Acer’s determination to pair an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with a beefy, twelfth Gen Intel chip could seem a bit of unhinged. And with a price ticket within the vary of £1,686, it definitely gave us a shock—we do not are inclined to advocate laptops with RTX 3060s in them for far more than £1,000 at present.
A lot to my delight, the Predator Helios 300 (PH317-56-79UB) I would been despatched comes with a powerful 140W GPU tucked below the hood, and it is one which does a significantly better job of complementing the 14-core, 20-thread Intel CPU Acer chosen from Intel’s twelfth Gen lineup. Whereas the Predator Helios 300’s lethal {hardware} tag-team did not fairly persuade me of the assigned value, the addition of a speedy, excessive capability SSD, 16GB of twin channel DDR5 reminiscence, and a clean 1440p display makes the config a darn sight extra tempting for the worth.
Just a few settings tweaks are gonna be essential to profit from that 165Hz refresh charge panel, particularly at 1440p. Even out of the field it is clear this laptop computer has the potential to push these body charges excessive sufficient in a bunch of video games at 1080p.
In testing, I picked the equally priced Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (opens in new tab) gaming laptop computer and Asus TUF Gaming A15 (opens in new tab) to check the Helios to. Each come touting an AMD Ryzen 9 5800H CPU and Nvidia RTX 3070 combo, with TUF’s GPU sitting at simply 95W. The Razer Blade 14 (opens in new tab) makes an look as a result of, though it is a bit of costlier than the remaining, the Ryzen 9 5900HX and 100W RTX 3060 with a 1440p panel is considerably nearer to the Helios’ config.
Acer Predator Helios 300 Spec
Processor: Intel Core i7 12700H, 2.3GHz
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 140W
Reminiscence: 16GB DDR5-4800
Show: 17.3-inch IPS 165Hz
Decision: 2560 x 1440
Storage: Samsung PM9A1 1TB NVMe SSD
Battery: 90Wh
Connectivity: 1x USB Sort-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB Sort-A 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB Sort-C 3.2 Gen 2, 1x DisplayPort through Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm Combo Jack, in-built mic
Dimensions: 28 x 399 x 295mm
Weight: 3kg (6.6lbs)
Worth: £1,686 (opens in new tab), (closest US $1,800 (opens in new tab))
The underside line? Regardless of sitting neatly between the TUF and the Blade when it comes to value, the Helios manages to slay all three in each artificial and real-world GPU benchmarks, aside from Metro Exodus the place it sits virtually on par with the TUF.
In relation to barely older video games like F1 2020, it manages to interrupt the 165 fps barrier even at extremely settings—solely by a bit of, however that is when confronted with a rainy-ass Vietnam circuit. With a number of tweaks it is easy to attain body charges in extra of 165 fps to profit from the panel in a great deal of at present’s video games, so long as you do not thoughts sacrificing a few of that candy constancy.
In relation to ray tracing, the Helios blows all three out of the water within the 3DMark Port Royal artificial efficiency benchmark, practically doubling the Razer Blade’s rating, although it falls behind the Legion in ray tracing checks.
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That is to not say switching on ray tracing makes video games unplayable—61 fps is greater than acceptable for Metro Exodus—however even with Nvidia’s DLSS turned on its clear the 140W RTX 3060 nonetheless has hassle matching the RTX 3070 when it comes to real-world ray tracing efficiency, significantly when confronted with an intensive recreation like Metro.
As for the Intel Core i7 12700H’s contribution to gaming efficiency, Hitman 3’s CPU-focused Dartmoor benchmark reveals a blistering 30 frames extra per second than the Legion 5 Professional delivered. A 3DMark Timespy CPU rating of 13,452 beats out the checklist of comparative laptops by a good-looking quantity, and the CPU exhibits off in rendering, too. The Core i7 12700H’s multi-core efficiency is spectacular, and it does an important job of video encoding, with a 55 fps common over the 41–44 fps the others delivered.
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Sadly, the Core i7 12700H is not essentially the most environment friendly cellular CPU of Intel’s twelfth Gen lineup, and paired with the 140W RTX 3060 it is left the battery life in a fairly horrible place—74 minutes is hardly sufficient time to get a spherical of gaming in unplugged, however that is the tradeoff we have grown to count on for a machine that ticks each the gaming and productiveness containers.
What’s spectacular, nonetheless, is that energy does not translate into topping out on thermals. We’re a most CPU temperature of 85°C and max GPU temps of lower than 80°C. That is in no way unhealthy, in comparison with the opposite laptops in that value vary, and you’ll all the time slap the turbo button on the highest left of the keyboard when you really feel it getting a bit too scorching. It’s going to abruptly whir as much as someplace between 68–75 decibels, however lay your hand on the underside for half a minute and you may bodily really feel the chassis cool off. It is nice for that panic second while you realise you’ve got been protecting the exhausts and have to rectify the warmth that is gathered.
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Loading Cities Skylines with my 10,000 mods did not depart me lengthy sufficient to go make a cup of tea.
And it isn’t simply the CPU/GPU combo that slaps, both. Acer’s determination so as to add a 1TB Gen4 Samsung NVMe SSD (opens in new tab) is way appreciated, since we want extra laptops with excessive capability SSDs in the marketplace. Pace-wise, we’re simply over 10 seconds real-world load instances, which continues to be a darn sight higher than the laptops I am evaluating it to. Loading Cities Skylines with my 10,000 mods did not depart me lengthy sufficient to go make a cup of tea, actually, which I suppose is technically a superb factor.
By way of RAM, Acer is available in with 16GB dual-channel DDR5 reminiscence, with the SiSoft Sandra checks uncovering a whopping 41.52GB/s bandwidth to play with. That gives quite a lot of slack on the subject of multitasking and is virtually supersonic in comparison with the comparability lappies.
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It is a comparatively chunky machine, however to not the purpose of taking on your desk. It is simple sufficient for me to carry one-handed however becoming it right into a backpack was a little bit of a stretch, that is as a result of 17.3-inch display. The thickness could make it a bit of awkward, and it isn’t as svelte as say the Razer Blade, however that little additional thickness helps afford this machine nice thermals. With a bit of backpack improve, I’d fortunately carry it to and from work.
The one difficulty with utilizing it at work is a matter the Razer blade suffers with too: the actual fact it has a dumb gamery emblem (sorry Acer) slapped onto the again of an in any other case beautiful chassis. The metallic blue is good and refined, though the sides are a bit of sharp for sitting on my precise lap, it is nonetheless a nifty and nonetheless very moveable machine.
As for the peripherals and ports, the addition of Thunderbolt 4 is nice, together with the couple of USB Sort-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports you get, although a number of extra would not have gone amiss. I am actually proud of each the excessive positioning of the included 2.1MP digicam, and the actual fact it runs at 60Hz. A high quality webcam on a gaming laptop computer that is not pointing up my nostril, for as soon as.
I am not a large fan of the keyboard’s really feel, however no less than it is full dimension. Having spent quite a lot of time trying out press samples of US keyboards and laptops, it is also good for me to make use of a lappy with a UK keyboard structure. Though that does deliver me to one of many main downsides: US availability.
The closest config I might discover within the US solely comes with a 144Hz 1080p display and half the SSD storage, and customarily it is promoting for round $1,800, which I am unable to wrap my head round. Principally, I will not be recommending it for you US people, sorry, however when you’re out there for an honest gaming laptop computer within the UK, this machine is killer. What actually makes for a worthwhile spend right here is the 1440p panel topping a beefy config, with the remaining simply serving because the icing on the cake.