Ginger 6 G6Aurora i3 PC review

It’s always tricky building a PC on a tight budget, trying to get the right balance of components. For the G6Aurora i3 PC, Ginger 6 has decided to go with an Intel Core i3-3220 processor and Asus P8B75-M motherboard in order to squeeze decent 2D performance out of it.

With an overall score of 74 in our benchmarks, this PC is a little faster than AMD Trinity-based systems, although not by a lot. Unfortunately, the choice of processor isn’t so good when it comes down to games. The onboard Intel HD Graphics 2500 GPU failed our laptop Dirt Showdown test at a resolution of 1,280×720 and high quality detail settings.

You’ll be able to play undemanding titles, such as Portal, at low quality settings, but don’t expect much more. If you want to play games properly, you’ll have to buy a dedicated graphics card first.

The system runs Windows 7, which is still a decent operating system, although you can opt for Windows 8 instead. Given that there’s a 120GB SSD boot drive, we recommend making the move to Windows 8, as it boots incredibly quickly. The Asus P8B75-M LX has a single SATA3 port that the SSD is connected to, so you’ll get the full speed out of it.

More bizarrely, the G6Aurora i3 PC has only the 120GB SSD for storage and no hard disk at all. This simply isn’t enough storage and you’ll need to add a hard disk for your files and large applications. There’s also a DVD-RW drive hooked up to one of six SATA2 connectors, leaving five spare for any other storage media you’d like to connect.

The case is compact and well finished internally, with plenty of spare drive bays, but it doesn’t do much by way or sound or dust proofing, and the rear case fan is a little noisier than we’d like. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there’s enough space for even long graphics cards, such as an AMD 7950, and the 500W power supply should be sufficient for all but the most extravagantly overpowered upgrades.

The motherboard has two PCI-E x1 slots, one PCI slot and a PCI-E x16 slot. One of the x1 slots will be blocked by most graphics card fans, but there’s still one spare if that happens. There are only two memory slots, one of which is occupied by an 8GB module. You can add another of the same size to the other slot to bring the motherboard up to its maximum 16GB if you want to use the system for particularly memory intensive tasks.

You’ll find the usual mic and headphones ports as well as two USB ports on the front panel, plus another on a multi-memory card reader that can also handle a massive range of formats including SDXC, xD and even regular mobile phone SIMs, although you’ll need software to read your contacts.

At the rear are six USB ports, two of them USB3, as well as three 3.5mm audio outputs for 5.2 analogue surround sound and the obligatory Gigabit Ethernet port. There are only VGA and DVI outputs for the on-board graphics, but it at least supports dual monitor configurations. If you need more USB ports, there are both USB and USB3 headers.

The PC comes with a 21.5in matt AOC e2250Swdn monitor. It has VGA and DVI inputs and even backlighting, but unlike the similar looking e2250Swda we weren’t happy with the contrast and it produced greyish-black tones. Viewing angles were very tight and moving off centre loses colour accuracy.

You’ll definitely want to buy a different mouse and keyboard, as the bundled Genius set is barely adequate. The keyboard in particular is spongy, unresponsive and difficult to type on accurately.

Although the G6Aurora i3 PC’s processor produced a bester application benchmark score than similarly priced AMD systems, it’s let down by its gaming performance and the 120GB SSD simply isn’t enough for a modern PC. The Wired2Fire Velocity VX is a much better buy.