A TechTuber has recently been on a tour of the Design Center at Acer HQ in Taiwan. Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus revealed the headline grabbing Acer Predator GeForce RTX 4090 with integrated liquid cooling (no external radiator), as well as another prototype / project flagship AMD Radeon graphics card.
Acer caused a stir last September by revealing its entry to the modern discrete GPU market with a Predator branded Intel Arc A770. It entered the GPU market with some confidence and gusto, using its premium gaming Predator name, and delivering a design with an interesting mix of blower and axial cooling. Now it looks like its new business thrust has been successful enough to inspire Acer to address the broader market. Yes, it is now busy designing flagship AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.
The Nvidia flagship card is far more advanced in the design process at this time, and that is why it grabs our headline, so let us look at it first. Acer's Predator GeForce RTX 4090 has a handsome design, using the typically angular Predator design language. At first glance it looks like a unfussy but boxy 3-slot card, which is pretty normal for an RTX 4090, one of the best GPUs of 2023. However, under the twin 100mm axial fans is a fully integrated liquid cooling system. Beneath the spinners you will find a 22mm thick finned cooling 227mm long radiator, the underside of which has a rectangular block which mates with the copper GPU contact section. We saw all this because Burke was allowed to disassemble the engineering sample.
Other things we learned about the custom RTX 4090 design was that, like EVGA designs, there is a protruding copper block for GPU contact. Burke reasoned that this allows for more precise machining of this crucial section, with greater flatness. The larger copper cooling plate area extends over the VRAM chips - all bolted to the radiator above it. The integrated water cooling necessitates a dual pump system, both at the back end of the card. Elsewhere in the video you will note that the Acer design uses a single 12VHPWR power connector, a full triple slot bracket (triple slot cards sometimes have twin slot brackets), as well as unobstructed top venting across the full length of the PCB.
There is much less to be said about the AMD flagship graphics card which Acer Predator is developing. It is earlier in development than the Nvidia model, so Acer (and Burke) didn’t want to talk too much about the finer details. Without a guided tour it is still apparent that this design has so far evolved into a graphics card with a triple axial fan, vertical exhaust, twin 8-pin power connector (option for a third). Additionally, Burke's video showed that the Radeon was pretty much the same size as its GeForce rival.
"Acer's plan is to try and move towards more stand-alone video cards," said Burke in his video conclusion. But before you all get excited that Acer is going to try and take over EVGA's place in the GeForce market, the PC tech YouTuber warned that "currently, Nvidia has not approved Acer to be a board partner." Thus, the less-developed flagship Radeon might have a better chance of hitting retail… Meanwhile, Acer has launched its first consumer graphics card with an AMD GPU - one of the new Radeon RX 7600 models. You can watch the full Gamers Nexus video from Acer HQ, below.
