Acer's Predator Orion X prebuilt comes with a unique liquid-cooled GeForce RTX 4090 that ultimately performs worse than air-cooled models, according to an in-depth review from KitGuru. Although liquid cooling is generally considered better than air cooling, Acer ran into design limitations with its custom 4090, which integrates the radiator into the graphics card itself, rather than it being external and mounted to the PC case like with a normal AIO liquid cooler.
The liquid-cooled 4090 made by Acer isn't all that different from a normal, air-cooled 4090. An air cooler uses a baseplate and copper heatpipes filled with fluid to siphon the heat of a processor (like a GPU) to the heatsink composed of metal fins, which are cooled by fans. All Acer has done is replace the copper heatpipes with a pump that moves liquid from the baseplate to the radiator, which is the cooler's heatsink.
