AMD had a great 2018 and has penetrated the desktop market quite well. One area they lack focus on at the moment though, is the gaming laptop segment – where there is no available H series processors to properly compete with Intel’s i5-8300H or i7-8750H. On the GPU side of things, no manufacturers have yet to fit any Vega GPU inside any of their laptops. Luckily, Acer’s gaming brand – Predator – is ready to change all that with the Helios 500 that is packed not with just a powerful H series CPU but a full 65W Desktop class Ryzen 7 2700 and all it’s 8core/16 thread goodness.
We don’t have benchmarks yet versus the H counterparts but ASUS ROG actually brought in the first gen Ryzen 7 1700x in the form of the GL702ZC and, till now, no laptop CPU comes to the performance of that laptop in raw rendering and compute power. The GPU was also a letdown only being an RX580 which goes toe to toe with the GTX1060 but has found no real following in the laptop market.
In benchmarks and tests online, we found the Ryzen 7 2700 to be of similar performance to the Ryzen 7 1700x. The real winner is the Ryzen 7 2700x but that might’ve proven to hot to handle in terms of cooling it in such a limited amount of space. Nevertheless, we expect the Helios 500’s R7 2700 to outperform all competing laptop CPUs. As for the Vega 56, given that the there is theoretically not performance difference in the desktop and mobile chips – it boils down to how each brand can bring out its true potential by applying proper and sufficient cooling and Acer claims to have just done that.
They’ve focused much of 2018 in bettering their cooling technology, receiving patents for over hundreds of them, and continuing to develop them as we speak. It also helps that the chassis is on the large side, so there should be a fair amount of space for heat to dissipate, with the help of Predator Sense technology, 6 large heatpipes and the exclusive Aeroblade fan technology.
For the Philippines, the Helios 500 will come outfitted with a 144hz 15.6″ Panel with freesync, which the Vega56 will surely be able to maximize, a 1TB + 256GB Pcie Nvme storage option and 16GB of DDR4 memory.
Here are more details on the Helios 500 in graphic version, and the price is at the end of this article.
Display 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS (144Hz, FreeSync)
CPU Desktop AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Graphics Radeon RX Vega 56 (8GB HBM2)
Memory 16GB DDR4-2400MHz
Storage 1TB HDD + 256GB PCIe NvMe SSD
Networking Killer DoubleShot Pro Wireless-AC 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Ethernet jack
Video Ports HDMI, DisplayPort
USB Ports (3) USB 3.0, (2) USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2)
Audio 2.1 Speaker configuration, with subwoofer headphone jack, microphone jack
Camera HD webcam
Battery 4-cell Lithium ion, 4810 mAh
Power Adapter 330W
Operating System Windows 10 Home
Dimensions (WxDxH) 16.9 x 11.7 x 1.5 inches / 429.2 x 297.2 x 38.1 mm
Weight 8.8 pounds (4kg)
The Predator Helios 500 is now available in Predator’s newly opened concept store in North Edsa for PHP134,995.