The Ballista comes packaged in the original Silverstone box which you would normally receive the case in. There was some extra padding added into the box to ensure that the system arrives on your doorstep safe and sound.
Whilst the accessories have not been shipped with our review sample, we would like to mention that you will receive them if you purchase this system. You will receive everything such as the motherboard manual(s), cabling, driver DVD(s), and the extra PSU cables which have not been included with our sample. Utopia has mentioned that you will also receive a document pack which is tailored to this PC.
The outside of the case has not been modified in any way. There are no stickers on it which leaves the system looking sleek and professional. The case is constructed of an aluminium outer shell and a steel body. As a result of using aluminium and steel, not only is the case light weight, it is also very sturdy. We have reviewed it previously here, if you are interested in our views on the case itself.
As mentioned in the introduction, only ASUS and Corsair products have been used for the majority of the components. It is nice to see that they have not taken a cheap route to try and maximise profit, but rather they have focused on providing quality. The CPU used in this build is the top of the line AMD Trinity chip, the 5800K. Both the motherboard and graphics card is produced by ASUS, which is a top notch brand by any PC builders standards. The motherboard is the ASUS F2 A85-M Pro which is ASUS' current top of the line uATX offering for FM2. The graphics card is a 1GB HD 6770 which has been configured to be used in conjunction with the APU too. The RAM is produced by Corsair who have a proven track record of quality products. More specifically the kit that has been used is taking from the very popular Vengeance range and has a frequency speed of 1600MHz. Faster RAM would have been better suited as FM2 thrives on more bandwidth. RAM is becoming cheaper nowadays and 2133MHz would have been a much better choice for this system, due to the way it is configured. So for a slight bump in price it would be beneficial to change to 2133MHz. The power supply is overkill for this system but it allows for future graphics card upgrades; should you wish to do that. It is nice to see a Corsair unit being used again as they are well known for their reliability in this area also.
Inside the Ballista, you will notice that all of the cables have been neatly bundled together to make sure that there is minimal clutter in your system. All of the cables have been routed to the nearest hole in the motherboard tray and they have also been cable tied so that they are just the right length to reach whichever component the cable is for. It is apparent that both time and effort have been put into this system to ensure that it looks tidy before leaving Utopia Computers.
It is a similar story at the back of the motherboard tray. The cables have been bundled together with cable ties to make for a tidy appearance.
The Corsair Force 3 120GB is used as the boot drive for this system and a Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive is installed for as your storage drive. A "green" varient of any drive may have been a better choice as they would use less power, create less noise and run cooler.
