The Acer Predator Triton 700 is a thin and powerful gaming laptop, a combination that
usually results in high temperatures and lost performance. In this video I’ll perform
some in depth thermal testing and show you how well it performs, see if there are any
issues, and show you what can be done to improve things.
In my configuration here I’ve got the Intel i7-7700HQ CPU with Nvidia 1080 Max-Q graphics,
so fairly decent specs, although a last 7th generation quad core CPU as opposed to the
newer and hotter 8th gen options.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 19 degrees celcius, so
expect warmer temperatures in a warmer environment.
Starting towards the bottom of the graph in light blue, at idle the CPU was actually quite
warm, probably as the fan was running quietly, as you’ll hear later. Moving up to gaming
in the green bar, the temperatures were still acceptable, and this was after temperatures
stabilized from an hour of playing. After manually maxing out the fans in yellow, the
CPU and GPU temperatures both drop back a bit. With the CPU undervolted by -0.150v,
but fans back on default, the CPU temperature was a little cooler than by just maxing out
the fans, shown in orange. With the CPU undervolt and max fans combined we get the best temperatures
yet, shown in red.
The stress tests were done by running Aida64 and the Heaven benchmark at the same time
in order to attempt to fully utilize both the processor and graphics. Moving up in the
graph and starting with the dark red bar the CPU peaked at 87 degrees celsius, honestly
not too bad for extended load, especially considering how thin the laptop is. By maxing
out the fan and applying undervolting, shown in the pink, purple and dark blue bars, the
temperatures get significantly better.
These are the average clock speeds for the same temperature tests just shown, not really
much to show here, as there was no thermal or power limit throttling the 7700HQ was able
to boost to its 3.4GHz all core turbo speed without any problems, even in these stress
tests.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load. Again no difference from before, absolutely no throttling at all on the CPU
under any of my testing, refreshing to see from the 8750H laptops I’ve tested recently.
I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here, I was getting the same results with or without
the CPU undervolt applied, as shown earlier there was no throttling at all here, so no
problems getting full performance with the out of the box configuration. Just for reference
or comparison I’ve also noted the score of the newer i5-8300H, the quad core laptop
CPU from the 8th generation. Although the performance doesn’t change, the undervolt
can still be used to drop the temperatures, as shown previously.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test. Acer’s Predator
Sense software lets you apply GPU overclocks easily in two different levels known as faster
and turbo. The “Faster” profile overclocks the GPU core by 75MHz and the memory by 200MHz,
while the “Turbo” profile doubles this to 150MHz on the core and 400MHz on the memory.
I was able to get a little further improvement by manually overclocking it with MSI Afterburner,
up to 200MHz on the core and 800MHz on the memory, as shown in red, but this may vary
between laptops as it depends on the particular chip.
So how does this performance boost actually translate in games? In the games tested the
exact same Windows updates, game updates and Nvidia drivers were installed so there shouldn’t
be any other changes. Undervolting won’t help improve performance here as we’re not
seeing any throttling, but it will lower the temperatures, so basically we’re going to
see best case performance here with my manual GPU overclocks, which again were a 200MHz
boost to the core and 800MHz extra on the memory.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and at the highest
settings the overclocks were just getting us a small 6% performance improvement to the
average frame rates.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, and in this test the overclocked results are
slightly better, 8.5% faster than running at stock speeds when running maxed out at
epic settings.
So there was just a little improvement with the GPU overclock applied, but it will vary
between game and settings.
As for external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle the
body was sitting in the low 30s, quite cool. While gaming we can see that only the rear
of the laptop warms up to around 50 degrees celsius, as that’s where the CPU and GPU
are located, the keyboard area stays pretty cool though. Fairly similar results with the
stress tests running, and then with the fans manually maxed out and CPU undervolted the
external temperatures lower by a few degrees.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was fairly quiet, and while gaming it was about as loud as any other gaming laptop
I’ve tested. Under stress test this rose a little, and with the fans manually maxed
out it gets quite loud.
You’ve got the option of controlling the fan speeds of the CPU or graphics independently
through Acer’s Predator Sense software, so that should help in finding a good balance
between temperatures and fan noise.
Overall the temperatures and performance were pretty impressive when you consider the thin
body of the laptop, I expected it to run hotter with the 1080 Max-Q graphics, but for the
most part the 7th gen CPUs seem to run cooler than the newer and faster 8th gen options.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature you’re running in, application of thermal
paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. You may
not be able to undervolt or overclock your hardware the same as me, it depends on the
chip and its specific power requirements, so don’t just blindly copy my settings and
do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results.
While you could probably improve the temperatures by swapping out the thermal paste, that’s
not something I can test in a review unit. If I go ahead and remove the stock thermal
paste and replace my own, I can't put the old paste back, so the next reviewer would
experience something different from what you'd actually see with the product and unknowingly
report incorrect information due to what I’ve done. In any case though, I’m perfectly
happy with the temperatures I measured, especially once undervolted and with the fans boosted,
so this may not be required unless you’re in a very warm environment.
Undervolting on the other hand isn't physically intrusive, and although it wasn’t needed
to improve performance as there was no throttling at all here, as we've seen it did improve
the temperatures with no downside once you’ve got a stable undervolt, it’s a nice way
to drop temperatures further without raising fan noise.
Let me know how much of a performance boost you’ve found by undervolting your hardware
and what you thought of the improvements here, and don’t forget to subscribe for the full
review of the Acer Predator Triton 700 gaming laptop, as well as future tech videos like
this one.