I've spent a month with this outrageous Overclockers gaming laptop and now I need to lie down

Many laptops offer a simple utility to its user; with nondescript design, understated performance, and generic features. Y'know, 90% of what you see in any given café or hotdesking office. Then you have 'power laptops', bigger, bulkier studio or gaming machines, with a thicker chassis to house a dedicated graphics card and maybe a touch of flair to their external design, to allow their now-impoverished/indebted owner to show off a bit.

And then there's the Overclockers Pinnacle.

When it comes to the best laptops for graphic artists, power is indeed important. You need a machine that can keep up with the latest 3D software, intense multitasking and heavy-duty graphic workflows, and preferably not catch fire in doing so.

And it's clear right from my first minutes with this new flagship from UK customisation and PC-building experts Overclockers that this is not a difficult challenge for the Pinnacle.

But so is portability, at least in most cases. And that's where we run into a brick wall. A brick wall called the Overclockers Pinnacle. Because holy [redacted], this might be the heaviest, bulkiest, most aggressively extra portable computer I've ever come near. And I was born in the '80s.

Key specifications

Design, build and display

• Incredibly bulky and heavy
•

There's nothing even remotely subtle about the Overclockers Pinnacle. With an enormous 18-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 2560x1600 and a refresh rate of 240Hz, the black chassis (with a white Pinnacle logo on the lid) also features one of the biggest protruding trays I've ever seen on a laptop out from behind the display. And just in case you didn't notice that enough already, the tray features swooshing spoiler-like accents on top and an RGB strip along the backside too.

And as a further mark of the complete lack of compromise and inhibition put into the design of the Pinnacle, it weighs a ludicrous 3.6 kilograms (8 pounds in old currency). This thing is a TANK.

Obviously it comes with a full-size keyboard, partly because you can sort-of fit one within the frame of this chassis and mostly because compromising on the keyboard setup considering... everything else here... would be weird.

The setup for the up-down-left-right keys is a little confusing, though, because the layout places the Up key right next to the right-hand shift key... which also has an upward-facing arrow on it. In my month with the Pinnacle, I have accidentally hit the Up key instead of the intended Shift key more times than I'd care to mention.

Overall, the physical heft, uncompromising design cues and the RGB fiesta is sure to divide, but for those who like loud, you won't find many things louder than this outside of a military airport.

Design score: 4/5

Features

• Thunderbolt 5 on board
• Customisable specs from very powerful to ludicrously powerful

As it's made by customisation experts Overclockers, the Pinnacle is available in no fewer than 14 different configurations on the OC website. The version I have been testing comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7GHz) CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM at a bandwidth of 4400MT/s, and 2TB of SSD storage. Otherwise known as one of the junior models. You can get up to 192GB of RAM and the top-spec 5090 graphics card if you so desire (and if you have a sizeable trust fund).

There are two Thunderbolt 5 ports on board, one of which supports power delivery, along with 2 USB-A ports and an HDMI port with HDCP support. Add to that a microSD card slot, AC outlet, Ethernet port and a 5MP webcam, and you've got yourself one well-kitted piece of desktop replacement here.

The keyboard is a per-key RGB chiclet, but one that gives a satisfying, clicky but quiet response to your inputs.

Considering what inside, I expect the next section to be impressive...

Feature score: 4.5/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing.
• Cinebench: Stress-tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process.

Performance

• Good overall performance
• Great for multi-tasking pros

When you look at the benchmark charts above, you might think "oh, these numbers are fairly middling", but please keep in mind that I have filtered the chart to include only high-performance professional laptops with discrete GPUs, almost all of which cost at least as much as my Pinnacle's configuration (£2,499 at the time of writing).

With that in mind, these scores come into sharper and more flattering focus. The GPU and CPU are strong across the board, whether I put them through computing-heavy office tasks, graphically intensive photo, 3D or video stress tests, or AI-reliant processing, such as evidenced by the machine's impressive Stable Diffusion and Topaz Video AI scores.

In real life, these scores are supported by my everyday experience, which includes working on this website, where I edit photos and videos in addition to writing pieces like this review. I frequently found myself having well over 30 tabs open in the notoriously power-hungry Chrome browser while working on files in Photoshop and either playing or editing videos at the same time or listening to music, and never noticed a stutter or slowdown in any relevant way.

I did have some issues with the computer's system settings, where it curiously wouldn't find the NVIDIA Graphics driver for a while, but that seemed to be either a Windows or NVIDIA problem, as a driver update via NVIDIA's app, along with a couple of restarts, remedied that issue, and it hasn't resurfaced yet.

As this is a gaming laptop, I obviously used it for gaming too, and I ran games like Cyberpunk and NBA 2K25 at over 120fps on near-maximum settings without any hiccups or overheating issues.

One thing to note here, like on so many laptops, is that under load, the fans get quite loud, but nowhere near the ear-splitting levels you get on a top-spec Predator Helios, to be fair.

Performance score: 4/5

Price

The specification of the Overclockers Pinnacle I tested currently costs £2,499.95 on the company's website, which is obviously not exactly cheap, but it's more than decent value for the equipment you get; a 5080 graphics card, two TB5 slots, lots of RAM and a big SSD (and the laptop doubles as a great core workout too, if you ever need to carry it). You can obviously go all-out and find yourself spending well over £3,500, if you want a UHD screen, 96GB of RAM and extended storage, but I'd recommend this configuration for all but the most ludicrous of creative demands.

Value score: 4/5

Who is it for?

• Serious gamers and creatives who don't mind a bit of flash (and have a strong back)

Buy it if...

• You want a loud, proud gaming laptop
• You want as big a laptop screen as possible
• You need solid across-the-board performance

Don't buy it if...

• You need to travel literally anywhere with this laptop
• A cheaper creative machine will do
• You are allergic to gamer aesthetics

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