LabsLuxury £599 PCs
The Chillblast Fusion Shinobi is visually impressive: the 22in LG TFT and 5.1 Gony speakers (no, that's not a misprint) make it look like one of the most complete packages in the group. But it's inside that the most interesting decision has been made. Chillblast has gone for a dirt-cheap Pentium Dual-Core and overclocked it massively instead of opting for a more expensive processor. It's a strategy that really pays dividends, as it excelled in our benchmarks - a hefty score of 1.37 beat those of several significantly dearer CPUs here - and at minimal cost, leaving plenty of room in the budget for more important extras. Amazingly, no fancy CPU cooling is needed: the stock Intel cooler copes with ease, aided by two 120mm case fans, but this does result
There's plenty of room inside the Shinobi chassis: a single Radeon 3850 slots into the motherboard, which is just quick enough to run Crysis at 1,280 x 1,024 at Medium settings. You get no extra expansion cards, although it has all the slots you need for the future, and on the outside the Chillblast impresses further. Its 22in LG monitor is one of the best on show. It's a good size, very sharp and its colours are accurate, plus it boasts a decent resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, so there's plenty of desktop room to play with. It's HDCP-compliant for copy-protected video and, although it doesn't have integrated speakers, the bundled Gony speakers make up for this- they're among the beston test. The Logitech Cordless 1500 Desktop keyboard and mouse set looks a little plain compared with some of the other peripherals, but it's comfortable to use and the quality is high. We're not huge fans of the case's tacky silver-grille front door, though, particularly as all the ports and buttons remain exposed on the side of the machine. With a 320GB hard disk, a rear eSATA port and a year's collect-and-return cover, the Fusion Shinobi is very good value. The choice of processor is inspiredand the peripherals are well chosen.A balanced package, and a superb alternative to the award winners. |
|||||||||||||||||||
