Chillblast Fusion Nano Fury review
Powerful gaming PCs commonly come with big, beefy graphics cards requiring correspondingly cumbersome and unwieldy system cases which really don’t look good in a typical living room. If you want something closer to the size and convenience of a console system, you will usually have to make large sacrifices when it comes to graphics power - which would probably negate one of the main reasons to go with a PC system in the first place.
Chillblast’s Nano PCs have for a long time offered a good balance of size and performance, by making use of small form factor Mini ITX components: The system case, motherboard and graphics card are all considerably smaller in size than in a desktop PC, making them easier to transport to LAN parties, or to tuck away next your living room TV.
What you gain in compactness, you often lose in terms of reduced internal expansion room, fewer motherboard slots, and crucially for a gaming system, a limit on the size of the graphics card you can fit in the case. Previous high-end models have used the popular GeForce GTX 970 from Nvidia (see last year's Chillblast Fusion Nano review), which optionally comes in a Mini ITX format, but the GTX 970 is a few steps down from the top of the ladder when it comes to performance.
With the new Fusion Nano Fury, Chillblast has replaced the GTX 970 with the R9 Nano from AMD - a graphics card packed with AMD’s top tier R9 Fury graphics technology, but specially re-engineered to fit into small form factor PCs. The result is a Mini ITX PC capable of previously unheard-of gaming performance, although it does come with a 38 percent price premium of the Nvidia-based model. That means it will cost you £1379.99 from Chillblast's website.
That sort of money can buy you a lot of traditional desktop PC, or a gaming laptop. So you really need a good reason to want a compact gaming PC, as you'll get better value from a full-size machine. Don't forget that the Fusion Nano Fury is backed by Chillblast’s five year collect and return warranty, the first two years of which cover both parts and labour.
It's also available in various colours: red, blue, black, green, gold and silver/grey.
