Verdict: Small, quiet and overclocked
The temptation for companies presenting a PC to the discerning readers of CPC is to go all out and build an ultra high-end, dual-graphics, nuclear-powered, octo-Core, liquid helium-cooled monstrosity that only one reader can afford. Showing off is easy when you're pulling out all the stops and not concerned about the price tag. Resisting that temptation to go to 11 is never easy, but the challenge of making a good PC on a reasonable budget gives you a chance to see how inventive a system integrator can be.
So, without further ado, let's see what Chillblast can come up with. At the heart of its new Fusion PC is the AM2 version of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core CPU, which, at stock frequencies, runs at 2GHz. It's the slowest dual-core CPU that AMD makes, which means that it should be a great overclocker. Cooling the CPU is the so-called SLI cooler, which is really just a Zalman CNPS9500LED that's black with a green LED, rather than copper-coloured with a blue light. Despite the impressive figure-of-eight twist of the heatpipes, it isn't a rival for the mighty Freezer 64 Pro. That said, it's quiet, and the X2 3800+ doesn't run hot.
Continuing the SLI theme, Chillblast has opted for a top-of-the-range AM2 motherboard, in the shape of the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe. This is powered by Nvidia's new nForce 590 SLI chipset, which provides a lot of features, some of which are on the fluffy and useless side, and others that are more promising. There are two 16x PCI-E slots, two Gigabit LAN ports and support for FirstPacket, which keeps your pings low when gaming - even when you're uploading. We spent an afternoon on Battlefield 2 with the Azureus BitTorrent program also running to share files. With FirstPacket off, our pings averaged around 110, but spiked up to 500 or so, causing the game to be unplayable. With FirstPacket on, the average dropped to 65, which is a good result, although we still saw highs of around 400. FirstPacket is neat but, for the best experience, you're better off not uploading while playing games .
Asus augments the two Gigabit LAN connections with built-in 802.11b/g WiFi and HD Audio. As well as the usual PS/2 and parallel ports, the Chillblast has eight USB 2 ports, which are spread between the front and rear of the case.
Aside from FirstPacket, many of the nForce 590 SLI's features are focused on overclocking. If you install a GeForce 7900 GTX, the speed of the PCI-E bus is automatically increased from 100MHz to 125MHz, but since the Chillblast has a GeForce 7900 GT, this is a moot point. The GeForce 7900 GT that Chillblast uses is another Asus product, the EN7900GT TOP, which has an overclocked GPU - 520MHz, rather than 450MHz - and 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 720MHz (1.44GHz effective).
The nForce 590 SLI is also the only chipset to support SLI memory, and with SLI memory modules installed, overclocking is as simple as pressing a button. It's even easier with the Chillblast, however, as it's been done for you - the FSB has already been upped to 266MHz, and the CPU's multiplier dropped from 10 to 9, providing a clock speed of 2.4GHz, which is the same as the high-end Athlon 64 X2 4800+. To do this, the CPU voltage is set to 1.4V, and the 2GB of low-latency Mushkin DDR2 modules run with 2.1V of power, running at 956MHz effective.
While the motherboard, CPU and graphics card selection are sound, there are other areas where bad component selection can send an entire build down the crapper but, to its credit, Chillblast hasn't fallen into any traps. The case is a brand-new and extremely compact Antec NSK4400, with a 120mm exhaust fan at the rear and an Akasa Amber 80mm fan at the front to provide the tried-and-tested push/pull airflow (although the Akasa isn't as good as the Sharkoon 80mm fan, as our Labs test on p70 shows). The power supply is an Enermax Liberty 500W unit, which will enable you to add a second GeForce 7900 GT to run in SLI at a later date. The case and PSU don't add much to the noise level of the CPU HSF and, overall, the Chillblast is pleasingly quiet. The cabling and wiring inside is also much improved from the last time we saw a Chillblast PC, with most of the wires neatly contained in black spiral wrap.
Storage and drives for the Chillblast are decent, although, as it's a modestly priced PC, it doesn't make use of the monstrous RAID capabilities of the nForce 590 SLI chipset, which can span an array across all six of its S-ATA II ports. The Chillblast has just one drive, but it's a brand-new 7200.10 from Seagate with a capacious 320GB of space. The NEC ND-4571A DVD-RW is installed, and it's an updated version of the unit in last month's Labs test. A floppy drive is also provided and, despite being, for the most part, as useful as a bobble hat on a lobster, on the rare occasion that you do need to flash the BIOS, you'll be glad of its presence.
PERFORMANCE
The 400MHz overclock allows the Chillblast to rattle through the benchmarks in good time without the fans having to spin up, or any bits melting or dropping off. The fast hard drive, increased CPU speed and large quantity of RAM all mean that this PC punches above its weight in the 2D tests. Our current Elite-listed mid-range PC, the Gladiator Titan CPC Expert, is clocked faster than the Chillblast, at 2.5GHz, but the benefit of the dual-core CPU and the speed boost from DDR2 put the Chillblast ahead; it scored 1.41 overall, well ahead of the Gladiator's 1.23.
Overclocking the Chillblast beyond the default speeds is possible and, with the CPU voltage stepped up to 1.45V, we pushed the FSB to 255MHz with a multiplier of 10, yielding an impressive 2.55GHz CPU speed. This raised the score in the 2D benchmarks by around 5 per cent, but made little difference to Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Beefing up the speed on the graphics card to 540MHz for the GPU and 1.5GHz for the RAM gave us a little bit extra in the 3D tests. The GeForce 7900 GT is a very capable card that won't be troubled by many current games, especially if you pair it with a 17in TFT.
CONCLUSION
One question that we often ask ourselves at CPC when reviewing a PC is: could you put this PC together yourself? It's easy to say 'yes' when you're looking at the end result, but a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to get this PC right. By making smart component selections, the Chillblast team has created a well-balanced PC that runs much faster than it should. It's compact, but there's room for expansion, and it's so quiet that you can barely notice when it's switched on.
