CHILLBLAST Fusion Axion

VERDICT Few expenses are spared in this potent and well-connected desktop system

- James Archer

NEWAMD CHIPS mean new AMD-based PCs, the first of which we’re looking at is the Fusion Axion. Like the CCL Paladin opposite, it’s based around the Ryzen 7 3700X, an octa-core CPU that’s only one step down from the premier Ryzen 9 3900X (page 30).

This being £525 more expensive than the Paladin might raise eyebrows, but there’s a lot more about the Fusion Axion that makes it a true high-ender. It has a more powerful GPU, in the form of an MSI-made GeForce RTX 2080, and it also completely ignores slow mechanical storage in favour of dual SSDs.

LUCKY SEVEN

Still, the Ryzen 7 3700X is the star of the show. Although it has a higher maximum boost clock than the preceding Ryzen 7 2700X (Shopper 366), at 4.4GHz, its 3.6GHz base clock is actually 100MHz slower. AMD will likely be relying on the move to a 7nm manufacturing process, the greater efficiency of which should help the CPU perform more processes per clock cycle, in order to make up performance.

Happily, it doesn’t just make up for that 100MHz drop, it blazes past the Ryzen 7 2700X in speed tests. Most impressive is the Fusion Axion’s 189 in our image-editing test, which shows that AMD has finally caught up with Intel on single-core performance.