Chillblast Fusion Swift review

Mike Jennings Read more October 6, 2010

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The Core i7-870 might sit at the bottom of Intel’s high-end range of processors, but that’s no reason to doubt its potential. After all, the chip supports Hyper-Threading, so its four cores can address eight processes simultaneously, and there’s 8MB of L3 cache on board.

That’s not taking into account the overclock, either. The i7-870’s stock speed of 2.93GHz is perfectly respectable, but Chillblast has upped it to 3.6GHz to extract more performance. It works, too: an overall benchmark result of 2.51 extremely fast, and only 0.07 behind the current PC Pro record.

Accompanying the processor on the motherboard is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 460. It’s the first successful card Nvidia has released for some time and, as such, has sprung up in numerous recent systems. A score of 48fps in our High quality 1,680 x 1,050 Crysis benchmark is very good, and a near-playable result of 28fps in the Very High benchmark when run at 1,920 x 1,080 indicates that few games will be beyond this excellent card.

The rest of the specification is capable too. We’re impressed by the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive in a system with such a mid-range price, and elsewhere there’s 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk.

The EZCool A200D chassis, meanwhile, can’t match the likes of the Cooler Master Scout for features, but it gets the basics right. Build quality is good, and the interior is tidy thanks to cable ties and a motherboard tray. The interior hard disk bays face sideways for ease of access, and sport handy catches allowing tool-free replacement. Plus, there’s plenty of room for upgrades, with vacant PCI and PCI Express x1 slots and spare DIMM sockets.

The only minor limitations are the lack of a spare PCI Express x16 slot and the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler, which overhangs a vacant DIMM and therefore impedes upgrades. The cooler does work reasonably well, though, capping the temperature of the overclocked processor at 84 degrees Celcius during our stress tests while making barely a sound. The graphics card was similarly quiet.

The included Samsung B2430L monitor has a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, and quality is excellent. Backlight bleed is minimal, whites are bright and even, and colours are bright and vivid without being oversaturated. Its smooth curves and glossy black finish look great on a desk.

The Chillblast also comes with Logitech’s Wireless Desktop MK250 keyboard and mouse set, which combines comfort with a decent selection of media keys, and S220 speakers, which are fine for home use, offering surprising depth and quality of sound.

This Chillblast, then, has few faults. It has plenty of gaming grunt and, while it isn’t the prettiest PC, its chassis offers consistent quality and some excellent peripherals. It’s this consistent quality that sees the Fusion Swift rocket to the top of the A List.