I think Acer has finally figured it out.
For the first time ever, as far as I know, Acer has done a pre-built gaming
rig that ships with NVIDIA's topofthe-line graphics card installed.
And the Predator G1 borrows a lot more
from enthusiasts and boutique system builders than just the idea of packing a
proper GPU inside. Let's take a closer
look.
Intel's Skull Canyon Nook features a sixth generation Core i7 processor and
Thunderbolt 3. You can learn more at the link in the video description.
Inside the box, you'll get the following: a Predator G1 gaming PC, some
extra screws and cables, a surprisingly competent set of peripherals. The
mouse's clicks are pleasantly tactile and it includes extra buttons for back
forward and toggling between three preset DPI settings. And the keyboard is
dual color LED back lit with a toggable gaming mode and Kaiwa mechanical key
switches mounted to what seems to be a steel back plate. Then if you get the
special edition launch bundle, there's also a copy of The Division and this is
a new one, an Acer Predator themed luggage with cutouts to carry your
gaming rig for when you travel. Leaving last but not least, two standard PC
power cables and two laptop power bricks in a neat looking holder. That Wait a
minute. What? Two power bricks? Yes, my
friends. The idea that I pitched to Cooler Master's product manager almost
three years ago of moving the power supply or two as it were outside an
otherwise standard desktop chassis for improvements to both thermals and size
cuz I'm a genius has officially come to
life courtesy of Acer of all people.
Well, whatever. Let's see if it worked. But first, I need to know if they impose
limits on the hardware that can be used in the Predator G1. So, let's pop her
open. which reveals a very interesting
layout. The centerpiece is a Core i76700
nonK quadcore hyperthreaded CPU, so no
overclocking. There's 32 gigs of DDR4 RAM and a cleverly positioned blower
case fan that should draw air across the front where a 512 gig M.2 to SATA SSD, a
slim DVD writer and a two TBTE hard drive reside across the memory sticks
and CPU area. And finally, over the motherboard heat sinks that cool both
the CPU power delivery modules and the
DC toDC converters that take 19vt
external power and turn it into the 12, 5, and 3.3 volt juice needed by your
computer guts. Not something that you often see on a pre-built motherboard.
Mind you, there's not much about this motherboard that's normal. Contrary to
the statement made by this unfortunate Acer spokesperson who's totally getting
called out right now. Like a mini ITX
board, it has only a single PCIe 3.06x
expansion slot, but it's closer in total
size to an MATX board. So, what is the
extra space being used for? A number of things. LED headers for the threezone
LED illumination that can be configurated regrettably not to all
operate on the same cycle for some reason using Acer's Predator Sense
software. One of only a couple bloy
pre-installed applications by the way. There's more room for memory sticks. So,
thanks to its four DIM slots, the Predator G1 can be upgraded to 64 gigs
of RAM. There's power distribution for the converted input power. The inclusion
of an extra PCIe power port and cable is a really nice touch, by the way, for
someone who might want to upgrade the graphics card in the future. And the
very open CPU socket area, which should help the performance of the fairly OEM
looking cooling solution that Acer has pre-installed. We'll talk about how well
this works later. For now, there are a couple more items to highlight in here.
Acer has included an extra 2 and 1/2 in drive cage with pre-run cables and
screws in case you want to add another 2 and 1/2 in SSD or hard drive, which is
much appreciated. And I want to take a closer look at the way the GTX 1080
graphics card is installed. So, it's covered with a Predator branded shroud,
but the unmistakable green glow visible from the bottom tells us two things.
It's a Founders Edition, and it's installed upside down. So Acer used a
hard PCB link to extend the PCI Express 16 neck slot, meaning that you can't
admire your graphics card with the side panel off, but shorter links are less
prone to signal degradation. And in theory, the way that they're pulling
fresh air in from the other side panel, keeping it contained then within its own
cooling zone and exhausting it out the back should deliver really solid thermal
results, which we'll get to. But first, a look at the outside. So, the top and
front of the Predator G1 features Acer's aggressive tank tread styling that I
personally think works better here than it did on the G6 due to the machine
smaller size. There's a power button flanked by two headset holders for some
reason, the optical drive we saw on the inside, and front IO, so an SD card
reader, a USB 310 GB type-C port, a USB
3 5GB typeA port, and a couple of audio
jacks. Around the back, the rest of the IO is actually pretty lackluster. The
3DPs, HDMI, and DVI provided by the
graphics card are accompanied only by 7.1 audio jacks with no digital output,
four USB3 5GB ports, and the DC input
jacks that may be at least partially responsible for the limited number of
USB ports on this machine. Remember that external USB devices can draw up to 7
1/2 watts each through the USB charging specification. And while the dual power
supplies confused the bananas out of my power meter, some napkin math tells us
that we're not that far off of their rated output. So then, let's answer the
big question. Was this approach worthwhile when Silverstone just
released a power supply that we featured in our most compact gaming PC V2 over
there that's cheaper, smaller, delivers
50% more power, and with some creativity
should be possible to integrate into a similar size chassis, especially if
you're willing to give up the optical drive. Well, actually, it's looking
pretty good for the G1 while being no
louder than the graphics card would be on its own. in another enclosure or even
on an open air test bench, the Predator G1 managed to turn in better thermal
performance than its bigger brother in spite of its much smaller size. Not to
mention that it's summer now versus March when we were checking out the G6.
And it did all this while being rock solid stable throughout my testing,
avoiding any and all thermal throttling on the CPU and letting the GTX 1080
boost its clocks, albeit not fully, even with a synthetic stress test running on
the CPU and the RAM concurrently.
That means that whether we're talking about light workstation use, or gaming
on a conventional screen, a G-Sync monitor, or in VR, the Predator G1 will
perform. All of which leads us then to a pretty interesting conclusion. Acer has
learned a lot over the last few years, going from poorly balanced gaming PCs
with lackluster graphics cards and overpowered CPUs with too much RAM to
correctly configured gaming PCs that unfortunately suffered from OEM grade
thermal management. all the way to this compact, no compromises mini gaming rig
that stood up to everything I could throw at it as long as I didn't want to
overclock or run the drives in RAID or
anything like that. Okay, custom still has some advantages. They still have
some things to learn about making a product really feel premium. The inside
should be black to go with the black PCB motherboard, which is a step forward in
itself, by the way. The cable should be sleeved and NVMe M.2 2 SSD should have
been included for a flagship product. And I'd like to see the next Predator
aesthetic reimagining move to more premium materials.
But with that said, the main complaints
about pre-builts from the 2000s, crappy motherboards and power supplies, limited
to no upgradability, and high prices are
quickly fading away. Which isn't to say that the Predator G1 is cheap. Okay, the
price is still high, but you're getting a lot of firepower in a surprisingly
compact little battle station if you're willing to pay for it. So, thanks for
watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like
button, or even check out the link to where to buy the Predator G1 in the
video description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which
has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should definitely join. Now that you're done
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