Chillblast Fusion Master Intel Skylake Gaming PC Review

The Chillblast Fusion Master is a showcase of the new MasterCase 5 mid-tower chassis from Cooler Master. Externally, one of its most noticeable features is a pair of handles that help with transportation. On the front panel, the main power button is located at the bottom, with a single LED for disk access, two USB 3 ports and two audio jacks. The reset button is on the right.

Mesh covers the front fans that blow air onto the radiator of the 240mm Nepton all-in-one liquid cooler, which has been attached towards the front of the case.

At the rear you can see the I/O for the Asus Z170 Pro gamer, which includes two USB 2 ports, four USB 3 ports, a single 10Gb/sec USB 3.1 type-A port and a USB 3.1 type-C port. The board has four display outputs for integrated graphics, but you’re more likely to be using the display outputs on the Zotac GTX 980, which includes one HDMI, a DVI, and three DisplayPort.

There’s plenty of space inside the case, providing good airflow and easy access to the components. Good room for expansion too, you’ll have no problems fitting an extra GPU later on.

With the aid of a Cooler Master Nepton 240M all-in-one liquid cooler, Chillblast has overclocked the 6700K to a juicy 4.6GHz for some extra performance. This is intended as a high-end gaming PC, so in addition, Chillblast has equipped the Fusion Master with a Zotac GeForce GTX 980 4GB graphics card, which is worth around £400.

Exhaust fans mounted in the roof and rear of the case expel hot air from inside. The water-cooling block covering the CPU shows the Cooler Master logo clearly, and this illuminates in white when the PC is turned on.

The two 8GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory are also visible, with the two empty slots providing room for future expansion.

If you haven’t seen an M.2 SSD yet, they’re quite different to SATA drives – a small PCB slots into a dedicated slot on the motherboard. Samsung's 512GB SM951 is one of the fastest SSDs on the market, although Chillblast uses the AHCI version, not the (hard-to-find) NVMe variant.

A 2TB Seagate SSHD is located in the bottom-right of the chassis.

From the rear of the case, you can see Chillblast has done a good job with cable management, using zip ties for the smaller cables and the larger ones held to the side of the case.

An accessories box contains a bag with all the extra fittings for the Nepton water cooler, the spare case screws and so on. There are a few manuals for the components, including the motherboard and graphics card. And you also get a DVD with an OEM copy of Windows 10. This is the first time we’ve seen this included with a PC.

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