Chillblast Fusion Storm Trooper review

£1409
Price when reviewed

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.

Chillblast Fusion Storm Trooper

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

Warranty1 yr return to base

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity1,080GB
RAM capacity6.00GB
Screen sizeN/A

Processor

CPU familyIntel Core i7
CPU nominal frequency3.07GHz
CPU overclocked frequency4.00GHz
Processor socketLGA 1366
HSF (heatsink-fan)Titan Fenrir

Motherboard

MotherboardAsus Sabertooth X58
Motherboard chipsetIntel X58
Conventional PCI slots free0
Conventional PCI slots total0
PCI-E x16 slots free2
PCI-E x16 slots total3
PCI-E x8 slots free0
PCI-E x8 slots total0
PCI-E x4 slots free0
PCI-E x4 slots total0
PCI-E x1 slots free2
PCI-E x1 slots total2
Internal SATA connectors6
Internal SAS connectors1
Internal PATA connectors1
Internal floppy connectors0
Wired adapter speed1,000Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory typeDDR3
Memory sockets free3
Memory sockets total6

Graphics card

Graphics cardNvida GeForce GTX 580
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards?no
3D performance settingLow
Graphics chipsetNvidia GeForce GTX 580
Graphics card RAM1.46GB
DVI-I outputs2
HDMI outputs1
VGA (D-SUB) outputs0
DisplayPort outputs1
Number of graphics cards1

Hard disk

Hard diskCorsair Force 80GB SSD
Capacity80GB
Hard disk usable capacityN/A
Internal disk interfaceSATA/300
Spindle speedN/A
Cache sizeN/A
Hard disk 2 make and modelSamsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ
Hard disk 2 nominal capacity1,000GB
Hard disk 2 formatted capacity931
Hard disk 2 spindle speed7,200RPM
Hard disk 2 cache size32MB
Hard disk 3 make and modelN/A
Hard disk 3 nominal capacityN/A
Hard disk 4 make and modelN/A
Hard disk 4 nominal capacityN/A

Drives

Optical driveN/A
Optical disc technologyBlu-ray reader/DVD writer combo
Optical disk 2 make and modelN/A
Optical disk 3 make and modelN/A

Monitor

Monitor make and modelN/A
Resolution screen horizontalN/A
Resolution screen verticalN/A
ResolutionN/A x N/A
Pixel response timeN/A
Contrast ratioN/A
Screen brightnessN/A
DVI inputsN/A
HDMI inputsN/A
VGA inputsN/A
DisplayPort inputsN/A

Additional Peripherals

SpeakersN/A
Speaker typeN/A
Sound cardRealtek HD Audio
PeripheralsN/A

Case

ChassisNZXT Phantom
Case formatFull tower
Dimensions220 x 623 x 540mm (WDH)

Free drive bays

Free front panel 5.25in bays4

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream)8
FireWire ports1
eSATA ports2
PS/2 mouse portyes
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports1
Modemno
3.5mm audio jacks6

Front ports

Front panel USB ports2
Front panel eSATA ports1
Front panel memory card readerno

Mouse & Keyboard

Mouse and keyboardN/A

Operating system and software

OS familyWindows 7

Noise and power

Idle power consumption124W
Peak power consumption483W

Performance tests

Overall application benchmark score2.80
Office application benchmark score2.51
2D graphics application benchmark score2.94
Encoding application benchmark score2.35
Multitasking application benchmark score3.42
3D performance (crysis) low settings162fps
3D performance settingLow

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