ACER Predator Helios 500 Hands-on, Quick Review: Overclockable Monster

The gaming notebook is fully customizable and overclockable

ACER’s not one to shy away from announcing fully decked-out gaming notebooks with insane innards to boost its young Predator gaming brand. That’s exactly what they did today at their Next event here in New York City with the Predator Helios 500. The new notebook is a fully decked-out machine that’s insanely overclockable, with quite a bit of thermal headroom for enthusiasts that want to tinker.

Initial impressions: a massive beast that’s bursting with power

There’s an easy way to spot what product goes where in ACER’s Predator lineup. A notebook that sports red highlights fall into the more mainstream gaming line, while products with the frost blue coloration falls into the more premium gaming lineup. One look at the Helios 500 and it’s obvious that it slots neatly into the higher-tier Predator gaming roster, thanks to the liberal use of blue highlights in the chassis and the keys.

As far as styling goes, the Helios 500 has sharp, angular lines which is pretty much what you’d expect from a gaming notebook of its caliber. It’s certainly no lightweight, considering what’s under the hood. The display is large, coming in at 17.3-inches, and there’s two display choices for the discerning gamer – either a 4K display or a full HD one. The full HD option will obviously be cheaper, but whatever the choice you’ll be getting a 144Hz capable panel with NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology.

Because of the overall size of the notebook you’re getting a roomy keyboard plus a bunch of ports, including dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, display and HDMI ports and the standard USB ports. There’s also dedicated subwoofers for better sound when you’re blasting your enemies. Killer DoubleShot Pro networking ensures your connection is as stable as possible when battling online.

Inside the Helios 500 is an 8th generation Intel Core i9+ processor, along with an NVIDIA GTX 1070 graphics card. Both are fully overclockable, and gamers can crank up the voltage to their hearts’ content (within reason) if they wish. ACER has outfitted the Helios 500 with their proprietary AeroBlade 3D fans to keep thermal throttling at bay during extended gaming sessions.

Aside from the killer CPU and GPU, the Helios 500 will also be available in a number of configurations with ultra-fast NVMePCIe SSDs. Obviously configurations with more high-speed solid-state storage will crank up the price, but if you’re already looking at buying this monster it’s more than likely that you’re looking to squeeze every last ounce of performance from it. You can also stuff in up to 64GB of memory into the thing if you really wanted to.

ACER also announced the Predator Helios 300 Special Edition, which is essentially an updated version of last year’s notebook with better internals and a whole new color. The all-white aluminum chassis and gold trim give it a very distinct look compared to the hundreds of other black-clad gaming notebooks in the market today.

The 15.6-inch display has an upgraded 144Hz refresh rate, along with an 8th Generation Intel Core i7+ which is also overclockable, and a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. If you’re the type that have deep pockets, you can spend a lot more by outfitting it with a 512GB PCIeGen 3 NVMe solid state drive and a 2 TB hard disk drive.