CHILLBLAST FUSION SPIRIT
Great potential for future upgrades, but not fast enough right now to be in contention for awards
It’s clear from this month’s systems that AMD’s Ryzen processors have won over many systems builders, particularly when kitting out their mid-range PCs. Chillblast is unusual, then, in sticking with Intel’s Core line, and even more so in opting for an entry-level Coffee Lake Core i3. This isn’t the rookie error that it might appear, as going low-end on the CPU means more budget for other components. With four cores running four threads, the new Core i3-8100 gives you much of the performance of a Kaby Lake Core i5, although without any Turbo Boost for ondemand power.
What’s more, taking this route gives you a long-term upgrade path for the future. After all, where older Intel 1xx and 2xx series motherboards can’t support Coffee Lake or later processors, the Chillblast’s Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming can, not to mention up to DDR4-2666 RAM (or DDR4-4133 if you overclock). It also packs in high-performance Gigabit Ethernet through a Killer E2500 LAN chip, three M.2 connectors and support for USB 3.1, with both USB-C and “normal” USB Type-A ports.
That’s a great platform to be going on with, and with ample space for 2.5in and 3.5in drives inside the Fractal Design Focus I case, there’s plenty of scope to expand. It’s a solid case, if not the best for acoustic dampening, and build quality is impeccable, resulting in smooth airflows and a great space for future upgrades. You could easily replace the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card with something more potent later on, and with 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory, a 250GB Hynix SSD and a 1TB Seagate hard disk, you’re well equipped as is.
If Chillblast’s forward-looking approach has a pitfall, it’s that the Fusion Spirit isn’t the very best performer right now. Up against machines with faster, four-core/ eight-thread and six-core/12-thread processors, it lags behind in our application benchmarks, particularly in the multitasking tests. And while there’s enough 3D horsepower to run Rise of the Tomb Raider or Metro:
Last Light with high detail settings at 1080p, rivals with a GeForce GTX 1060 reach higher resolutions or detail levels.
The Chillblast could still be a wise investment if you plan to upgrade later, but our winning systems have it licked today.