This perfectly overclocked system
achieves the absolute harmony between raw power, good-quality components and
gaming performance.
Price: $1,285
Ranking: 5/5
Chillblast
Fusion Blaze
Fusion Blaze is a powerful and well-built system.
The Intel Core i5-3570K Processor is the same CPU that you will find in our
favorite performance systems. It also has a remarkable overclock, which speeds
it up to 4.5GHz from the previous 3.4GHz. This gives the PC an excellent
overall score of 144 in our application benchmarks.
2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 OC is also
excellent; we noticed a smooth 30fps in Crysis 2 at 1920x1080 và Ultra detail, which
shows that it can easily handle all the latest 3D games.
The 700W power supply is the popular one rather
than the branded, but it can still provide enough power to support any important
upgrades. There are for sure a lot of opportunities to do so. The Asus P8Z77-V
LX motherboard is the low-price model, but it is an ATX motherboard with three
PCI slots and two PCI-E x1 slots; one of these is blocked by the cooler of the
graphics card. There are also two PCI-E x16 slots, but the slot at the bottom
only runs at x4 speed.
There are six SATA ports, two of which are
SATA3. There are three vacant SATA2 ports and one vacant SATA3 port. This PC has
a Blu-ray drive and a 2TB hard disc. We were amazed to see that Fusion Blaze unlike
most of the similar low-price systems – did not have an SSD. Although it means
that it cannot boot up as fast as other computers with a solid state drive,
Windows 8’s proper enhancements for boot time still make it feel fast enough. You
won’t also benefit from the quicker read and/or write speeds of an SSD, but a
2TB hard disc gives you a lot of room to install software and applications.
There
are six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3.
Later, if you want to upgrade, there is
more space for other additional drives, with two free 5¼-inch bays, one external
3½-inch bays and five unused internal 3½-inch bays. There are also two empty memory
slots on the motherboard, each of which has a 1333MHz 4GB memory module adding
up to 8GB.
The case is hard and well made; however,
not all the air vents have small mesh covers to protect the computer against
dust. The system runs quite quietly owing to the high-quality processor and
case fans.
The Cherry keyboard that accompanies the PC
is big and ugly, but the keys are responsive. The mouse looks rather classical
but it works well, even with a pretty loose scroll wheel. The monitor a 23.6-inch
matte finish Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS is evenly backlit and it also produces
natural colors.
The only disadvantage of Fusion Blaze is
the lack of an SSD. If you feel that you need faster boot time and the
quickness that an SSD can bring, the excellent Diablo Ultima of Wired2Fire and
Vanquish 650Ti of Specialist both have a 120GB SSD along with large hard discs,
but there is a cost to pay for those two, which is the performance. Finally, in
spite of the keen competition, its raw power and space for expansion gain a
Best Buy award for it.
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Basic
Specifications
·
Part Code: Fusion Blaze
·
Rating: 5/5
·
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K
·
Processor external bus: 100MHz (DMI)
·
Processor multiplier: x45
·
Processor clock speed: 4.5 GHz
·
Processor socket: LGA1155
·
Memory: 8
·
Memory type: PC3-10666
·
Maximum memory: 32GB
·
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX
·
Motherboard chipset: Intel Z77
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