Juggernaut is a very apt name for Chillblast’s latest creation as, with an overclocked quad-core processor, 4GB of memory and a fast high-end graphics card, it produces some monster performance figures.

Chillblast has built the Fusion Juggernaut around one of Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPUs that is normally clocked at just 2.66GHz. But Chillblast has opted to overclock this so it actually runs an impressive, and stable, 3.4GHz. To help keep things nice and cool, Chillblast has also chosen an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler.

The quad-core CPU sits in one of the best motherboards around at the moment, Asus’ Rampage Formula (read a review on page 50), which uses Intel’s X48 chipset. The board is an overclocker’s delight as the Bios contains a multitude of adjustments for most of the major components, including the CPU, memory, PCI Express lanes and northbridge. With this many overclocking variables, there’s potential to get the Juggernaut to perform even faster than it does out of the box.

Backing up the CPU is 4GB of Corsair XMS PC2-6400 DDR2 memory which, together with the overclocked CPU, gives the Fusion Juggernaut an impressive PCmark05 overall score of 10,982 - one of the fastest we have ever seen.

Equally impressive is the graphics performance, which comes as no great surprise as the Juggernaut uses one of Nvidia’s Geforce 9800 GX2 dual-GPU graphics cards. The result is a 3Dmark05 score of 22,783 and a jaw-dropping 18,750 in the more demanding 3Dmark06.

If you prefer real game scores, the average frame rate from the World in Conflict benchmark of 59fps (frames per second) at a 1,280x1,024 resolution with all the game details set to high says it all.

The various components are installed in a Coolermaster CM690 case. Although smaller than the same company’s Cosmos case, this still has a good amount of room inside in which to work, which will come in handy should you want to start upgrading components at a later date.

Chillblast supplies a 750GB Samsung F1 hard drive which has a 32MB buffer and a 7,200rpm spin speed, so transferring data on and off will be done quickly and without too much fuss. Should you want more storage space the case has four 3.5in and four 5.25in drive bays free and, with the motherboard supporting Raid arrays, you can either make even larger drives by striping two or more together or add data protection by mirroring drives. For backup there is a 20-speed Samsung dual-layer DVD burner.

Providing all the power is a Thermaltake 750W modular power supply, which is bottom-mounted in the case to allow the generated heat to be vented through the 120mm case fan in the rear panel.

Considering how much is going on inside the Juggernaut, we were surprised at just how quiet it is during operation; admittedly, it’s not silent, but for a gaming system it’s still very impressive.

The motherboard doesn’t provide integrated audio, but you get an Asus soundcard with it that provides eight-channel audio. This is routed directly to the included Creative T7900 7.1 speaker system.

The rest of the hardware is pretty impressive too: a Samsung 245B 24in TFT, Eclipse 2 keyboard and mouse. You also get Razer Diamondback 3G mouse, which is perfect for gaming. Windows Vista Home Premium comes preinstalled and Chillblast also provides a two-year warranty.

All in all, it’s an impressive collection of hardware, but a little on the pricey side.