Review: Chillblast Fusion Stealth

by Parm Mann on 18 January 2013, 12:00 4.5

Final Thoughts and Rating

By hand-picking components that are known to run quietly, Chillblast has built a gaming powerhouse that's sleek in appearance and barely audible at all times.

The Chillblast Fusion Stealth is right in line with our expectations of a modern-day gaming PC. Well built with good component selection throughout, it's a showcase of some today's most powerful hardware.

What's most satisfying, however, is that the combination of an overclocked Intel Ivy Bridge processor and award-winning GeForce GTX 670 graphics hasn't resulted in a routine gaming monstrosity. By hand-picking components that are known to run quietly, Chillblast has built a gaming powerhouse that's sleek in appearance and barely audible at all times.

The Fusion Stealth is a wolf in sheep's clothing and comes highly recommended to anyone in the market for a refined gaming PC. The only caveat is the £1,200 price tag - that's the sort of investment made only by die-hard enthusiasts.

The Good

Ultra-quiet in use
Excellent all-round performance
Makes light work of high-quality gaming
16GB of memory and SSD as standard
Good build quality and cable management
Backed by a two-year warranty

The Bad

Expensive for a base unit

HEXUS Rating

Chillblast Fusion Stealth

HEXUS Awards

Chillblast Fusion Stealth

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Chillblast Fusion Stealth desktop PC is available to purchase from Chillblast.com.

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Nice Rig.

Imagine the power with SLI and a better OC……………………

Yeah, but imagine the extra noise…

Silent system fans wrongly set in BIOS

I have just bought (January 2013) my second Chillblast computer in five years so I am reasonably satisfied with the make. But there are some issues I'd like to warn about.

SILENT SYSTEM?
My new PC is a Fusion Stealth which is listed as one of Chillblast's ‘Silent Systems’. When I got it the PC was fairly noisy. To cut a longish story short it transpired that the BIOS settings for the fans were incorrectly set at Chillblast. There are four BIOS fan settings and they all should be on ‘silent’ but in my case they were all on ‘standard’. Changing these to ‘silent’ quietened the PC down considerably but it is not silent: there is a continuous albeit low fan noise.

Chillblast apologised profusely for the incorrect BIOS settings but went on to say:
“The Stealth system is not designed to be truly ‘silent’; only the Fusion Vacuum series are truly silent as they feature no moving parts. The Stealth and our other low noise systems all have fans inside which need to be running during normal use. The advantage is that you can have a much more powerful PC than you can with the Fusion Vacuum series.”

I decided in the end that my Stealth was quiet enough but I think it is misleading to list the Stealth on the website at the head of their ‘Silent Systems’ when it isn't. Perhaps they need to advertise it as a ‘low noise system’, not a ‘silent system’.

The other lesson for buyers of any PC is that you can't guarantee it will be set up correctly. My confidence in the rest of the settings has been undermined but isn't easy to check what they should be; Chillblast assert that everything else was done correctly.

Unless the noise level is given in decibels and you have some way of measuring the PC you are never going to know how the thing will sound or whether your example is working properly.

WINDOWS 8 SLEEP REMOVED

My Stealth was supplied with Windows 8 Standard. My old PC had Windows 8 PRO which I downloaded when it was on special offer. I particularly like the ‘Sleep’ feature which Microsoft recommend as the default method when shutting down, rather than completely turning off. But I couldn't find the Sleep option on the Stealth and spent much time fruitlessly searching for it and Googling for answers. Chillblast eventually told me that they remove Sleep from overclocked PCs (as the Stealth is) because it may make the system unstable.

DELIVERY TIME

Chillblast quote 7 - 10 working days. My Stealth took nearly 15 working days to arrive. Admittedly snow disrupted supplies and Chillblast were also moving to larger premises during the build period. My beef is that they were poor at keeping me informed about progress. If delivery time is important to you I'd recommend trying to pin them down in advance, which I didn't.

Revised review 21 February 2013 to reflect Chillblast responses

In January 2013 I bought a Chillblast Fusion Stealth and this is my second Chillblast computer in five years. So I am happy with the make. My experience with the Stealth for nearly three weeks has been positive. But there are some issues I'd like to mention.

SILENT SYSTEM?
The Fusion Stealth was listed as one of Chillblast's ‘Silent Systems’. When I got it the PC was fairly noisy. To cut a longish story short it transpired that the BIOS settings for the fans were incorrectly set at Chillblast. There are four BIOS fan settings and they all should be on ‘silent’ but in my case they were all on ‘standard’. Changing these to ‘silent’ quietened the PC down considerably but it is not silent: there is a continuous albeit low fan noise.

Chillblast apologised profusely for the incorrect BIOS settings but went on to say:
“The Stealth system is not designed to be truly ‘silent’; only the Fusion Vacuum series are truly silent as they feature no moving parts. The Stealth and our other low noise systems all have fans inside which need to be running during normal use. The advantage is that you can have a much more powerful PC than you can with the Fusion Vacuum series.”

I decided in the end that my Stealth was quiet enough and Chillblast kindly paid me £50 compensation.

I suggested to Chillblast that it might be misleading to list the Stealth on the website at the head of their ‘Silent Systems’ when it isn't silent. Chillblast agreed and they have changed the main heading for ‘silent systems’ to ‘silent and ultra quiet’. In addition the individual headings for each PC in this category has been revised to show whether it is silent or ultra quiet.

It remains true that the buyer of any PC can't be sure it will be set up correctly. Unless the noise level is given in decibels and you have some way of measuring the PC you are never going to know how the thing will sound or whether your example is working properly. However, Chillblast are very good at responding to complaints and dealing with them quickly.

WINDOWS 8 SLEEP REMOVED
My Stealth was supplied with Windows 8 Standard. My old PC had Windows 8 PRO which I downloaded when it was on special offer. I particularly like the ‘Sleep’ feature which Microsoft recommend as the default method when shutting down, rather than completely turning off. But I couldn't find the Sleep option on the Stealth and spent much time fruitlessly searching for it and Googling for answers. Chillblast told me that they remove Sleep from overclocked PCs (as the Stealth is) because it may make the system unstable.

Chillblast also pointed out that their general terms and conditions include a warning that they don't recommend sleep mode because of stability issues and that, specifically, overclocked PCs may have sleep removed. So I admit I only have myself to blame for failing to plough through the lengthy small print! I suggested to Chillblast that terms and conditions usually deal with commercial matters like warranties, refunds etc and not technical choices. Hence I felt it would be better if they had more specific warnings for each PC. This is Chillblast's response:

“I agree that in a perfect world this sleep issue would be more boldly advertised, however please understand that have to carefully tread a middle ground between being as helpful and informative as possible, without putting off potential purchasers by scaring them away. If we stipulated every possible issue in terms of OS compatibility problems, and the steps we take to minimise the likelihood of their manifestation, then we would driving away sales where none of our competitors provide the same courtesy. After all, the sleep mode bug affects all manufacturers of overclocked machines, yet to my knowledge we are the only ones who inform our customers of the potential pitfalls of using it.”

Finally, Chillblast came to the view that because the Stealth is not aggressively overclocked it was likely that sleep would in fact work. They gave helpful guidance on how to restore sleep and the Stealth has now worked fine with it for 3 days.

START SHELL
I chose to have the Chillblast optimise my system for an extra £30. This turned out to include the installation of a shell which puts back the old Start button. I did not want this and Chillblast explained how to remove it. They have also revised the options so that optimisation is a separate option from the Start shell.

DELIVERY TIME
Chillblast quote 7 - 10 working days. My Stealth took nearly 15 working days to arrive. Admittedly snow disrupted supplies and Chillblast were also moving to larger premises during the build period. My beef is that they were poor at keeping me informed about progress. If delivery time is important to you I'd recommend trying to pin them down in advance, which I didn't.

It sounds like they've very gracious and refunded you some money, very helpful and responded to all your queries, and were only 5 days late delivering despite the snow!

Thumbs up and recommended by you then Honandal?