Acer has brought some changes to its fancy liquid-cooled graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090. But an in depth review from KitGuru highlights a bunch of problems. In a world filled with regular air-cooled graphics cards, Acer wanted to be different with its Predator Orion X gaming computer.
Acer took a strange approach by putting the cooling part right into the graphics card. They thought it would make things cooler. But when KitGuru tested the temperatures, it turned out the graphics card got really hot, reaching 76 degrees Celsius. That’s even hotter than the air-cooled ones, and it became the hottest among all the tested GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs.
The heat problem didn’t stop there. The memory chips on Acer’s graphics card got super hot too, hitting 96 degrees Celsius. In comparison, Nvidia’s Founder’s Edition kept things much cooler at 84 degrees Celsius. Acer’s plan to make things cooler turned into a big problem – the graphics card ended up creating too much heat.
To make things worse, Acer’s attempt at a quiet cooling system turned into a noisy mess. Instead of being silent, the cooling system got really loud because the graphics card was so hot. This was surprising because usually, liquid cooling systems are known for being both effective and quiet. Acer’s one didn’t live up to that expectation.
Not only did Acer’s graphics card struggle with heat and noise, but it also fell behind in performance. It didn’t run as fast as other liquid-cooled graphics cards, like the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X. Acer’s card had an average speed of 2,644 MHz, while the MSI one hit an impressive 2,820 MHz.
People also questioned Acer’s choice of a 270mm radiator. Some said it was too small for a powerful 450-watt graphics card. This was interesting because another graphics card, the MSI Suprim Liquid X, had a smaller 240mm radiator but still worked well. KitGuru thinks there might be problems with how Acer designed the baseplate and the thickness of the thermal pads for the memory.
Now, everyone is waiting to see how Acer will respond to these problems. The situation is a reminder that making effective liquid cooling systems for high-end graphics cards is tricky. Acer’s attempt to do something different with a liquid-cooled graphics card teaches us that not all new ideas work out the way we expect.
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