Chillblast Fusion Storm Trooper review

No two ways about it, the Chillblast Fusion Storm Trooper has an exceptionally silly name. Take a look at the system’s NZXT Phantom chassis, though, and it begins to make a little more sense. The white and black look is more than reminiscent of the Empire’s finest, and if you squint hard enough you can almost make out a face.

It’s as imposing as a phalanx of troops, and at 540mm tall and 623mm from front to back it’s one of the largest desktop PCs we’ve come across. A mixture of meshed panels and angled sections set off the stark colour scheme nicely, and the imposing size is backed up by superb build quality. The side panels are constructed from thick sheets of steel, and the rest of the structure is similarly sturdy. Even the plastic door on the front feels tough.

Adding to the industrial effect are five fan controls on the enclosure’s roof for adjusting the speed of the case fans. And this unconventional addition is joined by a host of other useful features. The motherboard tray is scattered with rubber-rimmed cable holes, and there’s also a gap for accessing the Titan Fenrir CPU cooler’s backplate for removal and replacement. The power supply sits on rubber feet to reduce noise, and the system also features pairs of USB 3 and eSATA ports alongside more conventional options.

Given the chassis’ titanic proportions, it’s hardly suprising to find there’s masses of room inside. You get five vacant hard disk bays for starters, there’s also four free 5.25in bays and all feature tool-free mounting systems.

The Asus Sabertooth X58 motherboard provides plenty of upgrade space. Two PCI Express x16 sockets lie vacant, and there’s a pair of PCI Express x1 slots alongside five SATA/300 ports and three vacant DIMM sockets. Note that one of these is impeded by the chunky CPU cooler, making access difficult.

The rest of the specification is as befits a £1,199 exc VAT PC. Six gigabytes of RAM is plenty to keep things ticking over, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is loaded onto an 80GB Corsair Force solid-state drive. Traditional storage is provided by a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 disk and there’s a Blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo drive for HD movie duties.