Chillblast Fusion Diablo review

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Verdict:

Fantastic performance in desktop applications and games from a well-rounded PC

Review Date: 24 Jun 2012

Price when reviewed: £799

Reviewed By: Tom Morgan

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

With an overclocked third-generation Core i5-3570K processor on board, the Chillblast Fusion Diablo is every bit the beast from which it takes its name. Combined with 8GB of memory, a dedicated AMD Radeon graphics card and a 2TB hard disk, it should be able to handle pretty much anything you choose to throw at it.

The system is housed inside a CIT Vantage X11 case, which has fairly generic looks subtly enhanced by sparing use of blue LEDs. It's also well equipped for cooling. One 120mm front intake, one 120mm exhaust and two 120mm side-panel fans kept the internal components cool and quiet, even after several hours of benchmarking. The side panel fans can be turned off if you prefer even less noise. A sparse front panel contains just two USB ports, 3.5mm audio jacks and an SD card reader, but there are more I/O connectors on the motherboard’s back panel.

Four USB ports, two faster USB3 ports, one PS/2 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port should be all you need to get up and running. The Diablo also has DVI, HDMI and VGA connectors should you wish to use the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics. Finally, it has three 3.5mm analogue and one optical digital audio output to support a 5.1 surround sound system.

Inside, Chillblast has kept cabling tidy enough to prevent the obstruction of airflow. You must remove the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler’s fan if you want to install additional memory, but the other expansion ports are all within easy reach. One free SATA3 port and three empty SATA2 ports provide potential for additional storage or optical drives, but you must screw them in to the three empty 5.25in and three 3.5in drive bays. Sadly, there's no tool-free installation here.

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