Acer Aspire Predator G7700

Striking looks, but can this brand name performance PC perform where it counts?

Look at that thing. Just take a moment. Even if you don’t like the Predator’s design (and we can understand that), you’ve got to admit that Acer has created a case that is truly unique and striking, a real cut above the square box mentality of most case designs.

What’s more, it’s thoughtfully designed from a technical point of view, as well.

The sliding front panel, which we hate on other cases, is actually quite solid on the Predator. It’s well anchored and never ever feels like it’s going to snap or foul its mechanism, and it looks as good raised as it does lowered (and neither position obscures the front IO ports).

With the panel raised, the real working fascia of the Predator is exposed. Here you have two bays for optical drives, and quite a fancy opening mechanism, and another panel door that reveals four hot-swappable HDD bays. The OS disk is clearly labelled, and in this model there’s only a second drive, but the room for expansion is ideal. The slide-in slide-out mechanism housing the drives is well designed, too, making this a feature that’s easy to use.

The interior is very neat, and all the major components feature airflow guides to make sure intake and exhaust goes where it should. Combined with the water-cooling system keeping the CPU chilled, this means getting to stuff like RAM is a little more convoluted than we like, but certainly not a chore. The cabling is neat, though perhaps not as anal as we’ve come to expect from smaller builders like Scorptech and NRG.

The watercooling is an excellent addition. With a QX9650 under the hood, the Predator is actually an excellent ‘first overclocker’s’ machine. It’s supplied at stock (presumably, Acer is planning to build a lot of these, and doesn’t want to mess about with a stock OC), but there’s ample room for getting your hands dirty. Like a lot of higher end builders, there’s a range of graphics options for the Predator, but this one comes with dual 9800 GTXs, with a total of 1GB of RAM between them. The system also boasts an alarming 8GB of DDR2-800 RAM, which is also the same burnt orange as the case. Thankfully, a 64-bit OS allows all the memory to be addressed, but we still think it’s a touch of overkill.



But how does all this tech gel together when it comes to actually delivering the goods? Only our benchmarks know the answer. And, now, you.

Frankly, we were impressed. In 3DMark Vantage the Predator pulled down a score of p10,002 marks, which is pretty impressive for what is now, effectively, ‘old’ technology. It laughed at Crysis – though it glitched before the benchmark could complete, the average fps was sitting around 35-plus, while the max frames pumped out per second was above 45.

You’re always going to get more bang for your buck if you build yourself, but by the same token, you’re not going to get a system – with matching monitor! – that looks quite like this one. It is expensive, yes, but a lot of care has gone into the build and specs. If you’ve got the cash, it’s an easy machine to recommend.