Chillblast Fusion Axion review: Spare no expense

New AMD chips mean new AMD-based PCs, and the one we’re looking at is the Fusion Axion. It’s based around the Ryzen 7 3700X, an octa-core CPU that’s only one step down from the premier Ryzen 9 3900X.

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Chillblast Fusion Axion review: Performance

This being a whopping £2,200 might raise eyebrows, but there’s a lot more about the Fusion Axion that makes it a true high-ender. It has a more powerful GPU, in the form of an MSI-made GeForce RTX 2080, and it also completely ignores slow mechanical storage in favour of dual SSDs.

Still, the Ryzen 7 3700X is the star of the show. Although it has a higher maximum boost clock than the preceding Ryzen 7 2700X, at 4.4GHz, its 3.6GHz base clock is actually 100MHz slower. AMD will likely be relying on the move to a 7nm manufacturing process, the greater efficiency of which should help the CPU perform more processes per clock cycle, in order to make up performance.

Happily, it doesn’t just make up for that 100MHz drop, it blazes past the Ryzen 7 2700X in speed tests. Most impressive is the Fusion Axion’s 189 in our image-editing test, which shows that AMD has finally caught up with Intel on single-core performance.

This is an excellent PC for multithreaded apps too, as it scored 326 in the video test and 395 in the multitasking test, for an enticingly high 338 overall. This is all with the Ryzen 7 3700X running at stock speeds, and because a Cryorig A80 watercooler is included, you could potentially get even more speed out of it with overclocking. Even without that effort, this is a superb performer on the CPU side.

The Fusion Axion’s RTX 2080 should on paper make it a formidable high-resolution gaming rig, and in practice, it proves to be exactly that. In Dirt Showdown, the Fusion Axion produced 190fps at 1,920 x 1,080, 186fps at 2,560 x 1,440 and 124fps at 3,840 x 2,160.

In Metro: Last Light Redux,  the Fusion Axion managed 112fps at 1080p, 67fps at 1440p and 29fps at 4K, this last result jumping to 60fps after we disabled SSAA. The Axiom scored 11 in the SteamVR Performance Test, too.

Chillblast Fusion Axion review: Features

If there’s anything that makes the Fusion Axion worth its lofty price, it’s the storage. Having a 500GB NVMe SSD as the main drive would be good even just with mechanical backup, but here you also get a 2TB SATA SSD to boost capacity massively. It means that even if you stuff the latter with games, you’ll never have to endure the slow loading speeds that you would with any hard disk.

The smaller SSD isn’t a new PCI-E 4.0 model, which is something the motherboard’s X570 chipset would allow you to add in the future, but it’s still immensely fast. Using AS SSD, we recorded a sequential read speed of 2,884MB/sec and a sequential write speed of 2,926MB/sec, a fantastic showing on both counts. A PCI-E 4.0 would probably bump up the price even further, anyway.

Besides speedier SSD support, the motherboard also confers a host of upgrade and connectivity options. There are two spare PCI-E x16, PCI-E x1 and RAM slots apiece, as well as a generous seven empty SATA ports. The rear I/O panel, meanwhile, combines four USB3 ports, three USB3.1 ports and one USB Type-C port with an optical S/PDIF connector, along with separate rear speaker and C/SUB ports. If you want a premium audio setup with your PC, this will suit it well.

The clean, white case is another highlight. It has outstanding cable management, with lots of channels and re-usable straps, and storage support includes two empty 3.5in trays plus four 2.5in trays. There’s also a spare M.2 slot back on the motherboard.

Chillblast Fusion Axion review: Verdict

The Fusion Axion’s more premium trappings help save it from being outright overpriced. You might find marginally better value for money – by which I mean a less vicious an assault on your wallet – in the likes of the CCL Paladin, but for the sheer breadth of features and unparalleled performance, the Axion is a clear choice.

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