Chillblast Fusion Hitman Gaming PC Review

John Williamson / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of writing, the Chillblast Fusion Hitman is available from the company’s website for £799 including delivery. To determine a system’s value proposition, we endeavour to compile an identical self-build and compare the price. This allows us to analyse the fee (if any) that a system integrator is choosing to charge customers for its services.

Case: GameMax Silent ATX = £42.94
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970-Gaming = £74.90
Processor: *AMD FX-8370 Black Edition 8-Core CPU up to 4.3GHz = £166.23
Processor Cooler: AMD Wraith Stock CPU Cooler = £0.00
System Memory: Crucial 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz = £51.59
Main Boot Drive: 250GB Samsung 850 EVO = £69.99
Additional Storage Drive(s): Seagate 1TB 7200RPM Hard Disk = £41.41
Graphics Card: XFX AMD Radeon R9 380 2GB = £149.99
Power Supply: Aerocool 80 PLUS 600W = £37.98
Operating System: Windows 10 = £71.99

Prices donated with * refer to a predicted retail value because the product is out of stock. In the CPU’s case, we decided to find a unit which has the latest Wraith cooler. Please note, at the current pricing levels you might be able to obtain the processor cheaper in the older package.

Once added together, an equivalent self-build comes to a total of £702.02 which is £96.98 cheaper than Chillblast’s custom creation. This is a very reasonable price point when you consider the comprehensive warranty period and excellent cabling.

Overview

Chillblast decided to forgo the widely adopted flashy colour schemes on gaming rigs and opted for a more subtle design strategy. The lack of LED illumination and acrylic side panel window is going to be divide opinion and greatly depends on your own individual preferences. Personally, I find it refreshing to see a professional, sleek aesthetic which focuses on noise isolation instead of vibrant lighting effects. It’s important to remember that many people simply position their PCs on the floor and only care about how it performs. Honestly, when you’re looking at such an affordable price point, concessions have to be made and it’s better to include faster components than flashy extras which fail to improve the user-experience in visually demanding titles.

The system’s chassis features remarkable build quality and greatly exceeded my expectations. For example, the strong steel frame, dust filters, and brushed front cover evoke a luxury feel. Not only that, the power supply cover is fantastic and helps create an exceptionally clean build. Even the chassis’ frame doesn’t buckle under pressure and has a surprising amount of rigidity. On another note, the soft foam inserts help with noise isolation and attempt to create a silent user-experience. During low CPU utilisation, this is easily achieved and results in one of the best desktop experiences I’ve encountered. Sadly, the CPU’s stock cooler tends to ramp up suddenly under load and the isolating foam cannot deaden the sound in an effective manner. This means that the system can be rather noisy when playing games. Saying that, you can adjust to it fairly quickly and it’s far from being obnoxiously loud.

In terms of temperatures, the CPU remains extremely cool and this is expected at the chip’s stock frequency. Nevertheless, this entire system is about optimising the price to performance ratio which means adding aftermarket cooling hardware would have been a wasteful endeavour. Of course, AMD CPUs have a poor standing among hardware enthusiasts which is unfair when you consider the age of the AM3+ platform. Additionally, the FX-8370 has good multi-threaded performance and you’re able to access 8 CPU cores without paying a hefty fee. Annoyingly, the CPU does struggle in synthetic single-threaded tasks and is a significant margin behind Intel alternatives. Most importantly, the CPU isn’t a noticeable bottleneck during games, and the additional cores could help in the future with modern game engines being tailored towards multi-threaded workloads. Also, the advent of DirectX 12 can potentially reduce CPU overheads and make the weaker single threaded performance a non-issue.

On another note, the system’s cable management is brilliant especially when you consider it’s been achieved with a non-modular power supply. Chillblast has employed tight zip-ties, a logical cabling arrangement and taken advantage of the chassis’ power supply cover. This all contributes to a very sleek cabling job which looks fantastic. Furthermore, closing the side panel door doesn’t require any effort and exemplifies the quality of cabling on offer.

The machine’s R9 380 is able to maintain good, stable frame-rates provided you’re using a 1920×1080 monitor. Theoretically, you could pair the GPU with a 1440P panel, but it’s going to be difficult to avoid huge frame drops which create a jarring user experience. While it’s possible to reduce the graphical preset the limiting 2GB frame buffer could easily become problematic. In all honesty, I can’t see many people owning a fairly expensive 1440P display opting for a budget-orientated graphics card. Overall, the R9 380 is a good card for the money and should please the mainstream consumer.

Pros

Chassis’ build quality is astounding given the budget
Enjoyable 1080P gaming experience
Good packaging
Great warranty
Neutral styling should appeal to a large audience
Proficient cable management
Ridiculously quiet during idle tasks
Very balanced specification

Cons

Can become loud under heavy load

“The Chillblast Fusion Hitman prioritises solid build quality and higher-end components over ostentatious extras. This allows owners to leverage extra performance and ensure every last penny has been used in the most effective manner.”

Editors-Choice