Kickstarter project - AquaTouch ITX Gaming PC: One solution to rising RAM prizes and GPU Shortage?

A few days ago, I stumbled on this Kickstarter campaign of an ITX gaming PC:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aquatouch/aquatouch-built-in-transparent-touch-screen-itx-pc/description

The AquaTouch ITX PC Project integrates a 10.4" 1080p touchscreen.

While on the other side, any GPU will be mounted vertically
using a riser card which the devs will provide

Claims to have as much flexibility and power as any larger tower PC.

CONTEXT

Now as to the context of backing this project is that as many of you may know that DDR5 RAM prices have been increasing sharply that it's almost not really feasible to get RAM new anymore. Coupled with the fact that as a result of RAM chip shortage also affecting GPU production. So, the question is...

Can gaming computers still be budget?

Will AquaTouch seems to think so.

Why ITX?

ITX Form factors have always been a popular choice and building one is not cheap and a labour of love as it takes quite abit of thinking of fiddling of components inside a small chassis. AquaTouch offers that construction as their sorta pre-build. Despite the smaller size, it's claimed that it will offer almost as much of an upgrade path as a standard PC.

CPU / Mobo Combo: Ryzen 9 9955HX3D
16 Cores, 32 Threads, 2.3-5.4GHz, 128MB L3 Cache inc 64MB 3D V-Cache

Don't get me wrong. It IS a laptop based CPU. But outside of the AI capable CPUs, the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is probably actually the best consumer grade CPU available and it is more than capable of duking it out with some of the other top tier desktop CPUs AMD has in the market. With it being 16 Cores and 32 threads, if you're into productivity and video streaming, this CPU is more than capable to do it. It resembles closely to the desktop based 9950X3D with a far lower 55W-75W TDP for efficiency than the full fat 170W. This is a rare example because there are only a small handful of laptops that comes with this CPU and you'll find it in high end heavy gaming laptops. By default, the 9955HX has 64MB of base Level 3 Cache. And as always with all X3D line of CPUs, an additional 64MB of 3D V-Cache is supplied as well, something the AI CPU equivalent, the Ryzen 9 AI Max+ 395 doesn't have.

The boost clocks of the 9955HX3D are the same at 5.4 GHz max. It is a fully unlocked CPU. But I doubt you need to tweak this any further. Furthermore, I am abit skeptical as to whether the included cooling solution can keep up.

As to what motherboard this is paired with remains to be seen. However, you can get the case barebones' unit that comes with this CPU / Mobo combo instead of a full system. Its rear USB-C port does have USB 4.0 support which is not really super needed, but nice to have.

Touchscreen: 10.4" 1080p

What is unique is that a 1080p touchscreen is integrated to side of the case and can be connected via its HDMI cable that comes with the unit. Although technically that means you don't need an external screen to power up the computer, it does make diagnosing and troubleshooting without needing an external monitor easier. Most people will use this as a secondary monitor to monitor temperatures and hardware. But can also add some utility and productivity usage like monitoring streams and chats.

MSI Ventus RTX 5070 12GB Twin Fan or Gigabyte RTX 5070

To keep it light, small and relatively compact for the build, AquaTouch opted for a either a MSI RTX 5070 Twin Fan, from the Ventus line or a Gigabyte RTX 5070. I'll not keep this card, I'd sell it for an upgrade to an 5080, which the 850W SFX PSU will happily support, as long as the card is no larger than 320mm long. Width wise shouldn't be a problem as preview pics show that the GPU is mounted horizontally using a Riser cable which is also supplied. As to how it performs, with 12 GB of VRAM and 6144 CUDA cores, it should perform between the 4070 Super and 4070 Ti.

32GB RAM DDR5 5600MHz

The reason why now this would be an enticing to get the full setup, purely because of the RAM. 32GB DDR5 can go as high as 700 SGD. So it may not be a bad idea to go for this PC as it's already making up about the third of the cost of the PC if I do include shipping. Especially for Desktop RAM. And the perk of this build is that it is definitely the case. The RAM shipped is desktop RAM.

1TB PNY CS2150 SSD

This SSD will double as your boot drive. This is nowhere near top of the line but it's more than good and fast enough to do what it needs. It'll run off the PCI-e Gen 5 x4 lanes but you can also add another drive at the back of the motherboard though it'll run at PCI-E Gen 4.

SFX 1U Form factor 850W PSU

To be honest, how external manufacturers manage to build a 850W 1U SFX PSU is beyond me because these are rare in the market. The only manufacturer I know at the back of my head that has these capacity small PSUs in the market is FSP. There may be more, I dunno. But that's the only major component that needs to be shrunk down for the build to be as small and compact as possible. Whether it'll a Flex kind of power supply or what, I don't know, I apologise. But either way, as long as you buy the case as a minimum, the 850W PSU will be supplied as well. In a way, this is probably the best, if not the only way to get super small form high capacity power supplies that can take an RTX 5080. Noiiiice.

COST COMPARISONS

As of this writing, the backing costed 1293 SGD fully kitted out using the parts below.

Now let's see, if I were to get something like that with your own parts: This is what would have cost.

Ryzen 9 9955HX3D plus Mobo ~865
32GB RAM 2x16GB 700
MSI Ventus RTX 5070 Twin Fan or Gigabyte RTX 5070 : 1200
1TB PNY CS2150 130
Screen 10.4" 260
850W SFX PSU Say like a Thermalright PSU, 160
SFF ITX Case: Say 130

That's already about 3.2K thereabouts, in Singapore dollars. Which is NOT cheap for an ITX build. 

To me that's a far cry. Sure you can get it as a barebones unit with the Case, cables, PSU and the touchscreen, or a barebones unit with the Mobo/CPU combo and PSU installed, Or the more popular option as a full system with the parts I mentioned.

You may want to back this if you've not done so yet. AquaTouch will only have room for 100 full systems.

As for timeline, the Kickstarter backing project ends on 10th January before manufacturing can be planned out and executed over the following months. Estimated delivery of the computers and cases is stated to be on April 2026 but we'll see as we go.

Following is a specs sticker of the entire system. Image from Kickstarter.

Once that arrives here, now I'll have a secondary rig and setup ready to go as my bedside rig away from my study that has the main rig with a PRISM + 1440p Ultrawide Monitor, a new set of speakers and more.

WarHammer 40,000 Dawn of War: Definitive Edition - Lightweight title with lots of playability.

The original game Dawn of War was already such a huge hit. But Warhammer brought back and updated this game with some enhancements that brings this 2004 legend for updated hardware. It brings some tweaks:

Native High Resolution support including 4K
Graphical enhancements
Improved Pathfinding for units especially Vehicles.

For a opening promo price just over USD 20, until August 28th, the Dawn Of War Definite edition brings:

- 4 Campaigns
- 9 Factions
- Multiplayer and Skirmish Battles with 100+ Maps

With that, the Dawn of War offers immense amounts of playability and replayability for a relatively reasonable price. Although it is still an old title with relatively kinda dated graphics, to be fair it is a 20 year old game ultimately, and remastering it is a good way to bring back an RTS classic.

But what I'm more interested is performance on this, as old as the game is. One thing I found, Dawn of War Definitive Edition is a very CPU bound title if your GPU is more than sufficient even though the requirements listed below are very light by today's standards.

6th Gen Core i5 or Ryzen CPU with at least 4 cores at 3GHz
8GB RAM
25GB Storage space
GTX 950 and Radeon R9 370

Like most RTS games, usually performance will only start to tank once there are a lot more units on screen. Although this game is no exception, GPU requirements are pretty damn light. Should be noted that it seems to run a lot better on nVidia GPUs than AMD Radeon ones.

Test Systems:
Ryzen 5 7500F, 32GB RAM, 4070 Super
Acer Swift X Ryzen 7 5825U, 16GB RAM, RTX 3050 Ti (40W TGP)
Clevo P950HR Core i7 7700HQ, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070 Max-Q
Chuwi UBook Pro Core m3 8100Y, 8GB RAM, Intel UHD 615

I'm disappointed that the devs didn't do this game with Apple OS or Mac OS in mind, because this would be a very good option if you're using an M1 MacBook Pro like I'm using as my current work laptop that is always in my car if I'm not using it.

Dated Laptop Test: Clevo P950HR Core i7 7700HQ, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070 Max-Q

An old Gaming Laptop powerful in its day and now starting to show its age.
It can still play this game, max settings, if the CPU doesn't hold the GPU back.

I'm starting with this Laptop first because it's pretty much the closest thing that I have to the minimum requirements in terms of hardware and age. Not surprisingly, although it runs alright, there are some hitches here and there. I reckon this is got to do with the CPU being bogged down. Because as old as the game is, it is still a very CPU-bound title. Although to be fair, the 7700HQ is almost an 8-9 year old CPU by now. If it was operating optimally otherwise, it can go 80-100fps. Maybe it's time to clean install the entire drive, not the end of the world since I don't really use this laptop a whole lot.

Acer Swift X Ryzen 7 5825U, 16GB RAM, RTX 3050 Ti (40W TGP):

But let's say I upgraded to a more capable CPU with more cores and threads, and similar, perhaps even less GPU horsepower. This proves my theory of Dawn of War being a more CPU bound title. I had no problems running on a Acer Swift X with a  RTX 3050 Ti that is tuned right down to 40W. The CPU on this thing is more than capable for this, even though it is rated for 15W to 25W max TDP.

The definite editions brings about some graphical enhancements to the game
while still being easy to run and keeping the soul of the base Dawn of War intact.
1080p on a laptop with a 4GB 40W RTX 3050 Ti is no problem.

That's on Maximum details and turning off V-sync to uncap the framerate.

4K Desktop Test: Ryzen 5 7500F, 32GB RAM, 4070 Super

I'm sure a full fledged desktop GPU will be overkill. But I decided to run with a RTX 4070 Super anyway. Again, Max details but at 4K. This game will be responsive as heck if you're running a high refresh monitor.

An RTX 4070 Super cuts through this game at 4K like a knife through butter.
Easy 200+ fps.

Across the spectrum:

 
We have the Core m3 8100Y and Intel UHD Graphics. 

This was from a Chuwi UBook Pro which is a work tablet for Windows. And the tech is abit on the dated side. Honestly was expecting a bit more from it but from these settings low settings with some upped to medium, it's good enough to maintain 30 fps and tolerable if it hovers around the cinematic 25 fps range. If you're playing just the campaign, that's fine. But not ideal on Multiplayer.

To be fair, the game still looks half-decent at low to medium settings. Reason why the resolution is weird is that this tablet uses a 3:2 Aspect ratio and 1920 x 1280 just can't really play it. So reducing the resolution here is a must. If you're using a more common 16:9 aspect ratio, then you'll want to set the resolution to 720p.

RTX 5050: A Good idea? Not cheap enough at 249 USD MSRP. Low Profile versions make the most sense though.

It's been a few years since we have had a 50 Class GPU since the RTX 3050 which has seen two variants, an 8GB one and a cut down 6GB one. So now this week, the RTX 5050 has seen a soft-launch with only one review available so far, which is by TechPowerUp

Specs of the RTX 5050.
2560 CUDA Cores
80 Texture Mapping Units
32 Render Output Units
80 Tensor Cores
20 Ray Tracing Cores

8GB GDDR6 RAM on 128-bit bus
2317 MHz Core Clock
2572 MHz Boost Clock
20Gb/s Memory Clock


The RTX 5050 is advertised to be a more budget friendly option, bringing high Core Speeds of its CUDA cores. Which is the reason why, the RTX 5050 is near identical to the RTX 4060.

I'll just leave the article and review by TechPowerup up here, you can see the numbers for yourself:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-5050-gaming-oc/

It'll be interesting to see where the RTX 5050 lands because this is a card I may want in my secondary machine I can use for light gaming and won't be held back by my Ryzen 7 1700X old CPU. But with that said, I hope for a 12 or 16GB Variant in the future and something to bridge the gap between the 5050 and the 5060. And to be honest it is not cheap enough because it makes the Intel Arc series A770 and the B580 look like an even more compelling option.

That's why it is not really a talked about GPU at all in today's market and does not really make a whole lot of sense, at least in a standard form factor. What makes sense however, is low profile versions which funnily enough, some shops in Singapore do have them on the market right now AND the LP card by Gigabyte is one of the cheaper 5050s. 

Tech Yard Singapore sells the Low Profile one, which funnily enough is one of the cheapest
RTX 5050s in the market.

I'm hoping to buy one in the future, not only for testing but also to resurrect my ITX box, because this computer doesn't need to game at anything more than 1080p. If any, I'd be surprised that even on this GPU that my Ryzen 1700X is still the main bottleneck there. 

Ryzen 7 9700F Could be released in the future? A Sub US$300 budget 8-Core CPU to keep an eye on.

Rumors has it that AMD could be releasing its first 9000 series processor without integrated graphics. Allegedly, this would be the Ryzen 7 9700F, an AM5 8-core CPU based on the Granite Ridge architecture.

The F-suffix, much like Intel's F-type CPUs, and the Ryzen 7500F and 8400F, are CPUs lacking integrated graphics, which is fine if your computer is meant to be game on and you'll be using a discrete GPU anyway.

How this rumor came about is that the ASUS released a new BIOS for the ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme motherboard. And knowing new BIOS revisions, this usually either mean stability improvements or support for new and upcoming CPUs. 

What the specs will be remains to be seen, but the rumored 9700F will probably have slightly lower clock speeds than the 3.8 - 5.5 GHz clocks the 9700X. But other specs which is that it being an 8-core CPU with 32MB of Cache and a 65W TDP, should stay identical. What is most targeted for are users who would want a more budget 8-core than the 9700X... like me. Although it remains to be seen, users upgrading from a 7500F or 8400F would have a noticeable performance bump and a good boost for productivity.

If it does get released in the market, I would potentially upgrade over the 7500F my AM5 Gigabyte B650M Mobo has right now.

Links to rumors:

https://www.lowyat.net/2025/355939/amd-ryzen-9-9700f-rumour/

https://www.techspot.com/news/108328-amd-set-launch-ryzen-7-9700f-8-core.html

https://www.guru3d.com/story/amd-ryzen-7-9700f-processor-rumor-8core-zen-5-without-onboard-gpu/

RTX 5070 Ti Laptop vs RTX 4070 Laptop. Is a RTX 5070 Ti LAptop a better buy than a 5070 Laptop?

OVERVIEW

When nVidia released the Desktop RTX 50 series to the market, it was not received well for many reasons. It was expensive, often above the MSRP, almost unavailable in any quantity, and does not have significant gains from the previous generation of nVidia RTX GPUs. There are still more down the pipeline that are yet to be released but shouldn't be the saving grace either.

But what about the Laptop GPUs? Let's list some that were released over the last month or two:

RTX 5090 Mobile: 10496 CUDA Cores, 24GB RAM, 256-bit Bus.
RTX 5080 Mobile: 8192 CUDA Cores, 16GB RAM, 256-bit Bus.
RTX 5070 Ti Mobile: 5888 CUDA Cores, 12GB RAM, 192-bit Bus
RTX 5070 Mobile: 4608 CUDA Cores, 8GB RAM, 128-bit bus

There is one in particular that seems like a good proposition when I looked at it, not just in terms of performance but also balancing out power and heat. And that's the 5070 Ti.

EXAMPLES OF NOTEBOOK / LAPTOPS WITH RTX 5070 Ti MOBILE GPU:

But before I delve down a little, just let you all know I'd certainly would love to review one of these great examples that carry it. I'll have to spend time to use and give my unbiased reviews about it. But if any company would like to give me one to try, I would do it. Here's a couple of examples. I'm sure there will be more down the pike but I'd love to get my hands on the Chuwi GameBook, or the MX-16, lighter examples that use this GPU.

CHUWI GameBook: Launching Soon.

Chuwi Gamebook: Ryzen 9 9955HX, 5070 Ti (140W), 32GB RAM
Price and yet to be released. 2.3 Kilos which is light for a 16"

AftershockPC MX-16: Intel Ultra 9 275X, 5070 Ti

Aftershock MX-16: Intel Ultra 9 275X, 5070 Ti, 32GB RAM, and any kind of SSD available now
2699SGD (About 2090 USD) at base config. 2.3 Kilos like the Gamebook.

MSI Vector A18X A9W (Image from notebookcheck):

From notebookcheck's review also with a Ryzen 9 9955HX.
The Heaviest and most costly one of the three: at 3.5kg plus a 1.327 400W Power Brick
3200 USD (About 4150SGD) at their configuration

I'd certainly would love to review one of these great examples in a more unbiased manner. So if anyone would oblige to give me one, do let me know.

RTX 5070 Ti (Mobile) is in a nutshell, a refined Desktop RTX 4070

On paper, they are actually very similar to each other. Same CUDA core count, Same VRAM count. The only differences are power profiles, clock speeds and using the faster GDDR7 RAM which dramatically boosts the overall memory bandwidth of the mobile GPU. Below is a table I did to compare other similar GPUs and last generation GPUs including a few desktop ones.

Left side, the 5888 Core Candidates plus the desktop 5070.
Right side: the 4608 Core Candidates.

12GB is the new minimum for any GPU, even in Laptops.

From various benchmarks, the combination of using less VRAM on top of a narrower memory bus really slows down the RTX 5070 Laptop significantly and presents as a memory bottleneck, even in just Full HD 1080p resolution. Even though the amount of memory bandwidth looks decent enough on paper and the amount CUDA cores differs by 20%, you'll find the 8GB VRAM gets fully saturated much more frequently than having 12GB. 

Still the mobile RTX 5070 Ti can prove to be capable enough for gaming at 1440p and to some extent 4K on most modern titles. That's the benefit of having more VRAM available before it is fully used or can be allocated for more demanding graphical features.

General Performance:

The RTX 5070 Ti Laptop in general is:
- On par, Trades blows, or slightly faster than the:
RTX 4070 Desktop, RTX 5060 Ti Desktop and 4080/4090 Mobile

- Faster than the:
Desktop RTX 3090 and below
Laptop 5070 by a Significant amount.

RTX 5070 Ti Laptop is a true successor to the RTX 4070 laptop.

According to various benchmarks, the RTX 5070 Ti (Mobile) can be as high as almost 40-45% faster than even just the non Ti Version of the Laptop GPU. As expected, with lesser CUDA cores, the Laptop 5070 Ti performs in between the Desktop 5070 and 5060 Ti, and in between the RTX 4080 and 4090 Laptop GPUs, filling in an actually considerable gap in between these two GPUs, and also performs slightly better than a desktop RTX 4070 if we compare the GPUs with the same amount of CUDA cores. It's helped because of a 192-bit bus and 12GB VRAM. 12GB is just about the minimum that you need these days but it shows that the RTX 5070 Ti (Laptop) GPU can do it.

The non-Ti version of the 5070 Mobile GPU is only marginally faster, again depending on wattage, than the previous RTX 4070.

RTX 5070 Ti carries the best balance

From Notebookcheck's various reviews of the 5090 and 5080, they all mostly share a common quirk, high power consumption and heat, especially if the GPUs are tuned to run on Full tilt. Razer and Asus do get around this with optimised power figures which also reduce heat and power, to the point a 250W external power brick can be made with their 5090 laptops. But most of them need a 400W PSU. Chuwi shrinks down to a 250W brick, and likewise XMG Pro 16 which notebookcheck also reviewed, does use a 250W one too.

So it wouldn't be a surprise if a 250W will be standard in a laptop that uses the 5070 Ti GPU which is great if you need to transport it around often. But even if you're more than likely to use it in a Desktop Replacement role, using less power will also mean less money toward your power bill compared to models to use the more powerful GPUs. 

That's the reason I wish to review. How powerful and how much weight you can conserve before your laptop really becomes a desktop replacement because 2.3Kg laptops that use full wattage GPUs seem to be the sweet spot here. There are some good examples of more powerful GPUs like the Razer Blade, but really be prepared to pay a premium for these.

Interesting quirk about the RTX 5070 Ti Laptop's hidden potential.

I've only just seen a video of Dave2D that he thinks there is actually wasted potential hidden in the RTX 5070 Ti laptop. Most laptops GPUs will cap out to its best performance after it reaches a certain maximum wattage as seen below:

The AD107 based 4050 to 4070s do tap out after about 105 Watts, and the GB206 based RTX 5070 mobile starts to tap out at around 115W.

However, for the RTX 5070 Ti, that seems to be not the case as it's those higher end boards. The #05 to the #03 boards do have potential for power. According to his graph, the RTX 5070 Ti hasn't really capped and plateau-ed out yet even after reaching the maximum 145W that NVidia allows.

That is a clear indicator of some performance and TDP still left on the table that the GPU can still provide, waiting to be unleashed.

There's a reason why they limit the amount power available for the RTX 5070 Ti, understandable in a business perspective and marking perspective. Because if unlocked, can trade blows or beat the higher ranked AND more expensive 5080 and 5090 mobile GPUs, which is true and proven if the latter two are tuned with a lower TDP as shown in some gaming comparisons off notebookcheck which you can see below. It's already fast enough for what the market is aimed at, so leaving at 140-145W makes sense.

Assassin's Creed Shadows: The RTX 5070 Ti is massively better than the 5070 in 4K.
Almost doubling the 5070 and 4070.

Indiana Jones: the RTX 5070 Ti can trade blows with a lower TDP 5080
and even a 5090 as shown by a shorter grey meter.
Moreover, 5070 Ti's average is not that far away either than theirs.

Pretty much same story with Alan Wake 2.
Higher resolutions is helped by higher VRAM and higher memory bus width.
And it's weird that even the 5070 loses to the 4070.

Cyberpunk: The 5070 only has 70% of the performance of the 5070 TI.
The 5070 Ti bridges the gap quite nicely between the 5070 to 5080, closer to the latter.

You can always check the rest of the numbers at notebookcheck. So you can kinda imagine how much closer the 5070Ti can be to the 5080 if the limits were removed. They did an article and sorta VS showdown between the 5070 and 5070 Ti Laptop GPUs which you can see here:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-RTX-5070-Ti-Laptop-vs-RTX-5070-Laptop-The-successors-to-the-RTX-4070-Laptop-in-review.1006203.0.html

I won't be surprised if someone can tap on its hidden potential with a new vBIOS down the line though, in which case I'd be very excited to see what it can really really do. Moreover, bridging the gap that is 15-20% away from the RTX 5080-5090 Laptop GPUs can be also done with regular overclocking and undervolting. Of course that won't get as much gains as having a vBIOS that uncaps the TDP of the GPU.

THE GPU IS STILL NOT PERFECT THOUGH.

Personally I'd hold off and wait for a while long if I was the buyer. Because some reviewers are facing some performance issues in games like Doom: The Dark Ages and some AAA titles. To me, it's very likely driver related or the game engines are abit finicky with the RTX 50 series. Till these bugs are ironed out, my advise is to hold off buying them if you're not sure on updating drivers and stuff. Should have a good out of the box experience. So I hope laptop manufacturers are on top of all these issues that have surfaced recently.

IETS: GT600 Laptop cooler review on the Predator Triton 14 - One of the best Laptop Coolers right now?

Here we have the V2 version of the GT600. What defers from the V1 to V2 is adding RGB to it. What is an upgrade over the GT500 is near double the wind pressure thanks to its larger fan which allows more pressure for lower revs which in turn lowers noise. The B0s versions of both sizes of cooler does not have a USB Hub built in which may hurt a bit if you're a content creator and you need the extra expansion off the laptop. My particular model has and you can use it as a passthrough to USB-C.

IETS GT600 blower cooler

How the GT600 is built it is pretty much a large blower cooler in the center blasting cooler air from its back which is more as an intake. Foam is provided and fitted around the top of the pad to provide a near complete seal to the laptop to prevent leaking of hot or cold air which makes it more efficient as one entire direction of channeled air into the internals. The cooler does include an additional foam insert for smaller laptops like mine and those that have smaller screen sizes.

Do note however, this cooler works best with laptops with vents at the bottom. The more vents, the more air it can take in.

Also interesting to note, that the USB-C passthrough can operate via your device's USB without additional supplemental power. You only need DC Power for the fan and RGB itself.

TEST:

Just to refresh the specs of the test machine:
We have the Acer Predator Triton 14 with:
Core i7 13700H
16GB RAM
RTX 4070.

This is always a good laptop to test because both CPU and GPU both pull some heavy wattages in sustained loads depending which of the two is used more. This 13700H uses up to 115W in short burst and 60W Sustained, and the RTX 4070 pulls 105W to around 107-108W of power. It's not the highest we've seen from a RTX 4070 but it is the optimal power where we see the best performance pulled for the GPU.

And for me, this laptop already pulls impressive performance for a 14 Inch even without additional laptop cooling. And hey, for a laptop this powerful, it deserves a run with probably the most powerful cooler.

Software-wise: I went ahead and get Unigine Heaven and finally Furmark since you can leave it running at load for prolonged periods without stopping and without using the benchmark tool.

FURMARK: 15 minute stress test - Volare vs IETS turned off.

How I did this is I left Furmark running first without cooling to get to its worst case temps on the GPU. 

83 degrees with the GT600 cooler off.

Volare cooler with it off does gain a better result of just a smidge under 80.
Interesting.

Without any cooling, 15 minutes stress test yielded pretty shocking and interesting results between the two. The shocking thing is that temperatures were actually quite good for a 14 Inch laptop with such hardware, with it lifted off the surface using either cooler. The Volare Cooler does net better zero fan temperature results, due to the more open nature of the Volare compared to a more constricted channel of the GT600. Interesting there, however it pretty much confirms that the GPU doesn't require much more cooling for it to stay cool at turbo. 

FURMARK: Cooler Tests

I didn't really bother posting the photo of Volare results because the temperatures didn't really change much. If the laptop had more vents concentrated on the cooling pipes of the laptop it would have helped. However, the IETS GT600 does get a nice temperature drop from 83 degrees to about 76-77 degrees. Sure a few degrees may not sound much, but every degree drop does help to extend the life of your components.

Whizzy whizzy. 2800 rpm is loud!

TUNING WITH IETS GT600 AND TURBO ON ACER PREDATOR SENSE

To get the score around 26400+ consistently like my last results I've been getting, I tuned the fans of the laptop down to 2300 rpm for both the CPU and the GPU at manual while I turned down the rpm to 2000 of the laptop cooling pad (Photo). Subsequently did try to drop the GT600 even further to 1000 rpm, even that didn't change it much to be off the margin of error.

CONCLUSION: High price but best cooling for a gaming laptop.

Let's just face it, this laptop cooler is not cheap by any means. However if you're doing a nice super clean build on your desk the GT600 v2 will be a workhorse because this is another way of adding more ports and therefore quite a bit of further expansion which improves more if you're using USB-C to USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 instead of USB-C to USB-A.

Admittingly, this is way too overkill as a bedside configuration. However, it'll still serve as such for now!

Acer Predator Triton 14 Review follow-up: Cooling does play a part in performance, especially the GPU. (Quick Volare Cooler Review)

Now last week, when I reviewed the laptop I was actually very happy with its stock performance right out of the box. Got me thinking, if cooling does play a part in performance, how much would it?

Just a refresher, the Acer Predator Triton 14 PT14-51 has it specced to the following:
- Intel Core i7 13700H, 14 Core, 20 Thread CPU (6 Hyperthreaded Performance Cores, 8 efficiency cores)

- RTX 4070 8GB, set at 105W TGP

- 16 GB LPDDR5 at 6,000 MT/s

- 1TB PCIe nVMe Samsung 980 Pro OEM SSD

To test I have a new Laptop Cooler from Volare, with 2 big fans and 2 smaller fans. The cooler doesn't get drowned in noise by the Turbo fans and even at max speed of 6 it is plenty quiet. For benchmarks reference we will take the reference scores from both Time Spy and Fire Strike Runs that we posted up last week.

Time to add some cooling. Volare AC38 has 2 large and 2 mini fans

During the benchmarks, with more cooling to give, means more clock speeds. It used to boost to around 2350MHz, but this time round I've seen clocks go as high as 2450 Mhz on Time Spy and even 2535 MHz at Fire Strike which results in these comparisons. Temperatures we are hitting nowhere near the TGP of the RTX 4070, even without it. With it sees the RTX 4070 stabilizing at 76 degrees, which is pretty impressive even from the base scores.

Time Spy Without Cooler from Last week:

Time Spy With Cooler

Cooled down resulted in a bit of a performance boost across the board.

That places the RTX 4070 in the typical score that's a bit higher than average for both the CPU and GPU across the board.

Fire Strike Without cooler:

Without cooler: 25244, with 28727 on GPU and 30783 on CPU

Fire Strike with cooler:

The scores got a noticeable bump: 28727 to 30545 on the GPU. CPU scores did drop slightly
but still resulted in a higher score overall from 25244 to 26421.

That places the overall score: slightly higher than average again, but the GPU score is very high and inching ever closer to an overclocked RTX 3070.

I did run a second run on Fire Strike to see it's not really an abnormally. Weirdly, the GPU score remained EXACTLY the same. But at least the CPU scores are now in line with the previous results that were not cooled.:

Fire Strike Cooled, Run 2:

In all, it was a 5.7% improvement over the previous total score and a 6.32% boost on the GPU alone.

It goes to show, cooling does play a part in affecting the laptop's performance. With more cooling will allow the GPU to further boost itself. But I think we've found couple of things:

1. Actually temperatures have never been an issue for the RTX 4070 even without a cooler.
2. But still has some untapped performance by sustaining at a higher clock.
3. The one that needs the cooling more is the CPU, as much as it has been amazing for us.

Because CPU intensive tasks will still cause the hotspot to immediately spike up to 100 C regardless. It did help scores in Cinebench just slightly, by about 300 points higher.

To be fair, bottomline is that the Core i7 13700H is still a 14-Core CPU. So it is bound to get hot in a jiffy.

Now the only thing, I hope that I can get sent is one of those IETS GT500/600 Coolers. As sufficient the Volare is, this laptop deserves the best laptop cooling pad possible. If anyone can give me a IETS GT500/600 cooler.

Sure, surfaces get hot on this regardless. But that says it all as to how well heat is actually managed on the Acer Predator Triton 14 despite its beast specifications. Still worrying for me is the CPU though, but for now is enough.