Chillblast Fusion Photo OC III review

Eighteen months ago we reviewed the Chillblast Photo OC II, a PC that came with an overclocked quad-core CPU, 8GB of RAM and hard disks arranged in a RAID array, all designed with photographers in mind. It may have seemed a little over-specified then, but that seems positively tame by today's enthusiast standards.

So Chillblast is back with the Photo OC III. As before, components have been chosen with performance computing and photo editing in mind, beginning with a 80GB Intel X-25M SSD that boots into Windows Vista Home Premium in a blistering 34 seconds.

There are practical benefits elsewhere, too, with intensive applications springing into life faster, and Vista feeling snappy and responsive at all times.

The rest of the rig is geared towards high performance computing. The Core i7-920 processor is a Chillblast favourite, here overclocked from 2.66GHz to a mighty 3.8GHz, and it returned a fantastic 2D benchmark score of 2.55 – a mere 0.03 points short of the current PC Pro record.

Those sick of waiting for Photoshop to load high-resolution images will be heartened by a massive 12GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM, and plenty of standard storage has been provided alongside that SSD, in the form of two 1TB Hitachi Deskstar hard disks.

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card may be a mid-range part, but there’s plenty of power available for handling whole stacks of digital photographs: a score of 34fps in our 1,600 x 1,200 high-quality Crysis benchmark indicates the power available.

As usual, Chillblast’s meticulous attention to detail results in an exceptionally well-built PC. The Cooler Master Sileo chassis is a newcomer to the PC Pro Labs and makes an instant statement with its dramatic black façade.

Inside, the front, sides and bottom are all coated with sound-dampening foam, and the Intel stock CPU cooler has made way for a whisper-quiet Akasa Nero. The result is a PC that won't even register when it’s tucked under or beside a desk – and is barely audible right up close.