No two ways about it, the Chillblast Fusion Storm Trooper has an exceptionally silly name. Take a look at the system’s NZXT Phantom chassis, though, and it begins to make a little more sense. The white and black look is more than reminiscent of the Empire’s finest, and if you squint hard enough you can almost make out a face.
It’s as imposing as a phalanx of troops, and at 540mm tall and 623mm from front to back it’s one of the largest desktop PCs we’ve come across. A mixture of meshed panels and angled sections set off the stark colour scheme nicely, and the imposing size is backed up by superb build quality. The side panels are constructed from thick sheets of steel, and the rest of the structure is similarly sturdy. Even the plastic door on the front feels tough.
Adding to the industrial effect are five fan controls on the enclosure’s roof for adjusting the speed of the case fans. And this unconventional addition is joined by a host of other useful features. The motherboard tray is scattered with rubber-rimmed cable holes, and there’s also a gap for accessing the Titan Fenrir CPU cooler’s backplate for removal and replacement. The power supply sits on rubber feet to reduce noise, and the system also features pairs of USB 3 and eSATA ports alongside more conventional options.
Given the chassis’ titanic proportions, it’s hardly suprising to find there’s masses of room inside. You get five vacant hard disk bays for starters, there’s also four free 5.25in bays and all feature tool-free mounting systems.
The Asus Sabertooth X58 motherboard provides plenty of upgrade space. Two PCI Express x16 sockets lie vacant, and there’s a pair of PCI Express x1 slots alongside five SATA/300 ports and three vacant DIMM sockets. Note that one of these is impeded by the chunky CPU cooler, making access difficult.
The rest of the specification is as befits a £1,199 exc VAT PC. Six gigabytes of RAM is plenty to keep things ticking over, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is loaded onto an 80GB Corsair Force solid-state drive. Traditional storage is provided by a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 disk and there’s a Blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo drive for HD movie duties.
Warranty | |
---|---|
Warranty | 1 yr return to base |
Basic specifications | |
Total hard disk capacity | 1,080GB |
RAM capacity | 6.00GB |
Screen size | N/A |
Processor | |
CPU family | Intel Core i7 |
CPU nominal frequency | 3.07GHz |
CPU overclocked frequency | 4.00GHz |
Processor socket | LGA 1366 |
HSF (heatsink-fan) | Titan Fenrir |
Motherboard | |
Motherboard | Asus Sabertooth X58 |
Motherboard chipset | Intel X58 |
Conventional PCI slots free | 0 |
Conventional PCI slots total | 0 |
PCI-E x16 slots free | 2 |
PCI-E x16 slots total | 3 |
PCI-E x8 slots free | 0 |
PCI-E x8 slots total | 0 |
PCI-E x4 slots free | 0 |
PCI-E x4 slots total | 0 |
PCI-E x1 slots free | 2 |
PCI-E x1 slots total | 2 |
Internal SATA connectors | 6 |
Internal SAS connectors | 1 |
Internal PATA connectors | 1 |
Internal floppy connectors | 0 |
Wired adapter speed | 1,000Mbits/sec |
Memory | |
Memory type | DDR3 |
Memory sockets free | 3 |
Memory sockets total | 6 |
Graphics card | |
Graphics card | Nvida GeForce GTX 580 |
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards? | no |
3D performance setting | Low |
Graphics chipset | Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 |
Graphics card RAM | 1.46GB |
DVI-I outputs | 2 |
HDMI outputs | 1 |
VGA (D-SUB) outputs | 0 |
DisplayPort outputs | 1 |
Number of graphics cards | 1 |
Hard disk | |
Hard disk | Corsair Force 80GB SSD |
Capacity | 80GB |
Hard disk usable capacity | N/A |
Internal disk interface | SATA/300 |
Spindle speed | N/A |
Cache size | N/A |
Hard disk 2 make and model | Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ |
Hard disk 2 nominal capacity | 1,000GB |
Hard disk 2 formatted capacity | 931 |
Hard disk 2 spindle speed | 7,200RPM |
Hard disk 2 cache size | 32MB |
Hard disk 3 make and model | N/A |
Hard disk 3 nominal capacity | N/A |
Hard disk 4 make and model | N/A |
Hard disk 4 nominal capacity | N/A |
Drives | |
Optical drive | N/A |
Optical disc technology | Blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo |
Optical disk 2 make and model | N/A |
Optical disk 3 make and model | N/A |
Monitor | |
Monitor make and model | N/A |
Resolution screen horizontal | N/A |
Resolution screen vertical | N/A |
Resolution | N/A x N/A |
Pixel response time | N/A |
Contrast ratio | N/A |
Screen brightness | N/A |
DVI inputs | N/A |
HDMI inputs | N/A |
VGA inputs | N/A |
DisplayPort inputs | N/A |
Additional Peripherals | |
Speakers | N/A |
Speaker type | N/A |
Sound card | Realtek HD Audio |
Peripherals | N/A |
Case | |
Chassis | NZXT Phantom |
Case format | Full tower |
Dimensions | 220 x 623 x 540mm (WDH) |
Free drive bays | |
Free front panel 5.25in bays | 4 |
Rear ports | |
USB ports (downstream) | 8 |
FireWire ports | 1 |
eSATA ports | 2 |
PS/2 mouse port | yes |
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports | 0 |
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports | 1 |
Modem | no |
3.5mm audio jacks | 6 |
Front ports | |
Front panel USB ports | 2 |
Front panel eSATA ports | 1 |
Front panel memory card reader | no |
Mouse & Keyboard | |
Mouse and keyboard | N/A |
Operating system and software | |
OS family | Windows 7 |
Noise and power | |
Idle power consumption | 124W |
Peak power consumption | 483W |
Performance tests | |
Overall application benchmark score | 2.80 |
Office application benchmark score | 2.51 |
2D graphics application benchmark score | 2.94 |
Encoding application benchmark score | 2.35 |
Multitasking application benchmark score | 3.42 |
3D performance (crysis) low settings | 162fps |
3D performance setting | Low |
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