Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 review

Compact in size, but big in performance, the Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 shows that you don’t need an 8-core processor to get smooth ultra-high definition gameplay. Based on the top-of-the-range Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake processor and a high-end Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, this system still holds its own against the new AMD Ryzen 7 based PCs. Here’s our review of Chillblast’s Fusion Adamantium 3 gaming PC. Also see: Best desktop PCs

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 price

You can buy the Fusion Adamantium 3 direct from Chillblast. When we reviewed the Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 it cost £1549.99 inc VAT.

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 design and build

Chillblast’s compact and not-quite cuboid Cit Mesh Kube case sits lower and wider than a regular tower PC and has been designed to sit unobtrusively in a living room setting while delivering maximum performance but with the minimum noise and power consumption.

Finished in matt black, with blue accents, the Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3’s appearance is rather understated compared to many gaming systems we’ve reviewed recently. It does contain interior lighting and a transparent viewing panels at the side, but the soft blue lighting effects are rather subtle compared to the full-colour light shows of some competing systems.

Behind the mesh covering at the front of the case sits a huge 200mm fan with blue LED illumination. This is complemented by a single 120mm fan at the rear and the two work together to keep the whole system cool with minimum noise, spinning up and down automatically as necessary. The case has space for an optical drive, although none is installed and a handy built in memory card reader, which is great for fans of photography.

Although there’s rather less room inside than you’d get with a mid-tower size case, the internals aren’t cramped and it’s not difficult to work on the internals of the PC when you need to.

Removing the top of the case allows access to the motherboard which is mounted horizontally inside, with additional access available by removing the side panels. See all gaming PC reviews

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 processor and graphics

Based on Intel’s formidable Core I7-7700K Kaby Lake CPU, the Fusion Adamantium 3 delivers single-core speeds of up to 4.5GHz, giving it a distinct edge when it comes to gaming and other applications which aren’t optimised for the large numbers of cores you’d get in a Ryzen system.

This is coupled with a high-end Zotac-branded Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. Once the flagship model of the GeForce range, the GTX 1080 is powerful enough to deliver 4K gameplay and now available at a more affordable price.

These core components set the system up for blistering performance, although Chillblast has decided not to push performance to the limit this time:

Despite using an unlocked ‘K’ edition processor, Chillblast has chosen to exploit the power efficiency of the Kaby Lake architecture by designing a cool and quiet PC suitable for living room use, rather than aggressively overclocking the processor to get the absolute maximum performance.

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 storage

Two separate drives each provide a sensible combination of super-fast and high-capacity storage. The super-fast storage comes in the form of a 256GB Samsung SM961 NVMe SSD. This is the OEM version of Samsung’s ‘Polaris’ PCI-Express SSD product line, capable of around six times the performance of the best SATA SSDs.

Because 256GB isn’t enough disk space on its own, Chillblast has also included a roomy 2TB hard drive for less performance-critical storage. These core components, plus 16GB of DDR4 memory, are all installed in an Asus Prime Z270M-PLUS motherboard.

This mATX form factor motherboard, is itself the source of some of the LED lighting which can be seen through the side of the case. The PCI-Express slots pulse with a warm glow, offset by the cool blue lights from the graphics card and main case fan.

The motherboard supports up to two M.2 SSDs in SATA or NVMe mode and is also ready for Intel Optane memory. It comes with PS/2 mouse and keyboard sockets at the rear as well as two each of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports and single 5Gb/s USB Type-C connector. There’s also 8-channel analogue audio and a single Gigabit LAN port.

In keeping with the cool and quiet concept, the system makes use of the motherboard’s built in fan control options which tie in with Asus’s optional overclocking and management software.

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 performance

As you’d expect from a PC fitted with a high-end CPU and a GeForce GTX 1080, the Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 delivers gaming performance in spades.

Older games such as Thief and Alien Isolation benchmark at over well over 60fps at 4K resolution in High or sometimes even Ultra quality settings. With a more demanding title like Deus Ex Mankind Divided, you’ll be hitting 30fps in 4K Ultra mode, which is fine for playing on the living room TV and if you do want super smooth 60fps action, you’ll be able to get that by stepping down to 2560×1440 on your PC monitor.

The Core i7-7700K may not be overclocked, but it still delivers a lot of performance for all your non-gaming needs. You’ll be able to achieve workstation-like performance in tasks such as photo and video editing as you can see from our high PCMark 8 scores which are excellent across the board. The CPU is helped here by the super-fast NVMe storage.

If you’re still hungry for a little more speed, you can purchase the PC factory overclocked by Chillblast to 4.6GHz at no extra charge. This will however affect noise and power consumption.

The only area where the CPU may lose out is in extremely parallel processing environments, where an 8-core processor, such as an AMD Ryzen 7, may pull ahead. You can see this effect in our Cinebench R15 tests, where the single-core test is excellent, but the multi-core test lags a long way behind Ryzen chips. This does not affect games however, which still currently benefit much more from high performance per core rather than multi-core power.

Intel-based PCs currently achieve better performance from NVMe storage devices than AMD-based systems, too.

Chillblast Fusion Adamantium 3 warranty

The Fusion Adamantium 3 comes with Chillblast’s excellent 2-year collect and return warranty which extends to 5 years for labour only. It also comes with lifetime phone support. This is one of the better warranty offers available.

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