A nice-looking, good all-rounder
The Fusion Nitro is a good example of an affordable desktop PC, with its own particular set of benefits and compromises. Its tower case is eye-catching, with Star Wars styling and the obligatory LED-lit window in the side. Chillblast – one of the leading system builders in the UK these days – has filled it with components that will satisfy a tight budget and broad requirements.
The most important component is the biggest chip on the motherboard, a Core i3 processor. Although this comes from the bottom end of Intel’s Skylake range, it’s more than adequate for jobs like web browsing, email and text editing. To keep it fed with data, there’s a sensible 8GB of memory, which should be ample to keep things moving even when you use several programs at once. If you find things slowing down, you can buy more DDR4 2133MHz memory modules, which are easy to install once you open the case. The catch is that the Fusion Nitro has no spare slots beyond the two that are already filled with 4GB modules, so you’d have to remove them to install bigger ones (8GB or 16 GB pairs are available).
To hold Windows 10 and all your programs and files, there’s a 1TB hybrid drive that incorporates a small SSD to speed things up – quite a common arrangement these days. Again, if you run out of capacity, the tower case gives you room to manoeuvre. You can install more drives inside (there are three free drive bays), or plug external ones into its USB 3.0 ports. Two USB 3.0 sockets on the back is less than generous (the four USB 2.0 ports are too slow for storage devices), and the one on the front didn’t work reliably for us. Still, you could always add a powered USB 3.0 hub for around £20 if you wanted. There are also audio jacks and an SD card reader on the front.
The Fusion Nitro comes with quite a decent budget graphics card, AMD’s Radeon R7 370. Most of Intel’s Core i3, i5 and i7 chips come with an integrated graphics processor, but they’ll generally only cope with 3D games on their lowest resolution and quality settings, if at all. A dedicated graphics card is pretty much essential for more demanding games, ranging from first-person shooters such as Call of Duty and Tomb Raider to pastimes like Minecraft and The Sims. Nowadays, even casual puzzle-type apps may use 3D graphics, and a graphics card can also speed up things like applying special effects in a video-editing program, although you’ll need to check which cards your chosen software supports.
The R7 370 occupies the case’s only PCI Express x16 slot, and of the two basic x1 slots, only one is of any practical use. Wi-Fi cards can be added as one of Chillblast’s customisation options, at £30 for 802.11n or £40, £50 or £60 for progressively faster 802.11ac components – the pricier ones having external aerials. A Gigabit Ethernet port is standard for wired networks.
In our tests, reflecting both the i3 and the R7 370, the Fusion Nitro’s photoand video-editing performance was very good for a PC at this price, and all our 3D games ran smoothly at Full HD resolution – at least once we turned off a couple of the most advanced graphics options. So this is a well-rounded configuration that should suit a lot of households.
VERDICT
As long as potential for expansion isn’t your priority, this is a great all-round PC or budget gaming system.
SPECIFICATIONS
3.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i3-6100 processor • 8GB memory • 4GB AMD Radeon R7 370 graphics card • 1TB hybrid drive • 3x USB 3.0 ports • 4x USB 2.0 ports • Gigabit Ethernet • HDMI port • DVI port • WIndows 10 • 412x208x366mm (HxWxD) • Two-year warranty