Chillblast Fusion Brix review

The Chillblast Fusion Brix is quite possibly the smallest PC we’ve ever tested. It’s based on Gigabyte’s miniscule barebones Brix unit, and measures just 30x107x114mm, making it even smaller than PCs based on Intel’s NUC Kit chassis and motherboard, such as used in the PC Specialist NUC Lite. It’s so small, in fact, that you can quite comfortably hold it in the palm of your hand and still curve your fingers round the edges.

Size isn’t the only thing that makes the Fusion Brix more convenient than the PC Specialist NUC Lite, as its full-size rather than mini HDMI output makes it easier to connect to your TV or monitor, without you having to buy an adaptor. Other outputs include a mini DisplayPort, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a combined headphone and S/PDIF optical audio output and two USB3 ports on the front and rear. This is particularly handy if you want to connect additional storage devices to the Fusion Brix, as its 120GB mSATA SSD doesn’t leave much room for large media collections.

Upgrading the Fusion Brix is simple. It’s sold as a complete unit, so only enthusiasts will ever need to open it up, but once you’ve unscrewed the base of the PC it’s very easy to work in. You have easy access to its two laptop memory slots, its mSATA SSD and a mini PCIe slot, currently filled with a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combination card and tucked under the SSD.

The Fusion Brix doesn’t sacrifice much power for its small size. As shown in our multimedia benchmarks, its 1.7GHz Intel Core i3-4010U processor packs a surprising punch. It will struggle with several heavy-duty programs running simultaneously, but an overall score of 34 puts it ahead of larger mini PCs such as the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 and even a few Core i3-based all-in-one PCs we’ve tested such as the HP Envy Rove 20.

This gives it plenty of speed to cope with everyday computing tasks, and its integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400 chip can even play some 3D games. In the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test, which we run at 1,280×720 with High detail and 4x anti-aliasing, it produced a steady 19.8fps, which is what we’d expect to see from this type of chip. Disabling the anti-aliasing will raise this frame rate further, as we found when we tried out the less demanding platform game Trine 2. In this title we saw a silky smooth 37.4fps on High quality with no anti-aliasing at 1,280×720, but this increased to an even smoother 46.2fps when we set the quality to Low.

We even managed to play games at 1,920×1,080; the native resolution of the majority of monitors available today. We had to set the quality to Low and disable anti-aliasing to get anything remotely playable, but we still managed a just-about-smooth 29.1fps in Dirt Showdown at this resolution. The Fusion Brix can handle 4K video playback, too.

Sadly, the Fusion Brix’s limited BIOS doesn’t provide any options for waking the PC from LAN. This makes it less suitable for mounting to the back of your TV or monitor, as you’ll have to reach round to find the power button every time you want to use it, rather than using a Wake on LAN app on your smartphone or tablet. This is a shame given the PC’s petite size and included Vesa mount, and makes it less suitable for use as a media centre PC than other mini PCs.

Our chief concern with the Fusion Brix is its price. At £585, it’s considerably more expensive than other Core i3 mini PCs such as the PC Specialist NUC Lite or Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190. The more powerful Zotac ZBox Nano ID64 Plus is also nearly £100 cheaper even after you’ve added in the extra cost of buying an operating system, and the more powerful Scan 3XS NUC N16 is only £15 more, leaving the Brix looking a little overpriced.