Chillblast Fusion Dimension review

The advent of 3D has been hugely hyped, but it’s not yet taken off. That’s evidenced by the paltry number of 3D-enabled machines that have arrived in the PC Pro Labs, with Chillblast’s Fusion Dimension the first desktop we’ve seen to incorporate the technology.

Part of the problem has been the lack of compatible games and mature drivers but it looks to be finally settling down if this system is anything to go by. It uses Nvidia’s 3DVision system, and when we loaded up Call of Duty: Black Ops, Just Cause 2 and the racing title GRiD they looked excellent on the Asus monitor.

It helps that the screen offers good general quality to go with the 120MHz refresh rate needed for 3D. Colours were bright and vivid, blacks deep, and detail sharp, and there was little sign of backlight bleed. We were pleased to see a fully adjustable stand too.

The Chillblast’s other stand-out feature is, undoubtedly, its chassis – a Silverstone FT02. Its matte black and glossy red finish and clean curves make it one of the most visually striking enclosures we’ve seen, and build quality is simply superb.

Pop open the side panel – released by a pair of thumbscrews along the top edge – and a rather unusual layout is revealed. The motherboard is orientated vertically, rather than horizontally, with its backplate accessible via a removable mesh cover at the top of the case. It’s a useful system that offers easier access to the system’s ports and sockets than on a standard case – and under that panel are two USB 3 ports, six USB 2 ports and two eSATA sockets alongside FireWire, PS/2 and more.

To keep things cool, a trio of 200mm fans occupies the bottom of the chassis, with a further single 120mm fan at the top, but despite all this, the Chillblast remained impressively quiet throughout our tests. When idling, the Fusion Dimension was barely audible, and the machine barely got louder during our stress tests. It’s far quieter than most of the expensive systems we’ve seen recently.