Chillblast Fusion Quasar review

£600
Price when reviewed

Chillblast is no stranger to serving up high-performance desktop PCs, so we had high expectations for its latest Fusion desktop. With a strong showing in all categories, the Fusion Quasar doesn’t disappoint.

Chillblast hasn’t skimped on the core hardware. It starts with a hefty dose of gaming grunt. Rather than relying on Intel’s somewhat anaemic on-CPU graphics, the Quasar has a discrete, Sapphire-branded AMD Radeon R7 260X graphics card. The R7 260X came out swinging in our Crysis graphics benchmark, achieving an average of 123fps on Medium quality settings and 71fps on High. Those are great scores for a PC of this price.

Chillblast Fusion Quasar

This system isn’t all about gaming, however, as evidenced by the inclusion of a Haswell Intel Core i5-4670K processor, overclocked to 4.3GHz and supported by two sticks of 4GB DDR3 RAM. This setup yielded a barnstorming Overall score of 1.14 in our Real World Benchmark tests, placing the Fusion Quasar in first place for application performance.

It isn’t all down to the CPU, though; Chillblast’s choice of storage plays a part as well. Instead of a standard mechanical hard disk, the Quasar features a Desktop hybrid HDD. This “SSHD” combines an 8GB SSD cache with a 7,200rpm, 1TB mechanical disk and some clever firmware to speed up the loading of common files, such as application executables. It has the effect of boosting the system’s score in the Responsiveness element of our benchmarks to SSD-like levels, while keeping costs down.

The build

The Fusion Quasar’s powerful components are housed in a plain-looking Zalman Z3 Plus tower case. But while the design doesn’t catch the eye, it majors on practicality.

Externally, this is achieved thanks to a decent array of ports. At the top of the chassis are 3.5mm audio and microphone jacks, plus one USB 3 and two USB 2 ports. At the back, you’ll find Gigabit Ethernet, two more USB 2 and four USB 3 ports. There are also HDMI, VGA and DVI video outputs on the motherboard back plane, with two DVI, one HDMI and a DisplayPort output on this graphics card.

Chillblast Fusion Quasar

Unscrew the thumbscrews and the side panels slide off with ease, revealing a spacious and clutter-free interior. The motherboard is mounted on a tray that leaves around an inch of space between it and the rear wall, which has been used here for stashing cables neatly out of sight.

There’s a danger with an approach like this that it will be more difficult to access power cables when you need to add drives, yet this isn’t the case. Remove the right-hand panel and you’ll see that all you need to do to free the relevant cable is snip open a zip tie or two.

At the bottom of the chassis, towards the front, there’s a tool-free, four-bay drive cage. For those who wish to add extra drives or upgrade from the hybrid drive that’s already installed, the Fusion Quasar has you covered.

Chillblast Fusion Quasar

The Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 motherboard also has plenty of upgrade potential with five SATA/600 sockets, two free RAM slots, a free PCI Express x4 slot and two free conventional PCI slots. Once again, there’s plenty of room to expand, should you wish to.

Where the Chillblast really impresses, however, is with its noise control. The cooling system’s intake and exhaust fans produce little more than a soft rush of air, even with the CPU and GPU running flat out.

Verdict

The Chillblast Fusion Quasar offers a great all-round package: stalwart processing power, great gaming capability and a well-balanced build with serious upgrade potential.

It’s a terrifically good PC for £600, and it claims our A-List top spot for best budget PC as a result.

Warranty

Warranty5 yr return to base

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity1,000GB
RAM capacity8.00GB

Processor

CPU familyIntel Core i5
CPU nominal frequency3.40GHz
CPU overclocked frequency4.30GHz
Processor socketLGA 1150
HSF (heatsink-fan)Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Motherboard

MotherboardGigabyte GA-Z87-HD3
Conventional PCI slots free2
Conventional PCI slots total2
PCI-E x16 slots free0
PCI-E x16 slots total1
PCI-E x8 slots free0
PCI-E x8 slots total0
PCI-E x4 slots free1
PCI-E x4 slots total1
PCI-E x1 slots free1
PCI-E x1 slots total2
Internal SATA connectors0
Internal PATA connectors0
Internal floppy connectors0
Wired adapter speed1,000Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory typeDDR3
Memory sockets free2
Memory sockets total4

Graphics card

Graphics cardAMD Radeon HD R7 260X
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards?no
3D performance settingLow
Graphics card RAM2.00GB
DVI-I outputs3
HDMI outputs2
VGA (D-SUB) outputs1
DisplayPort outputs1
Number of graphics cards1

Hard disk

Hard diskSeagate Desktop ST1000DX001 SSHD
Capacity1.00TB
Internal disk interfaceSATA/600
Spindle speed7,200RPM
Cache size64MB

Case

ChassisZalman Z3 Plus
Case formatFull tower
Dimensions192 x 465 x 430mm (WDH)

Power supply

Power supplyFSP Aurum 80 Plus FSP600-50ARN
Power supply rating600W
Power supply efficiency80%

Free drive bays

Free front panel 5.25in bays2

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream)4
PS/2 mouse portno
Modemno

Front ports

Front panel USB ports3
Front panel memory card readerno

Operating system and software

OS familyWindows 8

Noise and power

Idle power consumption41W
Peak power consumption252W

Performance tests

3D performance (crysis) low settings204fps
3D performance settingLow
Overall Real World Benchmark score1.14
Responsiveness score1.01
Media score1.29
Multitasking score1.11

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