Chillblast Fusion Olympian review

The Chillblast Fusion Olympian doesn’t skimp on quality components and, at £1,199, it’s one of the more expensive PCs we’ve recently reviewed. It’s also the first to include AMD’s new Radeon HD 7950 graphics card with 3GB of GDDR5 graphics memory.

The HD 7950 has two DisplayPort outputs, one DVI and one HDMI port and supports triple-monitor Eyefinity display setups for both gaming and desktop tasks. It’s a seriously quick card. The Fusion Olympian achieved a frame rate of 73.9fps in Dirt 3 at Ultra quality, 1,920 x 1,080 and 4x anti-aliasing, and 34fps with three monitors in Eyefinity mode at 5,760 x 1,080 at the same detail settings. In Crysis 2, which we run at 1,920 x 1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra detail, we saw 34fps, which is smooth but not as quick as we saw when we reviewed the HD 7950 on its own, where we saw 45fps. The card is so new that AMD is still tweaking the drivers, so performance in games seems to variable at the moment.

An excellent graphics card gets you a long way when it comes to gaming, but if you want optimal performance in all tasks, you’ll want a powerful processor. Chillblast has opted for our favourite: Intel’s Core i5-2500K, which it has overclocked to a blistering 4.8GHz. This means that the PC performed brilliantly in our benchmark tests, with an overall score of 141. For reference, that’s significantly quicker than Intel’s flagship SandyBridge-E processor, the Core i7-3930K, can achieve at its stock speeds.

The rest of the specification is to the same standard, with 8GB of Corsair XMS3 RAM, a Blu-ray reader/DVD-RW drive, 1TB hard disk and a 32GB SSD acting as a cache for high-speed access to frequently-accessed files. All the components are quality branded kit, including a 600W OCZ power supply and virtually silent ThermoLab Trinity processor cooler. The sound-dampening continues with an insulated Fractal Design case, which also has plenty of grilles to prevent fluff from invading your PC.

The Asus P8Z68-V LE motherboard has six SATA ports – there are three spare, one SATA3 and two SATA2 – three PCI slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and a spare PCI-E x16 slot. One of the x1 slots is blocked by the graphics card, but there’s still plenty of room for expansion. At the back of the PC are two USB3 ports, four USB2 ports, a PS/2 port, gigabit Ethernet and both 7.1 analogue audio outputs from the on-board Realktek audio and an optical S/PDIF output to transmit digital audio to a surround sound system. There are also two USB2 and one USB3 ports at the front of the case.

The PC comes with Asus’s 23.6in VS247H monitor. It’s a matt display, so you won’t have much trouble with reflections from overhead light sources. Its colours aren’t as bright as many glossy displays, but they also look more natural. The monitor’s backlighting is even but we found its viewing angles rather limited. The PC also comes with a set of 2.1 Logitech S220 speakers. They aren’t the most subtle set, but they’re well balanced, output plenty of volume and can produce bone-shaking explosions if you turn up the bass.

We’re not fans of the Trust GXT18 Gaming Keyboard, though. It feels flimsy and the slip-resistant textured rubber of the WASD and cursor keys become uncomfortable to type on after a while. We liked the ergonomic lines and variable resolution of the Gigabyte M6900 gaming mouse, however.

Despite the keyboard, this is an excellent PC. If you’re a keen gamer looking for a powerful and complete system to keep you playing for the next few years, it’s a great buy, even with Intel’s next generation of processors just around the corner. Most home users will do as well with the slightly cheaper Yoyotech Warbird Dark Iron CS, though.