Chillblast Fusion Flash review

Mike Jennings Read more September 9, 2011

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Chillblast certainly crams a lot into its PC packages: its latest machine, the Fusion Flash, incorporates an overclocked Core i5 processor, current-generation graphics card, lightning-fast SSD and an IPS panel for £1,199 inc VAT.

This is the first time we’ve seen an IPS panel packaged with a PC this cheap, and first impressions of the 23in, 1,920 x 1,080 LG Flatron IPS231P are good: colours are accurate thanks to the average Delta E of 3, the 731:1 contrast ratio contributes to good black levels, and the backlight is even. We did spot a couple of minor issues: the brightness of 199.7cd/m2 made the screen feel a little dim, and the maximum Delta E of 9.1 meant lighter tones appear a little cold.

Switching to SRGB mode saw the brightness drop to a meagre 148.9cd/m2, and we found best results by upping the gamma from 2.2 to 2.4: the brightness and average Delta E improved to 203cd/m2 and 2.7 respectively. Colour temperature improved after we tweaked the gamma, too, with the LG’s result of 6,737K closer to the 6,500K ideal than the 7,272K scored by the screen at factory settings.

While these aren’t massive improvements, and the brightness is a still tad disappointing, it makes for a fine screen that’s capable of handling gaming, movies and general work. It’s just as good as the Samsung screen included with the Palicomp Phoenix i5 Z68 Warrior – our current A-List favourite – but, in both cases, image buffs should look elsewhere.

The PC itself looks bland in comparison to the chunky and imposing Cooler Master case chosen by Palicomp but, once you’re past the Fractal Design R3’s laid-back looks, there’s plenty to like. Build quality is fine, and the side panel, ceiling and door are all coated with thick noise-dampening foam. It works on most occasions, too: the Flash was near silent when idling, and barely any louder when running through our benchmarks. Only after several minutes of intensive stress-testing did the graphics card ramp up but, even then, we’ve certainly heard worse.

Chillblast has filled the matte black interior with neat, regimented cables that rarely emerge from behind the motherboard tray, which is sturdy and features cable-routing holes bordered with rubber.

The six free hard disk bays stand out thanks to bright white paint, and the cages themselves are metal, sturdy and fitted with rubber washers to absorb hard disk vibrations. While you’ll need tools to fit additional storage, the cages at least face the side of the chassis, and can be slid in and out without interfering with other components.

Upgrade room elsewhere is more limited. All four DIMM sockets are occupied, with the left-hand pair blocked by the sheer bulk of the Corsair A70 cooler, and only one 5.25in bay lies vacant. The Asus P8Z68-V LE motherboard is a mixed-bag, too: while there are two space PCI sockets and a single vacant PCI Express x16 slot, the one empty PCI Express x16 socket runs at only x4.

The cooling setup is simple, with the two 120mm fans on the Corsair unit augmented by single 120mm fans on the front and rear of the machine, and Chillblast has replaced the bottom PCI blanker with a small fan controller linked to the front and rear case fans.

This superb enclosure is kitted out with a typically powerful specification. The Core i5-2500K is a perennial favourite, and its efficient 32nm architecture is ripe for overclocking. Chillblast has tweaked this chip to a stable 4.8GHz, and its benchmark result of 1.17 is almost 20% more than we’d expect from a stock-speed Core i7-2600 – and matches the Palicomp’s pace exactly.

Sixteen gigabytes of DDR3 RAM is the equal to the Palicomp, and is the most we’ve seen in a desktop outside of our recent Ultimate PC Labs, and the storage is no less capable. The star performer is undoubtedly the 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD, which completed our large file write and read tests at 479.5MB/s and 451.8MB/s respectively – more than enough to make file transfers and application loading times whizz by, and almost twice the speed of the Kingston SSD in Palicomp’s Phoenix i5 Z68 Warrior. There’s a terabyte of storage from the Samsung Spinpoint F3 hard disk, too.

Gamers, meanwhile, will be pleased by the AMD Radeon HD 6970. It’s a stock-speed card – we’d have liked to see an overclocked model – but it’s certainly no slouch when it comes to high-end titles. It scored 53fps in our Very High quality Crysis benchmark at 1,920 x 1,080 – only two frames behind the Palicomp. A result of 31fps when we increased the resolution to 2,560 x 1,600 is just as impressive and, again, only two frames behind its rival. The maximum temperature of 86˚C is a little high, but it’s not dangerous.

The rest of the peripherals are solid: the Microsoft keyboard and mouse are easily comfortable enough for all-day usage – and better than the Palicomp’s Labtec set – and the Logitech S220 speakers are dependable, if unspectacular.

In fact, the Fusion Flash does little wrong: equal application performance to the Palicomp, virtually as quick in games tests, an SSD that offers almost twice the speed and capacity as its rival, and peripherals that match the Phoenix in most departments. Factor in the quiet, capable case and it’s clear you won’t get many better PCs for £1,199 inc VAT.