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Chillblast Fusion Infinity review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £999
inc VAT

Well built, with an excellent monitor, the Fusion Infinity isn't the fastest Sandy Bridge i5 PC around, but it's still a superb performer and a well-rounded package.

Specifications

4.6GHz Intel Core i5-2500K, 8GB RAM, 24in 1,920×1,080 display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The Chillblast Fusion Infinity is powered by an Intel Core i5-2500K, our favourite Sandy Bridge processor. It’s been overclocked to 4.5GHz, giving it an Overall score of 131 in our benchmark tests. It’s not the most extreme overclock we’ve seen but it has a dramatic effect. To provide some perspective, our baseline score of 100 was achieved by a system with a non-overclocked Core i5-2500K processor, which is extremely powerful in its own right.

Chillblast Fusion Infinity inside

The case is solidly built and perfectly finished, with a smooth interior that makes it easy to fit new components without scraping your fingers. Our only complaint is that the ventilation holes are rather large, and only some have an additional fine mesh cover to keep dust out. All four of the Asus P8P67 motherboard’s memory slots are occupied by 2GB 1,600MHz DDR3 modules, for a total of 8GB of memory. That’s enough to ensure great performance in memory-intensive tasks such as video editing. The CPU cooler obstructs the first couple of memory slots, so we’re glad there’s already plenty of RAM. The giant graphics card hides two SATA ports from sight, but doesn’t block them, as they’re right-angled. The only port it blocks is one of the motherboard’s two PCI-E x1 slots. There’s another one above the PCI-E x16 slot occupied by the graphics card, plus three PCI slots and a second PCI-E x16 slot.

The case has enough bays for another three 5¼in and six 3½in drives. With four SATA II and four SATA III ports, you’ve almost got enough connections to fill them all, too. The occupied bays contain a 1TB hard disk and a Blu-ray reader drive, which also writes DVDs. There are ten USB ports at the back of the PC, including two USB3 ports, as well as an eSATA port. The motherboard also has a pair of PS/2 ports, six 3.5mm stereo audio sockets for 7.1 surround sound and an optical S/PDIF output. The front panel bears another two USB ports.

Chillblast Fusion Infinity rear ports

The ATI Radeon 6950 has two DVI, one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort sockets, which you can use to connect up to four monitors for desktop use or gaming in titles that are supported by ATI Eyefinity. A single-monitor setup produced frame rates of 66.4fps in Crysis and 50.9fps in STALKER. With a graphics card this powerful, you won’t have to think about upgrading it for several years.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core i5-2500K
Processor external bus 100MHz (Sandy Bridge DMI)
Processor multiplier x46
Processor clock speed 4.6GHz
Processor socket LGA1155
Memory 8
Memory type PC3-10600
Maximum memory 32GB
Motherboard Asus P8P67
Motherboard chipset Intel P67

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 2/10
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/1
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/1
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support none

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 2 (1)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 2 (1)
Free Serial ATA ports 5
Free memory slots 0
Free 3.5in drive bays 6

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Samsung HD103SJ
Interface SATA2
Total storage capacity 1,000GB

Graphics

Graphics card(s) 2GB ATI Radeon HD 6950
Graphics/video ports 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini DisplayPort

Sound

Sound Realtek ALC892
Sound outputs 7.1 line out, optical S/PDIF out, stereo line out, mic in
Speakers Logitech S220 2.1

Removable Drives

Supported memory cards none
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL BD-ROM

Display

Viewable size 24 in
Screen model Iiyama ProLite E2410HDS
Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Screen inputs VGA, DVI, HDMI

Other Hardware

Keyboard Logitech MK250
Mouse Logitech MK250

Software

Software included none
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty two year collect and return
Price £999
Details www.chillblast.com

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