#Now I can put games on NVMe drives!!!! Those are fast I hear.

[dorenarox]

A good video, explaining me what the fuck I needed to do! God I love it when it's easy!

[aion-rsa]

Xbox Series X Review

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After spending over a week with Microsoft’s top-of-the-line next-gen console, one thing is clear: the Xbox Series X is a powerful machine, and an impressive hardware upgrade for anyone looking for a home console that can run games at 4K resolution and up to 120 frames per second. The Series X is also lightning fast thanks to its custom 1TB NVME SSD and Velocity Architecture, which seriously cuts down on load times, and the console also features many other quality of life improvements that make it the best way to play Xbox games in 2020. But even a console this fast can’t outrun its most glaring issue: a lack of next-gen exclusives at launch to justify making the upgrade on day one, even if its impressive 4K upscaling and Auto HDR technology does enhance the console’s vast library of past-gen experiences.

Before we jump into the games, let’s talk about the hardware itself. I covered the console’s physical attributes more closely in my unboxing article, but the short of it is that the Xbox Series X is a big, hefty piece of hardware. At about 5.9 inches wide and 11.8 inches tall, and weighing in at 9.8 pounds, the Xbox Series X isn’t quite PC tower size but it’s still massive when compared to most other home consoles. While its absolutely dwarfed by the 15.4 inch tall PlayStation 5, you may still have trouble finding a spot for the Series X in your home entertainment center. I certainly had to get creative with the Ikea TV stand in my living room, and ultimately had to lay the console on its side in order for it to (barely) fit in one of the shelves.

And while I find the Xbox Series X’s minimalist, monolith-shaped design to be eye-catching and a refreshingly clean look when compared to its next-gen competition and PC gaming rigs bathed in RGB lighting, Microsoft’s console looks much less cool when in its horizontal position. It’s true that putting the Series X in either its natural vertical or alternate horizontal position takes a lot less effort compared to the PS5’s removable stand, but I think Microsoft might have sacrificed a better horizontal solution for the sake of convenience to the player. When in the horizontal position, the Series X’s round stand sticks out of the left side of the console, a slightly ugly appendage that you can’t remove from the console’s otherwise clean shape. Maybe I’m seriously nitpicking here, but the point is that this console wants to stand in the vertical position, and I’d advise you to figure out how to display the Series X the way it was meant to be shown off.

You can check out the unboxing video below to hear way more of my thoughts on the console’s shape, size, and design:

Once you turn on the Xbox Series X, set up the console with your Xbox Live account, and sync it to the Xbox app on your phone — and I suggest you do so you can enable Remote Play and more Share options, which we’ll get to in a bit — the first thing you’ll notice is how quiet this machine is. Unless you put your ear real close to the vents at the top of the console, you won’t even hear a low hum from the Series X’s single “whisper-quiet” fan. In fact, the only time I was able to actually hear the Series X from the other side of my living room was while installing a game from a disc, the console’s 4K UHD Blu-ray optical drive working quickly to install the 32GB Mad Max. Still, the virtually silent Series X is a major improvement over the mechanical sound of the original Xbox’s hard drive and loud hum of the Xbox 360 and Xbox One’s fans.

Speaking of fans, the powerful airflow solution in the Xbox Series X is very good at keeping the console’s components relatively cool most of the time. Generally, what you’ll feel when putting your hand close to the console’s vents is a gentle breath of cool to tepid air. Things get a little hotter inside the Xbox when you’re playing Optimized for Series X titles like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 at 4K 60fps, but the heat levels never felt all that alarming. I didn’t have a fancy thermal camera to test heat levels in the console, so I’d suggest you check out Digital Foundry’s excellent breakdown of the console’s power efficiency if you want to get into the nitty gritty.

The Xbox Series X’s specs have always been impressive on paper. Back in March, when we finally learned the specs of both consoles, we even speculated the Series X would be slightly more powerful than its next-gen competitor. It’s obviously too early to give a final verdict on the XSX vs. PS5 debate, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that Microsoft’s console has an advantage out the gate, boasting a more powerful CPU and GPU, even if the PS5’s potentially game-changing SSD has commanded much of the technical discussion.

Here are the main Xbox Series X specs you need to know:

Let’s talk about the console’s custom 12 teraflop GPU. While it might not be able to eclipse NVIDIA’s brand new line of GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs in terms of the raw specs, this is still an incredibly powerful graphics card when it comes to the home console market. Ever since it announced the Xbox Series X, Microsoft has had a clear mission: to make 4K 60fps the standard for all next-gen Xbox titles, while looking ahead at an 8K resolution future. After spending a bit of time playing Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4, and Sea of Thieves at 4K 60fps, it’s clear that Microsoft has absolutely knocked it out of the park.

While the Xbox Series X has no first-party next-gen exclusives at launch, which may make some players pause when considering the console’s $499 price tag, this machine does a lot to improve the Xbox experiences you already love. Playing Gears 5 at higher resolution brings the game’s diverse landscapes to life like never before, with improved textures and particle counts, while the inclusion of raytraced shadows and lighting makes all of the environments more immersive than ever before. There is some seriously beautiful lighting in this game to begin with, but the Optimized for Series X version of Gears 5 feels like the most fully realized take on this world. The higher framerate provides a better gameplay experience as well, especially when it comes to shooting mechanics, which feel silky smooth, a major boon when taking on Grubs.

Players can also set the framerate of Gears 5 multiplayer to 120fps, which provides the best look at the Series X’s current graphical ceiling (while the console is 8K-ready, there aren’t any 8K titles out to actually showcase that resolution). While I’m not sure I can tell as much of a difference between 60fps and 120fps when compared to the absolutely massive framerate jump between 30fps and 60fps, the ability to play a game on a home console at framerates that were once considered possible only on PC is no less impressive.

Ultimately, the jump to 60- and 120fps is a much bigger improvement to the home console experience than 1080p vs. 4K resolutions, especially when playing competitive shooters, racing, and fighting games, which demand quick reaction times and low latency. The clearer 4K resolution is certainly an improvement worth commending — just look at how good Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves look in the 4K screenshots taken from my Xbox Series X — but I’d pay more attention to what games you can turn all the way up to 120fps.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many Optimized for Series X games to actually try during the review period — only the Xbox One version of Yakuza: Like a Dragon was available ahead of the embargo, for example — so it remains to be seen how new titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion, current-gen games that are also Optimized for Series X and will boast 4K 60fps visuals, will perform at launch. What I’ve seen from the three optimized games I tried so far bodes well for the rest of the Xbox Series X’s launch lineup, though.

As I said at the start of this review, the Xbox Series X doesn’t have any first-party next-gen games on its list of launch titles, so it’s impossible to say how the Xbox Series X will perform when true next-gen experiences arrive to push that GPU and SSD to its limits. With Halo Infinite delayed to 2021, and other first-party releases like Obsidian’s Avowed, Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, and Playground’s new Fable game still a way’s away, we may be at least a year out from seeing what the console can really do.

Fortunately, there’s a lot to play on the Xbox Series X until then. In fact, the Series X may be the most backward compatible and most bang-for-your-buck console ever released — as long as you already have a $15 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription (and you totally should, if you’re an Xbox fan). Boasting a library of hundreds of backward compatible titles from across all generations of Xbox consoles, you can bring all of your physical and digital games from the original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One with you to the Series X. And with Xbox Game Pass, you also get a selection of over 100 games to download and play right out of the box. When compared to the PS5’s backward compatibility options, which only include PS4 titles and what’s available on PS Now, the Series X’s library of games is absolutely stacked.

I spent some time playing Star Wars: Republic Commando (an absolute banger for the original Xbox), Fable Anniversary for the Xbox 360, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (which is also getting an Optimized for Series X upgrade later this month) and Mad Max on disc for Xbox One. The Series X emulates the original Xbox and Xbox 360 experiences perfectly, while Xbox One titles run natively on the console, which is a nice touch for those who simply want to pop in a current-gen disc and play without worrying about a middle man.

But even that quality of life feature pales in comparison to the way the Series X is able to upscale 720p and 1080p experiences from the past to next-gen 4K and up to 120fps, while also seriously improving the picture quality of those titles through the console’s Auto HDR technology. While I spent a limited time trying out these backward compatible titles on the console, I can definitely say that Republic Commando looks and plays better than it ever did on the first Xbox, while I noticed a distinct choppiness in the framerate in Fable Anniversary and Mad Max (again, running on a disc). Digital Foundry said in its own detailed breakdown of the Series X’s 4K upscaling and Auto HDR for past-gen titles that this isn’t a “one size fits all solution – but when it works, it really works.” I should also note that Republic Commando did crash on me once at the start of my playthrough, but hasn’t given me any issues since.

Now, you can of course make the argument that people buy next-gen consoles to play next-gen games, and I tend to agree with you on that, but the vast backward compatible library on the Xbox Series X still makes this machine a hell of a deal for people jumping into home consoles for the first time as well as new gamers. The size of the Series X’s games library may very well be the best selling point for parents buying next-gen consoles this holiday season. You simply get way more options on Series X. And that’s before you even factor in the console’s Smart Delivery system, which allows you to upgrade select Xbox One titles to the Optimized for Series X version for free.

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Microsoft has also made the incredibly consumer-friendly decision to allow Xbox fans to bring their Xbox One accessories over to the Series X. Both the Xbox Wireless Controller for the Xbox One and the Xbox Media Remote will work on the Series X, for example. As a player who doesn’t like the idea of spending $60 a pop on extra controllers, this is a huge deal. Setting up to play a few rounds of Mortal Kombat X on the Series X, it was very easy to sync my white Xbox Wireless Controller with the next-gen console and jump right into the fight. If you already have an Xbox One and are upgrading this holiday, rejoice in the fact that you already have more than one controller for the Series X.

The only Xbox One peripheral I wasn’t able to sync with the Series X was my SteelSeries Arctis 9X wireless headset, which is supposed to be compatible with the next-gen console at launch. It’s possible that third-party peripherals weren’t compatible with the Series X during the review period, or that this is a bug Microsoft will squash at launch with a firmware update, but just a note of warning if you’re trying to bring your fancy headset over to the next generation.

I’ve waited this long to elaborate on the Xbox Series X’s SSD-powered Velocity Architecture and Quick Resume feature for dramatic effect — because this is where the console truly reveals itself to be an absolute showstopper. Not only does the Series X virtually eliminate load times in past-gen games like Republic Commando — no longer must you wait while different sections of a level load in the middle of the action — but seriously cuts down load times in Optimized for Series X titles like Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves. Gears 5, for example, transitions between cutscenes and gameplay almost seamlessly, while jumping into the campaign in the first place takes only a matter of seconds. Comparing load times between the Xbox One version and Series X port resulted in the latter winning every time. An unsurprising result considering the XBO uses an HDD, but a comparison worth making if you want to see the real difference.

Then there’s the Quick Resume feature, which allows you to switch between several games at once without having to stop and restart applications. With Quick Resume, you can play a few hours of Gears 5, switch to the Halo: Reach campaign in Halo: MCC, play a few quarters in Madden 21, and then go back to Gears 5 and pick up exactly where you left off without having to go through the game’s initial startup again. Loading back into Quick Resume-enabled games takes only a matter of seconds — and this goes for back-compat titles like Republic Commando, Mad Max on disc, and Gears 5 through Remote Play on my Google Pixel 3a XL, too.

The only two games I tried that didn’t seem to work with Quick Resume were Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves, which had to load from scratch again after switching to other games, but that might come down to the console’s pre-launch state or the fact that both of these games require logging into online servers. Every other game I tried seemed to be compatible with Quick Resume, though. Besides one hiccup where, after Quick Resuming, I lost all sound in Madden 21, this quality of life improvement, along with the graphics upgrade, is enough reason for hardcore Xbox fans to make the jump to the next-gen console.

You can see Quick Resume in action in the video below:

Meanwhile, not much has changed with the Series X’s UI, which has made an almost seamless transition from the Xbox One version. Yes, menus on the dashboard load much faster and everything feels much snappier and flows more smoothly, with little buffer between the dashboard and loading into Settings menu for example, but you won’t find a major UI redesign here. As someone who thinks that the current Xbox UI outpaces the competition, I’d say that continuity between generations is a good thing.

I have a few nitpicks regarding the UI, such as the unintuitive way you access recent screenshots and gameplay clips captured through the console’s Share function, but I’d hardly call this a deal breaker. I will say this: for a company so invested in making PC-level resolution and framerates a reality on a home console, Microsoft missed one key aspect of the PC gaming experience — the ability to quickly adjust graphics on the go. At the moment, you have to exit out of games and visit the console’s Settings menu to change resolution and framerates. The exception out of the Optimized for Series X games I tried is Gears 5, which lets you switch between 60- and 120fps multiplayer in its in-game graphics menu. While it’s true that developers themselves decide just how adjustable a game’s graphics are in-game, it wouldn’t have hurt Microsoft to have implemented more robust graphics options in its first-party optimized titles at least.

The above might not be something console-only gamers are really all that concerned about, of course, which would explain why Microsoft hasn’t done much about it. But when you tout 4K and up to 120 fps gaming so often, you should at least create a faster way to access graphics options on the console without forcing gamers to exit out of the game. Maybe some quick toggles in the Guide menu would do the trick?

Like the UI, the Xbox Series X controller brings pretty much everything you loved about its Xbox One predecessor back for the next generation. Microsoft has perfected its gamepad to the point where it’s also become the preferred controller on PC, so there’s no point in fixing what isn’t broken. I went into way more detail about the actual feel of the controller in my unboxing, but the short of it is that the Xbox Series X gamepad is comfortable, responsive, and features some neat improvements.

The first addition is its new D-pad. Microsoft has done away with the traditional cross-shaped design and replaced it with a new facetted dish inspired by the Xbox Elite Controller. While the new, rounder D-pad felt a bit odd at first, I’ve quickly grown accustomed to it, and have even started to prefer it over the Xbox Wireless Controller’s cross, which now feels a bit stiff in comparison.

The other big new feature on the controller is the Share button, which I had an absolute blast using throughout the review period. With one click of the button, you can now easily capture screenshots of your gameplay, while holding down the button allows you to record 30 seconds of 4K gameplay (you can record longer clips at lower resolutions). From there, you can upload the captures to your activity feed, message them to an Xbox friend, post to Twitter, or even save them to your phone through the Xbox app.

All of the images used in this article were taken with the controller’s Share button, and the results look pretty impressive to this very amateur game photographer. As I mentioned above, for the best experience, I’d suggest handling these captures on your phone once they’re uploaded to the cloud, as it’s easier to zoom and switch between them on the Xbox app than in the console’s Guide menu.

There’s no doubt that the Xbox Series X is a powerful console, one worthy of the next-gen label, but what will ultimately decide the console’s success is its games. Unfortunately, and this is absolutely no secret, the console’s launch lineup is a bit of a letdown. Leaning heavily on third-party Optimized for Series X titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and first-party next-gen ports like Gears 5 — most of which aren’t exclusive to XSX — as well as its Xbox Game Pass and backwards compatible library, the Xbox Series X doesn’t really have an exclusive next-gen title in its launch lineup to entice gamers who are on the fence. Even timed next-gen console exclusive Yakuza: Like a Dragon will be available on XBO, PS4, and PC at launch.

It does seem at the moment like Microsoft’s console will limp out of the gate when it’s finally toe-to-toe with the PS5. Without something truly new and exciting you can only play on the Xbox Series X, I’m not sure I can recommend you buy this console on day one unless you’re looking for raw power in your next-gen gaming. So who is this console really for at the moment? Hardcore Xbox fans who want the best way to play upcoming Xbox titles as well as Game Pass and backward compatible games.

For everyone else, getting an Xbox Series X right now is really an investment in the console’s future. With so much GPU and SSD power at its disposal, the Xbox Series X should prove to be an excellent canvas on which developers will be able to create great pieces of art. And what’s coming up from within Microsoft — Halo Infinite, Avowed, all upcoming Bethesda titles — certainly has me excited about the types of experiences we’ll eventually be able to play on the console. What I’ve experienced so far in terms of graphics and load times tells me that the future of Xbox is very bright.

But at launch, Microsoft wants you to feel like this is still the Xbox experience you love with some major upgrades to performance. Is this a good strategy when it comes to hooking PlayStation and PC gamers across the aisle? That’s up for debate. But as a celebration of everything Xbox fans love about the brand, the Xbox Series X absolutely succeeds and shows a ton of promise to boot.

The Xbox Series X launches on Nov. 10. The Series S, which wasn’t provided by Microsoft in time for a review, will also release on Nov. 10 for $299.

Stay tuned for more of our ongoing coverage of the Xbox Series X here.

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The post Xbox Series X Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ebestlaptop]

Acer Predator Helios 300 Review 2020

This is the acer predator helios 300. there's a lot of names in there isn't it so this is their mid-tier gaming laptop the nitro 5 in the 15 inch size would be the entry level model this one sits in the middle and then of course there are more expensive helios models like the helios 500 so this one has a lot to offer though for the price it starts around 1200 with an rtx 2060 and an intel core i7 10 gen cpu we have the rtx 2070 max q model which is around fifteen hundred dollars you might find it on sale for less but for that money you get a metal lid you get fast 240 hertz refresh display pretty good calling on this and it's quite relatively speaking for our gaming laptop thin and light we're going to look at it now and now a shout out to our sponsor wondershare and their demo creator and this is for windows and it's also coming for mac you know i tried it and i actually really like it what is it it's the screen capture and video editing utility so you know what a screen capture is so you need to record say gaming like we do a lot of gaming footage to show you how well laptops like this perform so you can do that but not just that the video editor is really very simple to use it's pretty intuitive it reminds me of imovie a little bit i think anybody can learn it so you record your clips and you can do things like split your clips put in transitions put in title screens you can change the playback speed you can crop it you can choose the resolution but you've got things like annotation or you can put a little fireworks going in the video which is something you certainly don't usually see in a caption utility also it's obviously great for things like training software demos if you're a teacher and you have to make lessons for school that sort of thing be sure to check out the link in the description to get a hold of it it's very affordable in fact there's even a free version that has a watermark on it unlike the paid version of it and now back to our video so confession i actually don't mind gaming laptops that look like gaming laptops as long as they look kind of cool well cool to my eyes obviously the predator tries to look a little more chill you've got anodized matte black aluminum on the lid but you do get those blue stripes hey instead of red anyway and the logo the logo the logo looks so cheap it looks like a piece of plastic just glommed right on there kind of takes away from the looks which is too bad but it's a little more toned down than the nitro which is also kind of a chill matte black but it has a reddish sort of reddish accents well you can see we'll put them both on screen for you now so you can compare the nitro is around a thousand dollars with an rtx 2060 and a core i7 so it is about 200 less than the entry level predator of course the nitro is all plastic and our predator helios has a more robust cooling system which is always important for gaming laptop and of course that 240 hertz ips map three millisecond refresh display there is a base model which is 144 hertz which is still nothing to sneeze at and speaking of the display actually the metrics are pretty good we checked it out with our colorimeter it's a little brighter than average for a gaming laptop they typically aren't very bright so it was over 300 nits by a good amount there and pretty good color gamut so that's a nice self for something that is again mid tier usually in gaming laptops the display is what takes the hit they don't get the greatest quality displays so this one's better than average which could be nice for those who are thinking of using this for content creation photo editing video editing doing some 3d blender work or something like that inside we have an intel 10th gen core i7 6 core cpu we have two ram slots so you could in theory you should be able to go up to 64 gigs though acer only mentions going up to 32 gigs this ddr4 ram rs has 16 gigs they sell dual challenge configurations in 16 and 32 gigs you have not just the m.2 boot SSD drive which is nvme and benchmark pretty well on ours but you also have a hard drive bay even if you buy a configuration that doesn't have a two and a half inch hard drive the brackets in place and they include the connector cable that you need to put that in for yourself which is sweet the cooling system on this is relatively speaking again in this price to your pretty robust and i think that helps because this is fairly thin and light acer says it's five and a half pounds which is 2.5 kilograms but ours actually measured a little bit less than that so yeah go then i when playing games yes if you're playing triple a titles on ultra settings or full hd resolution which is exactly what we do in our tests that you see running on screen well yes it will thermal throttle but a hundred millivolt undervolted using throttle stop no problem that brings it down eight degrees centigrade you can see the temperature difference right now in one game where i was actually under vaulting it but still for something this didn't like the temperatures are not that bad especially in this price tier and again for those who like to fiddle and tinker and all that sort of thing with things like under vaulting you can do that they have the acer predator sense app as always on this and you can do things like give these gpu a mild overclock set your fan speeds manually if you want certainly that could help with cooling speaking of the fans not terribly loud i mean it's a gaming laptop yes you will hear them when you're doing things like gaming or if you're doing a complex render in blender or something like that but not that loud so there is certainly thermal room there for going even higher they also have the turbo button built and keyboard deck there and that one basically does the gpu overclock sets the power profile to high performance and blasts the fans some probably most people don't want to get that loud either you might get about five percent more performance improvement by doing that but yeah if you get this play with the fan profiles on this and do a little under vaulting and good times especially for the price once again has a microsoft precision trackpad no complaints with that that keyboard is a four zone rgb backlit we don't expect per key rgb backlighting at this price point uh the keys are a little on the soft and mushy side pretty decent travel but i would like them to be a little bit firmer and a little bit crisper it's not a hideous keyboard or anything like that though but you know if you like that crispy kind of firm keyboard this one would not be it speaking of the internals again there is a second nvme SSD slot and it is possible to set up two drives in raid 0 if you want to do that acer mentions thunderbolt 3 for some of the configurations others i think just have usbc but the rest of the ports on here are pretty hardy you've got killer ethernet by the way you also have killer wi-fi 6 on board which is an intel based card so that's good but you've got plenty of usb a ports you got three of those you got your mini display port 1.4 in addition to the hdmi 2.0 so yeah it's pretty well equipped and obviously a headphone jack when it comes to the speakers they're average they're not so great they're not so terrible and again fitting for this price range there's dolby dts x ultra software there so if you're playing plugging in a set of surround sound speakers or something like that you can get some pretty nice audio out of it and even your headphone audio quality is quite fine on this but speakers you're right that's about it it has a 59 watt hour battery which is you know this is how they get them thin and they get them light folks in this price tier so that's not a very big battery it's a little bit bigger than you would see in an ultrabook but there's obviously a lot more horsepower going on here to consume it we do have nvidia optimus switchable graphics no g-sync by the way but so that's going to help if you're doing light work you're just streaming video or something like that or working in office then it's going to run on integrated graphics but still you don't expect a whole lot of battery life out of this you know about four hours on a charge doing light work i don't mean really pushing it hard and doing 3d renders or something like that our max q2070 card came with a 230 watt charger i assume that you probably get 180 watt charger for the lesser configuration with a 20 60 inside speaking of that 2070 max q yes the max q version of the car which does help us run less hard but the performance is exactly where you would expect it to be which is to say that 2070 max q is not mid-range it's getting into upper tier there so you can play any game on the market now on ultra settings and certainly have frame rates that exceed 60 frames per second on this and given that you have a fast refresh display if you're using it for something more like battle royale or apex legends you know those kind of things you can easily go into the hundreds in your frame rate with this which is sweet you're not going to overrun the 240 hertz display but maybe with something even lighter less demanding like overwatch you just might come closer to that so it punches above its weight there and if you're thinking about future games like cyberpunk 2077's coming out soon this should be able to handle absolutely no problem okay the bottom cover is plastic unlike the lid that is metal and that means real tight fit unfortunately phillips head screws to unscrew it that part's easy start at the front edge and notice that the front edge is a wraparound kind of thing so you see that so that's how that works so you have to get that off first and then you go around the size and then the back also wraps around so just so you can see where the separation point is because it might be a little confusing because of all the little grille decor so that entire thing comes off and then we finally get inside it's not much fun folks but you can do it we have speaker vents on the side plenty of ventilation over here for the cpu and gpu and the fans and uh so there's our battery again 59 watt hour not really terribly big two ram slots we have dual channel memory there 16 gigs in our model the speakers are flanking over here they're pretty small and that's why well the sound is pretty small on this and nice heat sinks see all this is not some teeny-weeny little thing we've got a lot of component coverage here so that does help it run relatively speaking for a gaming laptop with an intel 10gen cpu not too hot and here is our boot ssd we got a 512 gig in ours and right next to it is the killer wi-fi card that's the 1650i wi-fi six card based on intel hardware and there is a second ssd slot over here this is where the ssd would plug in it's kind of a tight fit there but hey and the hard drive bay visible and we've got the the mounting hardware there even though we don't have a drive and again the cable that's required to connect the drive to the motherboard is in the box so that's the acer predator helios the 2020 edition with intel 10th generation cpus and in our case the rtx 2070 max-q gpu but even if you get the rtx 2060 it's no slouch and you'll still be able to play games on high or ultra settings at the full hd resolution in this panel for the price it's not bad it competes obviously with things like the dell g5 msi's mid-range gaming laptops but as always i think acer really does a good job with the low to mid end the gaming laptop front