Final thoughts and rating
A high-performance PC that's both quiet and relatively power efficient is something that should be in every system integrator's inventory. It's a sign of the times; big, brazen machines with multiple power-hungry components are becoming less appealing to all but the hardened enthusiast.
Chillblast's Fusion Whisper Mini isn't quite as silent or small as it's made out to be, but it is extremely quiet in use and that's an admirable feat for a mid-range gaming machine.
Spend some quality time with a PC that hardly makes a noise, takes up less room and doesn't put a dent in the leccy bill, and you soon begin to see the attraction. The fact that the Fusion Whisper Mini is well built, uses well-thought-out components and can churn out high-quality 1080p games is a bonus. Add an SSD, and it would go from being good to being great.
Bottom line: similar money could buy greater overall performance or a system with more room for future upgrades, but Chillblast's combination of good performance, cool temperatures and very little noise make it strong in the areas that matter to the target audience.
The Good
Good CPU and GPU combination
Makes very little noise
Blu-ray as standard
No bloatware
Tidy build
The Bad
Limited graphics options; no Radeon HD 7000-series*
Solid-state storage is an optional extra*
Not a lot of room for expansion
HEXUS Rating
Chillblast Fusion Whisper Mini
HEXUS Awards
Chillblast Fusion Whisper Mini
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Chillblast Fusion Whisper Mini 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.
*In response to the HEXUS review, Chillblast has issued the following right2reply:
Some of the limitations of the Whisper Mini were inherited from the full size whisper, which were imposed only to provide a little differentiation from the Tranquillity – our flagship quiet machine. In order to mitigate some of your concerns with the spec, I have uploaded three new options. There is now a 60GB SSD available at no extra charge should the customer prefer this option instead of a 1TB drive, and as recommended I have added two flavours of Radeon 7000 series cards.
