Acer's new Predator RTX 4090 with unique hybrid cooler, sucks in new thermal testing

Acer is the second system builder that we know of to have its own GeForce RTX 4090, after LENOVO and its RTX 4090 LEGION, with the new Acer RTX 4090 Predator being independently tested by our friends at KitGuru.

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The company is now shipping its new GeForce RTX 4090 Predator graphics card with an interesting hybrid-style cooler inside of its high-end Predator Orion X Gaming PCs. The first review unit has reached KitGuru, who has pulled apart the RTX 4090 Predator graphics card inside of it. The card doesn't actually have a name, but given that it's inside of a Predator gaming PC, it should be the RTX 4090 Predator, right?

Acer's custom GeForce RTX 4090 Predator graphics card is a triple-slot beast, that is almost -- but not quite as -- big as NVIDIA's in-house GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition. It weighs slightly less as well, at 1.8kg for the RTX 4090 Predator compared to 2.19kg for the RTX 4090 FE. Acer uses a matte black plastic shroud with embedded RGB accent LEDs that can be controlled through Acer's in-house Predator software.

We have a single 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector, stock standard display connectivity with 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, and a single HDMI 2.1 port for I/O on the Acer RTX 4090 Predator graphics card.

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Once the cooler is off, we can see that Acer has used a 14+4 (GPU + VRAM) VRM design and a PCB design that is close to the reference PCB design. Acer's hybrid-style cooler is interesting: it uses a copper block that is attached directly to a water pump and a radiator. All of this is inside of the shroud itself, with the radiator measuring 270 x 116 x 29mm. It saves space inside of the PC, versus having an external radiator that takes up considerable space in your case.

• Read more: Lenovo's new LEGION 9000K Gaming PC: Core i9-14900K + custom Lenovo GeForce RTX 4090 LEGION GPU
• Read more: Lenovo's new GeForce RTX 4090 pictured, and man... it's gigantic

KitGuru put the Acer RTX 4090 Predator through its paces: GPU clocks, thermals, and acoustics. Acer ships out its custom RTX 4090 Predator graphics card with a GPU base clock of 2235MHz and GPU boost clock of 2520MHz.

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Even with its hybrid-style cooler, the card boosts up to 2644MHz out of the box, which is 36MHz slower than the slowest RTX 4090... and over 100MHz slower than other liquid-cooled RTX 4090 cards on the market.

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In the average GPU clocks, GPU temperatures, and acoustic level benchmark charts, you can see that the Acer RTX 4090 Predator is not great at all... It's one of the hottest and loudest RTX 4090s on the market. Considering that Acer's flagship Predator Orion-X gaming systems START at $2000, and with an RTX 4090, you're looking at over $5000... you'd want a higher-quality RTX 4090 inside of your new PC.

Reminder: this is Acer's first liquid-cooled hybrid-style design for the RTX 4090... but Acer needs serious work on this if it wants to be taken seriously on a $5000+ purchase. Hat tip to KitGuru for the work they put into this testing, too.