A budget AMD-based system with a few interesting tweaks
Last year, AMD took the decision to spread its budget processors across a wider audience, catering for those who want to build a decent gaming system without the cost overheads.
The range of processors AMD released started with the entry-level Athlon 740, then moved up through the numbers, adding an unlocked multiplyer-K every other processor, until the launch of the 860K. This FM2+ socket CPU is basically an A10-7850K, but minus the integrated GPU element. It still features the four Steamroller cores, though, a TDP of 95W and a base clock speed of 3.7GHz. Overall, it's a decent CPU on which to base a wallet- pleasing gaming system.
As it happens, Chillblast has done exactly that with the Fusion Drone Gaming PC. This system features the Athlon 870K processor fitted to a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H motherboard, with 8GB of DDR3 memory.
A 1TB Seagate SSHD hybrid hard drive serves as the main storage medium, with Windows 10 Home 64-bit edition pre-loaded and updated out of the box. Since there's no processor-based GPU here, Chillblast has opted for the very capable Gigabyte R7 370 Windforce 2GB card to drive the gaming graphics.
The Gigabyte R7 370 Windforce is an overclocked version of the stock Trinidad R7 370, with a 965MHz base GPU clock speed, and a boost clock speed of 1015MHz - both of which are about 5% or 6% higher than stock speeds. In essence, the card is more than able to handle the likes of Star War: Battlefront and Fallout 4 at 1080 on good settings.
In terms of the usual benchmarks, the Fusion Drone managed a 3DMark11 score of 5,976 and a PCMark8 score of 3,952. While it's not the highest benchmark machine we've had through our doors, those numbers are certainly good enough for the moderate gamer, and there's plenty of performance within to cope with everyday computing duties too.
The Fusion Drone Gaming PC has some other interesting features, though, beyond benchmark scores. For one, Chillblast has fitted the system with a Corsair H55 liquid CPU cooler, which makes the system exceptionally quiet. Further cooling comes courtesy of a pair of front and rear fans, with the large 140mm front fan fixed to the H55's radiator.
Secondly, the case Chillblast has used is the Zalman T4 micro-ATX gaming case. Rather than opting for a bigger and more elaborate Zalman offering, the choice of the T4 makes the Fusion Drone a more compact, lightweight and unobtrusive PC. True, you may struggle to fit a second graphics card for a future upgrade, since it'll be a squeeze against the Aerocool 500W PSU, but for the sake of having a reasonably discrete gaming system, the Zalman T4 is a good system build decision. And of course, the system is immaculately presented.
Ideally, we'd have liked to see an SSD used as the main system drive, with a terabyte-plus hard drive as the secondary data drive, and our personal preference lies with the Nvidia GTX970 when it comes to gaming graphics. However, both of those additions would have increased the cost considerably.
This brings us nicely to another highlight of the Chillblast Fusion Drone Gaming PC. At £499, this is an exceptionally well-priced gaming system. Certainly you could get more performance from a range of other systems, but the cost will be reflected in that decision. Sub-f500 for these specs is very appealing indeed.
Overall, we really liked the Chillblast Fusion Drone Gaming PC. It's a good-looking, well-performing and balanced system, perfectly priced and with plenty of great features. David Hayward
A great budget gaming system with plenty of features.