Acer Predator G9-791

Interior
Hardware wise, the two series are built on Intel’s Skylake-H platforms, with options for Core i5-6300HQ or Core i7-6700HQ processors, up to 64 GB of DDRAM 4 (4 SODIMMs) and Nvidia 980M graphics with 4 GB of video memory. If you don’t need that king of graphics power or you’re on a lower budget, both can be also configured with the Nvidia 970M 3 GB chip. For storage, you get a PCIe Gen3 slot for a fast SSD, plus a 2.5″ inch SATA drive bay for your massive storage, but both can also take a secondary 2.5″ storage drive, according to the specs (can’t tell for sure if that includes replacing the optical drive with a storage-bay, but that’s probably the case).
Buyers will be interested in how easy these laptops could be upgraded, and from what I can tell there is a quick-service tray on the bellies of both these Predators, which should offer access to the RAM slots and the storage bays.
Ok, so by the looks of it, these laptops won’t come short in terms of performance, but performance is closely tied to the cooling solution on such powerful configurations. A proper solution would ensure the hardware won’t throttle under load.


Acer did share some aspects about their approach, but details are still rather scarce for now. We do know that both notebooks get two rear-exhaust fans hidden behind those aggressive red grills, but the number of pipelines, their design and whether the fans run in series or in parallel is still unknown. Acer advertises a technology called Predator DustDefender for these fans, which basically consists of high-speed fans able to alternate their airflow, meant to improve heat dissipation, lower the amount of gathered dust and reduce noise.
Acer also includes an accessory called Predator FrostCore with these laptops, which is an extra fan that can replace the optical drive and will help with cooling. And last but not least, the Predators will include a fan management software called CoolBoost, which will allow you to adjust the air flow and fan-speed.
So at least on a first look, Acer’s engineers are aware of the crucial role the cooling has on such computers and took the necessary steps to combat throttling and performance loss, but we’ll have to see how the system perform in real-life before we get to draw any conclusions.

These aside, there are a few other things worth mentioned here. First of all, both the 15 and 17-inch Predators should punch high-quality sound, with a 2.1 speakers system (6W) on the smaller model and a 4.2 system (12W) on the larger version, both with Dolby Audio Surround. The woofers are placed on the belly, while the speakers are on the front lips, pushing sound towards users. Gamers tend to use headphones often though, and Acer thought about that as well, making sure the 3.5mm jack can support premium headphones with an impedance of up to 600 ohms.
Besides this, I should add a few words about the Killer DoubleShot Pro connectivity Acer chose for this device, which allows us to use the Wired and the dual-band WiFi AC connections simultaneously, for a faster and more reliable network access. Users also have the option of configuring which app uses the Gigabit LAN and which uses the WiFi solutions.
Last but not least it’s worth adding that Acer put some large 88 Wh batteries on these two machines, which should offer up to 2 hours of gaming and roughly 5 hours of daily use between charges. Battery life is perhaps not very important on such computers, but it’s still healpfull to be able to use the computer on battery when needed.