Final thoughts and rating
Priced at just over £1,100, the Chillblast Fusion Flash is a high-performance PC that willingly doubles as a gaming rig.
The combination of an Intel Sandy Bridge processor, AMD Radeon HD 6970 graphics and a Corsair Force Series solid-state drive delivers excellent performance, and Chillblast has neatly tied all of the core components together.
Both software and hardware build quality is as clean as it gets, and pricing is very competitive. At the time of writing, Chillblast's pre-built solution is no more expensive than building the PC yourself - and it has the added benefit of a two-year warranty and a CPU pre-overclocked by a Chillblast engineer.
The foundation is strong, but the Fusion Flash does leave room for improvement. The standard ASUS motherboard isn't as feature-packed as we'd hoped and leaves little room for graphics expansion, and the system as a whole struggles to find a suitable middle ground between quiet operation and optimum cooling. It's incredibly quiet, but CPU and GPU temperatures could both be lower.
Bottom line: A little extra cooling wouldn't go amiss, but the Fusion Flash is nonetheless a blazing-fast PC that's smart-looking, well put together and competitively priced.
The Good
Pre-overclocked CPU
Includes an SSD as standard
Competitively priced
Well put together
Quiet for a gaming PC
The Bad
CPU and GPU cooling could be better
No front-facing USB 3.0 ports*
HEXUS Rating
Chillblast Fusion Flash
HEXUS Awards
Chillblast Fusion Flash
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Chillblast Fusion Flash PC is available to purchase from Chillblast.com.
*HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
ChillBlast has responded to this HEXUS review with the following right2reply:
"We really appreciate such an in depth and comprehensive review from HEXUS! I am happy to state that our Fractal Design Define R3 cases all now have USB 3.0 connectivity at the front. Any and all customers ordering a Flash will benefit from this feature as of today."
