Sorry gamers: Acer's Acer PCs are powerful, quiet and cool, but designed for the creators

ConceptD could be the PC of your dreams, but it's not for gamers. ConceptD is the new Acer PC brand, designed for creative professionals who need graphics power similar to gaming, but in cooler, cooler systems that are better suited to corporate and studio environments.

Acer introduced ConceptD Thursday at the company's next event in New York. The genesis of the brand was born after the discovery by Acer that 50% of its customers called "hardcore gamers" also used professional creative applications on their gaming computers. Acer further discovered that 15% of its gaming computer customers were using their systems. exclusively for professional creative applications – not games at all. This last group simply needed power. What they did not need was the warmth, the sound and the facial aesthetics inherent to the gaming computers.

(My guess: players would probably want cooler and quieter computers, but the cost is probably a problem.)

It's a powerful PC, it's a lifestyle

With ConceptD, "we're talking about a new lifestyle," said Jason Chen, CEO of Acer. This is apparently one of the areas where most systems (with the exception of the more expensive ones) have cold white panels and woody accents. Where the AeroBlade metal 3D fan, previously seen on Acer gaming laptops, works with what the company has called a "noise reduction mechanism" to keep noise levels below 40 decibels – a level of library silence. And one where color matters: all ConceptD Computer screens will have a 100% Adobe RGB color gamut, Pantone certification and a Delta-E color difference value of less than 1%.

Some ConceptD models will be available from April, while others will arrive later in the year. Here is an overview of the product line up to now.

The flagship model is the ConceptD 9. Like the Acer Predator Triton 900 we just saw at CES, the ConceptD9 screen is mounted on an Ezel Aero hinge, two arms that can rotate it so acrobatic. The ConceptD 9 has a 17.3-inch (3840 x 2160 pixel) UHD touch screen with a maximum brightness of 400 nits.

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Inside, you get an Intel Core 9 i-gen processor and up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, plus a Nividia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU. A Wacom DME pen comes standard. The ConceptD 9 will be available in June for a starting price of $ 4,999 (not $ 4,000, as I said in my video cover by mistake).

ConceptD sees a PC and wants to paint it in white

The other two slim, lightweight notebooks, shipped in April, include the ConceptD 7 and ConceptD 5. Both are equipped with 15.6-inch (contactless) UHD displays. The ConceptD 7, starting at $ 2,299, comes with the 9th generation Core i7 processor, up to 16GB of RAM and Nvidia RTX 2060 or RTX 2080 cards.

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The ConceptD 5, starting at $ 1,699, is getting something special: the Intel Core i7-8705G, a processing partnership integrating the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL. It also has a fingerprint reader for security.

Both desktops will include the ConceptD 500 (available in June), available in white with a woodgrain top panel, and the ConceptD 900 (available in May), a high-performance workstation. The 500 processor series will offer options up to Intel's Core i9-9900K processor, while the 700 will offer two Xeon Gold 6148 processors. Both will feature discrete Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs: the 8000 for the ConceptD 700 and the 4000 for the ConceptD 500.

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Note the wood grain-like panel above the ConceptD 500, which brings a suggestion of nature to a highly synthetic product.

Hang on to your hats for the prices, though. While the ConceptD 500 desk starts at a modest $ 1,699, the ConceptD 700 starts at $ 19,999. This is not a typo. That's the real price for a workstation type system with all the accessories. Maybe that's why it's painted black, too.

Acer is seriously considering building the ConceptD range. Other products will include high resolution monitors and even a VR / AR headset. It remains to be seen if the creators will flock to this new brand. As you will learn in my interview with President and CEO Jason Chen, Acer plans to bring quality and value to this specialized (and lucrative) segment of the IT world.