This is our review and test of a pre-built desktop system, the Chillblast Fusion Falcon. While it is named after a bird, its chassis is hefty and strong enough to stay on your floor or desk. The Phanteks Enthoo Evolv case is durable and sturdy, but it’s also just 450mm tall and 230mm wide – far smaller than full-sized towers, making the Fusion Falcon a tempting micro-ATX alternative to monster desktop machines without cutting performance.
There’s 16GB of DDR3 RAM clocked at a middling 1,600MHz, and a familiar SSD and hard disk combination: a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo solid state drive and a 2TB Seagate hard drive.
Meanwhile, the Asus Z97M-Plus is a micro-ATX board with a decent feature set. The middle of the black PCB has a spare M.2 socket, and two spare DDR3 memory slots can be used to double the amount of RAM. There are a few SATA ports free too, although you’ll have to move the graphics card to access them, and the ports at the bottom of the board are fiddly to reach.
The backplate has four USB 3 ports, two USB 2 ports and a PS/2 port alongside six audio jacks, but there’s no clearCMOS button or S/PDIF output. The front I/O panel offers up two USB 3 ports and the usual audio jacks, although they all sit towards the bottom of one side panel, which could be awkward to reach, depending on the position of your PC.
Perhaps the biggest compromise with the motherboard is the lack of dual graphics ability: this board doesn’t support NVidia SLI, and its second PCI-E slot only runs at 4x speed. There are no on-board buttons or overclocking features either.
There’s also not much room inside the Phanteks case. The SSD and hard disk are relegated to a small cage beneath the PSU shroud, and there are only two bays – elsewhere, storage is limited to a single 3.5in or two 2.5in drives on the main bracket, and two more SSDs on the rear of the motherboard tray. There’s no optical drive either, and the modular bay can’t be used to add one, as the CPU cooler blocks its panel. That said, with changing storage requirements and falling prices, that’s enough room for most people.
In other departments, the Phanteks chassis is impressive. Its side panels swing open on slick hinges, and its front and top panels pop off easily.
A plastic panel with a dust filter is installed behind the main metal façade and protects the 200mm fan, while the PSU’s cables are hidden behind a thick metal shroud. The latter makes the system look tidy, and Chillblast’s attention to detail is just as tidy around the back, with cables running in neat, straight lines.
Finally, the Fusion Falcon also comes with Chillblast’s five-year warranty, which includes two years of collect and return coverage for parts and labor, and another three years of labor coverage after that.
Performance
Running Battlefield 4 at Ultra quality at 2,560 x 1,440, the Falcon never dropped below a solid 49fps. Crysis 3 is our toughest game, but the Chillblast was up to the task at this resolution with a very respectable minimum of 36fps.
Not surprisingly, the single-GPU Fusion Falcon was less convincing when playing games at 4K though. In Battlefield 4, its minimum frame rate dropped to 22fps, and it went all the way down to 17fps in Crysis 3.
In short, this machine is fantastic for gaming at 2,560 x 1,440, but you’ll need a PC with either two GPUs or a GTX Titan X (check our GTX Titan X Review here) for 4K gaming.
Meanwhile, the overclocked processor helped the Chillblast Fusion Falcon to an overall system score of 119,374 in our RealBench 2014 test. That’s a rapid, and enough to handle high-end work and avoid game bottlenecks.
None of the components proved too hot for the Chillblast with its Corsair H80i cooler and 200mm intake fan either. The processor’s delta T of 55°C is fine, and the highly efficient Maxwell GPU architecture meant that the GPU delta T was just 49°C as well. The Fusion Falcon barely made a noise when idling either, and it wasn’t much louder when tasked with tough games, while drawing a modest 335W from the mains when stress-tested. Considering the power available, this is all quite an achievement.
Conclusion
The GTX 980 has ample pace for gaming at every resolution beneath 4K, the processor is quick and the rest of the specification is reasonable too. It’s well-built, looks good and keeps cool. The micro-ATX form factor doesn’t compromise on performance, but this particular setup does result in a few compromises.
There isn’t a huge amount of upgrade room, for example especially for multi-GPU, and full-sized rigs have more room for extra storage. If the lack of upgrade room isn’t a major concern, though, the Chillblast Falcon Fusion is a sturdy, smart alternative to full-sized desktops, offering loads of power in a surprisingly quiet and small chassis.
VERDICT
Fast, well made and quiet. The Fusion Falcon is a great machine for gaming at 2,560 x 1,440, although its room for expansion is a little limited.
CLOUDY CIRCUITRY SCORE – 88
