The Fusion Blaze from Chillblast is a powerful and well-built Windows
8 system. At £800, it occupies the middle ground between high
performance and realistic pricing for a family PC. Chillblast has
equipped it accordingly, with more modest components than you'd find in a
full-on enthusiast PC. The Intel Core i5-3570K processor is the same
powerful CPU that you'll find in many of our favourite performance
systems. It has a significant overclock, too, bringing it up to a speed
of 4.5GHz from the stock 3.4GHz. This helped the PC to an excellent
overall score of 144 in our application benchmarks.
The graphics card is an overclocked 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 OC
from Palit. The GTX 660 is an unassuming-looking card which isn’t as
powerful as the GTX 660 Ti version, but it's still no slouch; we saw a
smooth 30fps in Crysis 2 at 1,920x1,080 and Ultra detail, demonstrating
that it's easily able to handle all the latest 3D games. The card has
two DVI ports, an HDMI port and DisplayPort, and you can connect
monitors to all three for triple-screen gaming; you'll have to drop the
resolution and detail levels, though.
The PC's 700W power supply is generic rather than branded, but should
nonetheless pack enough power to support significant upgrades. There's
certainly plenty of scope to do so. The Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard is a
budget model, but it's an ATX motherboard with three PCI slots and two
PCI-E x1 slots - one of which is blocked by the graphics card's cooler.
There are also two PCI-E x16 slots, but the bottom slot only runs at x4
speed.
There are six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3. There are three
free SATA2 ports and one free SATA3 port. The PC has a Blu-ray drive and
a 2TB hard disk. We were surprised to find that the Fusion Blaze –
unlike most similarly priced systems - doesn’t have an SSD. Although
this means that its boot speeds aren’t as fast as computers with a solid
state system drive, Windows 8’s own improvements to boot times still
make it feel fast. You also won’t benefit from the quicker read/write
speeds of an SSD, but the 2TB hard disk gives you plenty of room to
install software and means that you won’t have to juggle with the
install locations of your favourite games and applications, as you do
with small SSDs. If you want to upgrade later, there's lots of room for
more drives, with two free 5 1/4in bays, one external 3 1/2in bay and
five unused internal 3 1/2in bays. There are two vacant memory slots on
the board, too, with the others each holding a 1,333MHz 4GB memory
module.
At the front of the case are two USB ports - one USB3 and one USB2,
plus 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. At the back are two more USB3 ports
and four USB2 ports, as well as a PS/2 port for a keyboard or mouse.
There are three 3.5mm stereo ports for 5.1 analogue surround sound, as
well as an optical S/PDIF output and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The case
itself is sturdy and well made, although not all the air vents have fine
mesh covers to keep dust out. The system is remarkably quiet, thanks to
high-quality processor and case fans.
The supplied Cherry keyboard is big and ugly, but its keys feel
responsive. The mouse looks similarly old-fashioned but also does the
job effectively, despite a somewhat loose scroll wheel. The monitor - a
matte-finish 23in Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS - has an even backlight and
produces natural colours and blacks.
The Fusion Blaze's sole disadvantage is its lack of an SSD. If you
feel that you absolutely need the faster boot times and responsiveness
an SSD can bring, then Wired2Fire’s excellent Diablo Ultima and PC
Specialist’s Vanquish 650Ti both have fast 120GB solid state drives in
addition to large hard disks, but this comes at the cost of gaming
performance. In the end, in the face of very stiff competition, the
Fusion Blaze's great gaming performance, raw processor power and room
for expansion earn it a Best Buy award.
| Part Code |
Fusion Blaze |
| Review Date |
19 Oct 2012 |
| Rating |
|
| Processor |
Intel Core i5-3570K
|
| Processor external bus |
100MHz (DMI)
|
| Processor multiplier |
x45
|
| Processor clock speed |
4.5GHz
|
| Processor socket |
LGA1155
|
| Memory |
8
|
| Memory type |
PC3-10666
|
| Maximum memory |
32GB
|
| Motherboard |
Asus P8Z77-V LX
|
| Motherboard chipset |
Intel Z77
|
| USB2 ports (front/rear) |
2/6
|
| Firewire ports (front/rear) |
0/0
|
| eSATA ports (front/rear) |
0/0
|
| Wired network ports |
1x 10/100/1000
|
| Wireless networking support |
none
|
| Case |
midi tower
|
| PCI-E x1 slots (free) |
2 (1)
|
| PCI-E x16 slots (free) |
2 (1)
|
| Free Serial ATA ports |
4
|
| Free memory slots |
2
|
| Free 3.5in drive bays |
6
|
| Hard disk model(s) |
Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001-9YN164)
|
| Interface |
SATA2
|
| Total storage capacity |
2,000GB
|
| Graphics card(s) |
2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 OC
|
| Graphics/video ports |
2x DVI, 2x DisplayPort
|
| Sound outputs |
5.1 line out, optical S/PDIF out, line out, mic in
|
| Speakers |
none
|
| Supported memory cards |
none
|
| Optical drive type(s) |
BD-ROM, DVD+/-RW +/-DL
|
| Viewable size |
23 in
|
| Screen model |
Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS
|
| Native resolution |
1,920x1,080
|
| Screen inputs |
HDMI, DVI, VGA
|
| Keyboard |
Cherry KU-0556
|
| Mouse |
Cherry M-5400
|
| Software included |
none
|
| Operating system |
Windows 8
|
| Operating system restore option |
Windows disc
|
| Warranty |
two years collect and return
|
| Price |
£799
|
| Details |
www.chillblast.com
|
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