboard’s cost.
One design decision, on Gigabyte’s part, that irritates me is the omission of a connection in the uppermost expansion location. Placing an x1 slot in that location would have little impact on production costs, but would increase the flexibility for users installing more than one expansion card.
Corsair’s 1600MHz Vengeance Arctic White low voltage 4GB DIMMs occupy two of the Z87-HD3’s four memory slots. Operating at 1600MHz CL9 with a 1.35V DIMM voltage, Corsair’s modules should run cool, thanks to their lower-than-JEDEC voltage.
Sat next to the 24-pin power connector is a single internal USB 3.0 header. The header’s outwards-facing orientation makes it easy to access in narrow cases but also increases the complexity of cable management.
Six SATA 6Gb/s ports, operating from the Z87 chipset, are located in the Gigabyte board’s bottom-right corner. As a cost-cutting measure, the ports are orientated to face outwards, rather than the more-costly, dual-stacked alternative.
A large heatsink sporting a golden Gigabyte logo is used to cool the Z87 chipset. Its function is mainly aesthetic as the chipset itself doesn’t produce a significant amount of heat.
Positioned beneath the heatsink is a pair of BIOS chips. Gigabyte provided the Z87-HD3 with a dual-BIOS implementation for redundancy purposes.
Rear IO ports found on the Gigabyte Z87-HD3 motherboard are the typical affair for an entry-level, mainstream product. The only notable exclusion is an optical SPDIF output that many people use to connect their computer to a surround sound system.
Motherboard rear ports:
- 2x USB 2.0.
- 4x USB 3.0.
- 1x PS/2 Combo.
- 1x VGA.
- 1x DVI-D.
- 1x HDMI.
- 1x RJ-45 LAN.
- 6x audio jacks.
The red circles in the above image indicate the location of each fan header.
Gigabyte supplies the Z87-HD3 with four 4-pin fan headers in total, one of which is reserved for CPU duties. Distribution of the headers is adequate, with the majority being positioned mid-board and within the reach of typical fan mounting locations.
Aria’s Gladiator Sparta i5 bundle fits inside an ATX-capable case with ease. The bundle’s dark colour scheme is an excellent match for that used on our Gun Metal edition of NZXT’s Phantom 630 chassis.
Provided your chassis can accept the 161mm height of Scythe’s CPU cooler, there shouldn’t be any other interference issues to worry about.
Aria’s bundle can be used to provide the foundation for an attractive gaming system, especially when combined with a dark-coloured graphics card such as our reference GTX 760.
