Helios 500 - Ryzen 2700 & Vega 56 Laptop...

Fry750 · 18 Nov 2018 at 09:44

Really keen on/interested by this.

Acer Predator Helios 500 with Ryzen 2700 and Vega 56 @ £1700.

While it's similar to the Asus number from last year (Ryzen 1700 and RX 580), it's got a number of improvements including a 144hz 1080P panel.

Spec wise it seems pretty bang on, only thing missing is TB3 (for obvious reasons but not sure if a deal breaker yet). It's also a big fat desktop replacement at 17.3" and 4KG, no Aero 15X/GS65 levels of portability.

Spec and price wise for me, it looks great. Aesthetically, it looks naff but then Acer does tend to opt for the try-hard look. Performance wise, it smashes every other laptop at Cinebench, trades blows with other flagship Intel laptops in other benchmarks and hovers around GTX 1070 levels for gaming.

Interestingly, like the Asus Ryzen laptop before it, the CPU is a desktop part - so in theory is upgradeable... Is there a better laptop for content creation and gaming?

Full specs - https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/predator-series/predatorhelios500

Anyone have any thoughts, opinions or equally interested by it?

Electroshadow · 20 Nov 2018 at 11:54

I am interested in one of these as well,

I have been trying to find out if the HDMI port is 1.4 or 2.0? as this will dictate frame rates on external monitors. looking at this laptop due to the desktop parts in it as well as with my work i tend to do a fair bit of AutoCAD and point cloud processing which can take its toll on my little Dell 7559. Also hoping that the chassis on the Acer would be a lot stronger than most of today's ultra thin laptops?

the only thing putting me off is I have just installed a nice new 1TB SSD on my current laptop and I have no idea how to transfer it over to a new laptop whilst keeping all of my data and files and programmes. can bear the idea of fresh installing everything again with all the programme data links being lost again

Electroshadow · 21 Nov 2018 at 10:29

Fry750 did you get one of these in the end?

willhub · 21 Nov 2018 at 16:42

From reading it seems a GTX1070 version is more recommended and seems to perform better

Electroshadow · 21 Nov 2018 at 17:07

yes, I got that impression as well with regards for frame rates on games, although I believe the ryzen 2700 processor beats the Intel variants for raw power?

as I'm looking for something for processing pointclouds along with AutoCAD and 3d modeling for my day to day usage, i think the ryzen /vega option may be better suited along with the cheaper price. Its just my current laptop is only a year old and starting to play up when I thought that I may have got 4-5years out of it so spending again (should have bought the helios in the first place) is a little annoying, to say the least.

mark2410 · 26 Nov 2018 at 11:54

fugly but that is some serious cpu power its got

Electroshadow · 26 Nov 2018 at 17:10

Got bored of Black Friday and cyber Monday & messing around to try and find a better deal, so i just went ahead and ordered the Helios 500 with ryzen 2700.

Will report back when i receive it.

Fry750 · 27 Nov 2018 at 21:46

Good lad! If you can, do a full review - everything I've seen has been really vague, I.e. it's an 8 core laptop which is good but Intel/Nvidia is better for gaming.

Electroshadow · 28 Nov 2018 at 01:15

I'm going to be mainly using it for autocad 3d work and some 3d rendering of buildings along with processing point clouds in agisoft.
Should be good for that type of work.

willhub · 28 Nov 2018 at 08:51

How much more powerful is the 2700 over the 7700HQ?

Electroshadow · 28 Nov 2018 at 12:03

don't really know but passmark scores...

Intel 7700HQ = 8838
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 = 14989

mark2410 · 30 Nov 2018 at 21:53

Electroshadow said:
don't really know but passmark scores...

Intel 7700HQ = 8838
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 = 14989

damn

Electroshadow · 3 Dec 2018 at 15:28

Thought I would check in with a bit of an update after nearly a week with this laptop.

First of all this thing it big (but you would have know that before buying), so the daily commute has become a little heavier mainly due to the insanely sized 330w PSU brick.

and secondly, there is no caps lock indicator light. (come on Acer, its well annoying)

Apart from those two things this laptop really is a desktop replacement in the mobile form, although it is a big laptop its also welcomed as the chassis is strong and solid with no flex and has plenty of room for resting both palms and wrists on either side of the trackpad.

With regards to processing power, it really is quite immense as a workstation. Running 3 x 27" screens and the laptop screen whilst using AutoCAD Civils 3d / Arcon EVO and running Agisoft point cloud processing software at the same time really is increasing productivity. (Normally Agisoft would cause a computer to be totally utilized for 2-5hours generally).

Gaming wise I don't really game nowadays but it will flawlessly run battlefield V or Star Citizen. I did find an interesting option within the AMD software for Virtual Resolution which allows for similar to 4k gaming on the laptops 1080p screen, all i can say is that it was a noticeable increase in resolution.

I would highly recommend this laptop to anyone thinking about it.

willhub · 3 Dec 2018 at 17:25

Is the GPU and CPU removable?

Electroshadow · 3 Dec 2018 at 18:39

Yeah the cpu is removable its a standard desktop unit and socket.

Not to sure if the gpu is removable but it's a desktop chip again.

Fry750 · 13 Jan 2019 at 15:05

Peculiarly, it looks as though it's been discontinued already.

Signs of a Ryzen 3 version incoming?

Electroshadow · 14 Jan 2019 at 11:24

it does look as though most stock has been sold off now.... possible that new versions could be inbound? Predator Triton 500 & 900 looks to be the new versions...?

Still a couple of places offering the laptop though