Talk of the overwrought laptop gimmicks and the Acer Predator 17 would be one of the more ridiculous ones that has ever been seen!
Acer Predator 17 @ IFA 2015
With the push of a button, you can eject the Predator 17’s increasingly-retro optical drive, then throw it in the trash and replace it with an extra fan.
After all, you can never be too cool.
But does it work? One can put the Predator 17 through battery of tests to see how much of a difference one little fan could possibly make.
But before we get into the little fan, let’s talk aesthetics.
The Predator 17 is about as obvious a gaming laptop as you see these days. Big. Boxy. Black and Red. This behemoth is the likes of which I’d expect to see out of Origin instead of Acer. And it’s emblazoned with the Transformers-esque Predator logo on the rear, to boot.
The Predator 17X also features Intel’s unique Core i7-6820HK quad-core processor, which has unlocked multipliers to allow for overclocking. Indeed, Acer says the Core i7-6820HK is capable of going up to 4.0GHz in the Predator 17X. At least, that’s when the processor enters its “Turbo Boost” dynamic frequency. In Acer’s showroom, we observed the Predator 17X running at a scorching 3.9GHz. The overclocking is done through Acer’s PredatorSense software.
This kind of power isn’t easy to keep running at a sensible temperature. That’s where some uncanny engineering feats come into play.
That said, the cooling system isn’t entirely ordinary. Rather than use two fans like the normal Predator 17, the Predator 17X has three. There’s an additional fan towards the front, used to pull in cool air from the front edge of the laptop before it’s filtered through the insides and flushed out through some rear vents.
The fans use Acer’s AeroBlade design, which Acer claims uses the “world’s thinnest metal fan blades.” These are also used in the Predator 17. Acer’s big claim is that the Predator 17X can squeeze better performance out of the GTX 980 than the Asus GX700—even though the Asus has a water-cooling module that should radically boost its cooling capabilities.
In addition to the triple fan design, the Predator 17X has a vapor chamber inside the chassis to improve cooling. A vapor chamber is commonly used in server applications; it takes concentrated heat from a small space, and spreads it out over a larger surface area for more effective dispersal.
Well, Acer does take on Asus with the Predator 17X. But it isn’t cheap. Or pretty. The Acer Predator 17X will be available from July, starting at $2,799/€2,499.
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