Liquid-cooling systems are frequently found in large, desktop gaming rigs, or other oversized computers. Today, Acer is bringing liquid cooling to a more portable form factor with its Switch Alpha 12, a 12-inch convertible notebook.
Acer packed liquid cooling into its 12-inch Surface clone
The $599 Switch Alpha 12 is the first fanless 2-in-1 to use Intel’s sixth-generation Core i (Skylake) processors, and has a 2160 x 1440 pixel display and optional backlit keyboard. The liquid-cooling system enables the fanless design, and Acer says it is both reliable and silent in operation. Liquid cooling in a small device isn’t entirely unprecedented — Microsoft put it in the 5.7-inch Lumia 950 XL smartphone last year, for example — but it’s still fairly uncommon to see. The Switch Alpha 12 has a similar design to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, including a kickstand and detachable keyboard that’s included with the tablet.
The Switch Alpha 12’s low price is apparent in its build quality: it’s not nearly as elegant of a device as Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, and while it does have a brushed aluminum lid, it both looks and feels cheap. The kickstand can be adjusted to a wide variety of angles, but it’s not as slick as Microsoft’s option.
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Acer is also announcing a slew of other notebooks and gaming equipment, including the Predator 17x gaming notebook with a triple-fan cooling system; the Predator G1 desktop, a compact PC with full-sized Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics and up to 64GB of RAM; and a 27-inch curved gaming monitor. Also revealed is the $699 3.13lb S 13 notebook, which is said to be one of the “thinnest notebooks in its class,” and R 15 convertible notebook, which has a 15.6-inch display, glass fiber body, and metal lid.
Acer says that all of the products announced today will be available for preorder in the near future.
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