Chillblast Fusion Krypton review

Chillblast’s Fusion Krypton system certainly stands out from the crowd. Housed in the company’s own small-form-factor “Kube” case, the PC sits lower on the desktop, taking up less space than a full-sized alternative. The case is finished in a matt black softcoat, with what Chillblast describes as a “touchy-feely” surface, lending the whole system are rather expensive-looking finish, despite it being one of the least expensive PCs of its kind.

See also: Best gaming PCs roundup

Inside the case, the PC is lit with deep blue LEDs which glow through the mesh front and illuminate the internal components through tinted windows on either side of the PC.

Components can be accessed from either side of the case or my removing the top panel to look down on the motherboard from above. Inside, the motherboard tray and drive bays are coloured blue, to match the internal lightshow.

The Fusion Krypton is powered by an Intel Core i5-6600K “Skylake” processor. In this case it has been overclocked from 3.5GHz to a respectable 4.4GHz and installed in an Asus Z170M-Plus mATX form factor motherboard.

The smaller-sized motherboard is necessary to fit in to the Kube case, and size constraints force the removal of a couple of PCI slots found on full-size versions, such as the Asus Z170-P found in The Eclipse SuperNova i566n9700C. The Chillblast, PC is nonetheless packed with features, including support for USB 3.1 Type C, fanless heatsink design, individual fan controls and M.2 support with SATA Express. It also offers excellent overclocking support, should you wish to tweak the performance beyond what Chillblast provides as standard.

Graphics performance comes from an MSI-branded Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, which delivers excellent performance for the price. This particular model features a large twin-fan cooler andhas been factory overclocked, giving the Fusion Krypton a small edge in performance and some of the fastest gaming results among its rivals.

The CPU is cooled by an Akasa Nero 3 CPU Cooler which runs quietly, although a couple of degrees hotter than most of the competition under full load. Not that this is anything to worry about unless you’re planning on attempting some extreme overclocking of your own.

General computing performance is also very good, its Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD easily outclasses the competition in raw speed, although we feel its 128GB capacity is a rather small, which could cause users to run into problems later if they’re not careful to ensure that anything which isn’t speed-critical is installed on the accompanying hard drive instead. Thankfully, the hard drive is a roomy 2TB model rather than the 1TB versions we’re most used to seeing in similar review systems. You also get a full 16GB of DDR4 RAM where others have dropped the amount to 8GB to cut costs.

Our review system comes without an optical drive but a 24-speed DVD burner can be added for £19.99 or you can provision a Blu-ray writer for £69.99. We’d prefer the look of the system if no optical drive, or drive bay, were provided at all. Without Chillblast’s suggested AOC U2868Pqu 28” 4K monitor, the Fusion Krypton comes in at just £869.99 inc. VAT, making it the least expensive option, yet also one of the fastest.