Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Chillblast Fusion Midgard
in Desktop PCs
1 of 2 
Verdict
A PC that offers blistering pace in both applications and games, and at a remarkable price too
Review Date: 4 Nov 2009
Price when reviewed: £779 (£896 inc VAT)
Overall Rating
Features & Design
Value for Money
Performance
The launch of a new generation of graphics cards is always an exciting time. It helps gamers to play the latest titles at previously unreachable quality levels and gives power users the chance to churn through intensive tasks such as HD video editing at record-breaking speed. ATI's HD 5000-series of cards is the latest to top the performance charts, and Chillblast's Fusion Midgard eagerly crams one on board.
Instead of the top-end HD 5870, though, this PC opts for the more reasonably-priced HD 5850, resulting in a PC with plenty of power, but also a reasonable price tag - lower than the Mesh Matrix II 5870XT, which comes with the more expensive HD 5870 card. Not that the cheaper card affects performance too much: as we expected it blitzed our gaming benchmarks, running through our 1,600 x 1,200 high quality test at 60fps and handling Crysis' very high quality settings at a commendable 32fps.
These impressive scores are proof that the Chillblast can handle the most demanding games around and it's not far behind the HD 5870-equipped Mesh, which scores 39fps in the same test.
The processor, an Intel Core i5-750, is another relatively new component and one that, along with the HD 5850, sits just below the top end in its respective range. But with the help of some judicious overclocking, the 2.66GHz core clock has been boosted to 3.6GHz, and the result is a rip snorting 2.48 in our application benchmarks. That makes it faster than most systems we've reviewed, including most systems on our A List.
The system gets its name from its case - the Xigmatek Midgard - which is a newcomer to the PC Pro Labs. And it comes with plenty of features designed to keep the powerful components cool and quiet. The 120mm fans at the front and rear of the chassis are boosted by a top fan designed to draw excess heat away from the huge CPU cooler, and the fans, PSU and hard disk all use rubber mountings to ensure vibrations are absorbed.
Despite the overclocking the Midgard manages to keep reasonably cool, though. An Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme HSF, keeps the four cores to 60˚C or below when rattling through our application benchmarks. Meanwhile,the GPU's temperature peaked at just 71 degrees while running our most demanding 3D gaming tests. The Fusion Midgard was reasonably quiet too.
The Midgard is tidy inside: PSU cables and other wires are hidden away behind the motherboard, resulting in a spacious interior that's as attractive as it is manageable. It has decent upgrade potential, with two DIMM slots, three 5.25in and four empty 3.5in HDD bays provided. The only downside is that the motherboard only has one PCI Express x16 slot and, therefore, there's no opportunity to add a second graphics card.
But disappointment over the lack of graphics headroom soon expires as soon as you see the price. The Mesh Elite Ice 5 Pro, which currently sits atop the A List, may boast a 24in Iiyama monitor, keyboard and mouse, but it's slower in all our benchmarks - and almost £100 more expensive. Add peripherals to the Midgard and you'll be getting a more powerful, longer lasting package for not much more. It's also a better deal than the recently-reviewed PC Specialist Vortex 860GTX, which costs £133 exc VAT more but is a less impressive performer.
Thanks to the dramatic changes that have swept through the components market in the past few months, it's now possible to get more performance per pound than ever before, with the £779 Chillblast delivering some of the best benchmark results this side of £1,000. If you're after a well-designed and powerful base unit, but don't want to break the bank, then the Midgard is the only true contender.
The Midgard is listed on www.chillblast.com as including an ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card and costing £695, but the specification reviewed here is available at the price quoted - simply specify the HD 5850 manually when ordering.
Author: Mike Jennings
However...
There is nowhere on their site that I can find this overclocked PC with the specs described.
By matbailie on 4 Nov 2009 
When will this be available to buy??on there website
By WILKY99 on 4 Nov 2009
Midgard availability
Thanks for your comments - I've been in touch with Chillblast so hopefully the Midgard will be available to buy before the end of today.
Mike
By Mikey_Jennings on 4 Nov 2009
In fact, I've just been told that the system is live on Chillblast.com right now :) - sorry for the delay!
By Mikey_Jennings on 4 Nov 2009
The right picture?
The picture of the inside of the case is the same picture used in the previous review of the PC Specialist Vortex. Which is wrong?
By phantombudgie on 4 Nov 2009
Hey guys, I've just added it to the front page for easy finding. Inside shot looks right to me :)
By Chillblast on 4 Nov 2009
Radeon 5850 card costs extra !!!
The Midgard actually only comes with the Radeon 4890. You have to pay an extra £83 + vat for the 5850. Either pc pro's editorial was wrong by not saying that they upgraded their spec or Chillblast didn't tell them it comes with a lower spec card and upgraded the machine they gave to PC PRO without telling them so the graphics performance figure comes out better. tut tut !!
By lgray on 4 Nov 2009
The price of the midgard with the 5850 upgrade is exactly as PC Pro's price. This is all by design to give people various graphics and pricing options :)
By Chillblast on 4 Nov 2009
Chillblast. I understand what you are saying but Mike does say base unit and base unit is the starter un-upgraded unit. This isn't. enough said.
By lgray on 4 Nov 2009
Hi Igray
A base unit is simply any PC sold without peripherals, which this is. To be clear, no user upgrades are required at all, it simply offers our customers a choice of various different cards when specifying their Midgard :)
Thanks!
By Chillblast on 4 Nov 2009
Sounds good but...
Sounds good but why do I want to spend this amount of money when an AMD machine will cost you a fraction of the price and deliver similar results?
By sayl1000 on 5 Nov 2009
Delivery Charges to Ireland!
Was trying to order this. Firstly I had to fill out the registration form 6 or 7 times. Each time failing because of invalid username. No reason why. Eventually realised,No capitals allowed. Maybe I'm blind but I don't see any mention of this anywhere.
Should have given up at this stage but tried to check out. I got to the payment page and nearly fell over. £128.40 delivery and wait for it... £19.26 VAT on delivery charges. It would be cheaper to fly over, pick it up myself, spend a night in a quality hotel and fly home. I'm used to rip off prices in Ireland but that is beyond belief.
By ScobieDoo on 5 Nov 2009
Delivery Charges to Ireland
Comment by ScobieDoo refers. I live in Ireland too so I know how we suffer from higher delivery charges applied by many companies. However, I have previously purchased from Dell and from Mesh and I can tell you that you will not be disappointed from buying from Chillblast. You get a competitively priced 5* product, from a small but expert company who provide excellent back up and support (from Martin S) who seems to be in the same place as where the computers are built rather than some disjointed helpdesk in some faraway place.
By PaulDs46 on 5 Nov 2009
Hi Scoobie
If you'd like to email me the system you are thinking of to customspec "AT" chillblast.com I'd be happy to give it the once over and see if we can ship it more competitively for you. Sometimes we can get special one-off rates from City Link if it's close to a weight threshold :)
By Chillblast on 5 Nov 2009
Other Benchmarks
Is there a benchmark for the quietness of the Midgard? As there is normally one for the 'published' review. And on that note, will this review be published in a future issue of the magazine. Thanks
By mr_fitz on 15 Nov 2009
Delivery Wrong
Ordered a stinger system from them a week ago website says shipped in 7-10 days had e mail today after chasing saying delivery is 2-2.1/2 weeks!!
By WILKY99 on 24 Nov 2009
Don't forget the Mesh has an SSD
"The Mesh Elite Ice 5 Pro, which currently sits atop the A List, may boast a 24in Iiyama monitor, keyboard and mouse, but it's slower in all our benchmarks - and almost £100 more expensive. Add peripherals to the Midgard and you'll be getting a more powerful, longer lasting package for not much more."
Add an SSD, as well as the other peripherals, to the cost of the Midgard and it will surely be quite a bit more expensive. Whether SSDs are actually a good buy at the moment is another matter; but it seems to me that could make a big difference to system performance which may not register on your benchmarks. Also, the Ice5 has a bigger hard disk, which is worth a few quid in itself.
Personally, I'd rather have a system with an nVidia GPU as I do quite a bit of OpenGL and ATI drivers have a bad reputation for that (and also Linux in general)... good bang for the buck for gaming, no doubt, but perhaps not ideal for me.
By ptodd1 on 17 Dec 2009
...and also
I also didn't mention that the E2407HDSD screen that comes with the Mesh seems to cost about £160 if brought separately (although annoyingly they only take £95 for configuring without it).
By ptodd1 on 17 Dec 2009
A-listed items should be at reccomended operating conditions and not overclocked
I am surprised that A-listed Pc's etc. are tested on their overclocked conditions rather than the manufacturers reccomended operating settings. If these are tested overclocked then what is the expected life span under these operating conditions?, as a potential customer I would hate to buy a PC for say video editing only to find that after a year my expensive kit fails potentially loosing valuable data and having to waste time re-installing and re-registering software.
Please have a thought about reliability and comparing like for like under normal operating conditions, the fact that some PC's can be overclocked could attract additional points but that should be that.
By georgioua on 29 Dec 2009
Would this be a good system for 3D design work
Hi all,
Just need quick advice. I need to purchase a high-end PC for 3D design work in 3ds-max and AutoCAD. Unfortunately PC Pro do not have a Labs section for such systems.
So can anyone hazard a guess whether this would be a good system for what I need to do?
Thanks.
By valentine_101 on 14 Jan 2010
Stay Away
Speced a system and was told to order by the guy on here and he'd sort out a lower delivery fee to Ireland. When I ordered I got an e-mil from their sales team telling me they don't ship to Ireland. When I queried this i got no response from either the sales guy or the guy on here. Ordered from Overclockers and got a much better system for a better price. delivery for £18 from Overclockers when the initial delivery quote from chillblast was £135 and the cheapest they could do was £54. Totally unprofessional service from Chillblast. Stay away!
By ScobieDoo on 30 Jan 2010
Havoc57
Yikes - Looks like a few 'issues' going on before I place my order with Chillblast - 'tis an icy wind' and all that!!!
By Havoc57 on 1 Feb 2010
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