Acer Recalls Predator Deskops

PC and laptop manufacturer Acer America had to recall its Aspire Predator line of desktops due to short-circuiting and overheating.

Yesterday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall alert, reporting that Acer America voluntarily conducted a product safety recall of its Aspire Predator desktop computers. The recall consists of around 215 computers sold between May 2008 and December 2008, originally costing consumers somewhere between $2,000 and $6,000 each, depending on the selected configuration.

The Acer Predator is one of the company's high-end gaming machines, featuring Intel's Core 2 Quad processor, Nvidia's nForce 780i SLI chipset, Nvidia's GeForce 9800GTX (or 9600GT), and 8 GB of DDR2 SDRAM. The PC comes in a wicked cool case mounted with supporting arms on the front cover and claw-like optical drive doors. It certainly looks like a robotic beast in appearance alone.

However, according to Acer's recall notice, the insulation on the computer’s internal wiring can become bent or stripped, causing the wires to overheat while the product is in use. As a result, the overheating may cause melting or damage to the unit, and could even pose a risk of fire. Because of the potential damage to consumers, both Acer and the CPSC concluded that the company should recall the machines and offer to repair the wires in question free of charge.

"Acer recommends that you discontinue use of the unit and unplug it from the main power supply," the company said. "You may also reduce the risk of pinching this wire by not opening/closing the hard disk drive (HDD) door on the front of the Predator." Unfortunately, Acer already received two reports of the Predator computers short-circuiting, resulting in melted internal components and external casing. However, the company said that neither incident occurred in the U.S., and no injuries have been reported.

Aspire Predator owners who want to know if their rigs are on the recall risk simply need to locate these model numbers: ASG7200 and ASG7700. The model numbers are printed on the bottom right corner of the panel on the right side of the system. Owners can contact Acer at 1-866-695-2237 (United States) or 1-866-706-2237 (Canada). Acer can also be reached via e-mail by clicking http://acer.custhelp.com; an Acer Customer Service representative will reply within one business day.