Is this computer any good?

CastletonSnob

Weaksauce
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Apr 12, 2021
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I got this computer today. Is it any good? Anyone have any experience with Acer computers? I plan on using it to surf the web and watch streams.

I ask because I've heard of Acer products breaking soon after purchase, and I've heard horror stories about Acer's customer service.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-TC-895-U.../dp/B088X2YR3X
 
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I've never had any good experiences with Acer products. Back when they used to sell motherboards, every board I ever bought from them failed within a year. The few laptops I had from them were cheap and grubby as well.

At the price point that machine is being sold at, they had to cut corners somewhere. Like it appears they didn't bother to install a rear exhaust fan? The inside of that case is going to be an easybake oven. At bare minimum, I'd buy a what appears to be a 120mm or 140mm fan and install it to keep the machine from dying an early death.

The PSU looks to be proprietary, so if it ever fails, it will be interesting trying to rig something up.
 
My son has an acer G3 or something. Came with a 7700k and a 1070 GPU. Cool looking case, works for him, never had an issue.

My one complaint is the 1070 is probably the lightest GPU I have ever handled and I wish I knew why. I have one myself and it is twice the weight. The thing runs cool, quiet and overclocks quite well. Has no vendor markings either.

Otherwise, works well for what it is.
 
I've never had any good experiences with Acer products. Back when they used to sell motherboards, every board I ever bought from them failed within a year. The few laptops I had from them were cheap and grubby as well.

At the price point that machine is being sold at, they had to cut corners somewhere. Like it appears they didn't bother to install a rear exhaust fan? The inside of that case is going to be an easybake oven. At bare minimum, I'd buy a what appears to be a 120mm or 140mm fan and install it to keep the machine from dying an early death.

The PSU looks to be proprietary, so if it ever fails, it will be interesting trying to rig something up.
What makes you say it doesn't have a rear exhaust fan?
 
What makes you say it doesn't have a rear exhaust fan?

Because the picture on the Amazon listing shows it missing.

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No screws, no fan blades visible through the holes in the case. If you look closely through the holes, it looks like you can see the front drive cage and some power wires.
 
Shouldn't this question be asked before you buy something?

I've never had any good experiences with Acer products. Back when they used to sell motherboards, every board I ever bought from them failed within a year. The few laptops I had from them were cheap and grubby as well.

At the price point that machine is being sold at, they had to cut corners somewhere. Like it appears they didn't bother to install a rear exhaust fan? The inside of that case is going to be an easybake oven. At bare minimum, I'd buy a what appears to be a 120mm or 140mm fan and install it to keep the machine from dying an early death.

The PSU looks to be proprietary, so if it ever fails, it will be interesting trying to rig something up.

OEM's like Acer cut a lot of corners. They cut them virtually everywhere. You get motherboards with weak VRM's, UEFI's with very limited features, motherboards that lack RAID support, they may have less than 4x PCIe lanes for NVMe devices. You may only see one NVMe slot, they have poor airflow in the cases, shitty case fans, or none at all. The lack of USB ports on the back shows you that they didn't bother with costly options like integrated USB hubs on the motherboard or additional controllers. The power supplies are rated according to wishful thinking rather than actual output capacity and the list goes on and on.
 
OEM's like Acer cut a lot of corners. They cut them virtually everywhere. You get motherboards with weak VRM's, UEFI's with very limited features, motherboards that lack RAID support, they may have less than 4x PCIe lanes for NVMe devices. You may only see one NVMe slot, they have poor airflow in the cases, shitty case fans, or none at all. The lack of USB ports on the back shows you that they didn't bother with costly options like integrated USB hubs on the motherboard or additional controllers. The power supplies are rated according to wishful thinking rather than actual output capacity and the list goes on and on.

No need to tell me they cut corners, it's pretty much general knowledge they're junk. All of the AOpen boards I had suffered from the capacitor plague and failed. Sucks I didn't know how to recap boards back then, they're pretty rare today.

Someone should make a T-shirt with bold letters "HOPES AND WISHES TOUR" and list off all of the shitty OEM power supplies. Bestec, Delta, Liteon, HEC, etc. Maybe have a big graphic of a PSU exploding on the front.
 
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If I'm just using it to browse the internet and watch streams, it's an OK computer, right?

Yeah, it will be fine for that. My grandparents had one of those SFF Acer desktops that provided them years of basic computing (web browsing, email).
 
I would just build something for that price. I just piece togather a cheap pc that is better then that for less. Granted I am including a grey market windows 10 pro key.
 
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I've never had any good experiences with Acer products. Back when they used to sell motherboards, every board I ever bought from them failed within a year. The few laptops I had from them were cheap and grubby as well.

At the price point that machine is being sold at, they had to cut corners somewhere. Like it appears they didn't bother to install a rear exhaust fan? The inside of that case is going to be an easybake oven. At bare minimum, I'd buy a what appears to be a 120mm or 140mm fan and install it to keep the machine from dying an early death.

The PSU looks to be proprietary, so if it ever fails, it will be interesting trying to rig something up.

That case is way too small for a 140 fan, or even a 120. The opening is only about half the size of the IO panel (6.25"/158mm). It's holes are for an 80 or 92mm fan. 🤦‍♂️

With a 65W CPU it probably won't get crazy hot without an exhaust other than through the PSI; but even if you can upgrade the PSU, forget anything but adding blower style GPU. You wouldn't be able to get the extra heat from an open air GPU out.
 
If I'm just using it to browse the internet and watch streams, it's an OK computer, right?
It's not a particularly great value or anything but yes it will be fine. If anything it's overkill.

If you plan on upgrading it with a gpu for gaming at some point I would return it for something that takes a standard ATX power supply. If not, don't worry about it.
 
This thing is ranked #2 in tower computers. Man times have changed. Even from a basic value stand point it doesn’t seem like much.

merlo a quick price history search shows it’s been pretty low around $350 before. That makes more sense for the sales and ratings.

after reading the reviews and seeing the pictures it’s a ton of proprietary stuff including the motherboard. Very very basic. They put some time into making a cut down proprietary board like that. Strange.
 
What do you mean it's not a great value?

You might be wondering why I bought this computer if I heard bad things about Acer. Because I heard Acer Aspires are the best budget computers from several sites, and this computer had the Amazon's Choice label.
 
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What do you mean it's not a great value?

You might be wondering why I bought this computer if I heard bad things about Acer. Because I heard Acer Aspires are the best budget computers from several sites, and this computer had the Amazon's Choice label.
I mean at $350 that’s a good value. At $550 I’d build my own and have much much better quality components that are not proprietary.
 
What do you mean it's not a great value?

I mean that you could probably walk into a big box store and buy a similar PC for a similar price. You didn't get taken advantage of, but you didn't get a great deal either.

Next time I would keep an eye on slickdeals.net when you are getting ready to buy. You likely could have gotten a similar machine for less or an entry level gamer for not much more.
 
I mean that you could probably walk into a big box store and buy a similar PC for a similar price. You didn't get taken advantage of, but you didn't get a great deal either.

Next time I would keep an eye on slickdeals.net when you are getting ready to buy. You likely could have gotten a similar machine for less or an entry level gamer for not much more.

In other words, it's about the same deal I would have gotten if I went to Best Buy or some other store.
 
Yes.

Although to your credit that is the cheapest I see for those exact specs, at current prices. It looks like you are saving ~$100 in exchanged for the barebones \ proprietary components it comes with.

If you have any interest in gaming I would be on the look out for something like this. https://slickdeals.net/f/14941313-d...-cashback-free-shipping?src=SiteSearchV2Algo1. You get a smaller SSD and less RAM in exchange for the GPU, but those are easy to upgrade down the road.
 
Yes.

Although to your credit that is the cheapest I see for those exact specs, at current prices. It looks like you are saving ~$100 in exchanged for the barebones \ proprietary components it comes with.

If you have any interest in gaming I would be on the look out for something like this. https://slickdeals.net/f/14941313-d...-cashback-free-shipping?src=SiteSearchV2Algo1. You get a smaller SSD and less RAM in exchange for the GPU, but those are easy to upgrade down the road.
Does that Dell use a non-proprietary power supply? IIRC they were one of the companies whose mutually incompatable proprietary designs drove the development of the ATX 12VO standard, but I don't know if they used proprietary 12V only models across their entire line, or if they've replaced them with standard compatible models yet were used.

Edit: Looking at pictures on Dell's site it looks like a proprietary design. 2x4 pin, 1x8 pin, and 1x6 pin connectors scattered across the board. The 12VO standard replacement for the big ATX connector is 10 pin; and I don't see one of those.
 
Does that Dell use a non-proprietary power supply?

Edit: Looking at pictures on Dell's site it looks like a proprietary design.
Good catch, I assumed they were still putting normal PSUs in machines with GPUs. My mistake!
 
My new computer has an optical drive.

Is that bad? I've heard that most modern computers don't have one.
 
Shouldn't this question be asked before you buy something?



OEM's like Acer cut a lot of corners. They cut them virtually everywhere. You get motherboards with weak VRM's, UEFI's with very limited features, motherboards that lack RAID support, they may have less than 4x PCIe lanes for NVMe devices. You may only see one NVMe slot, they have poor airflow in the cases, shitty case fans, or none at all. The lack of USB ports on the back shows you that they didn't bother with costly options like integrated USB hubs on the motherboard or additional controllers. The power supplies are rated according to wishful thinking rather than actual output capacity and the list goes on and on.

Do you mean that lower-quality OEMs like Acer cut a lot of corners, or that pretty much all OEMs cut corners?
 
Sorry, everyone. Just a bit worried that my computer will die early.
It will be fine. I am still running an i5 6600k, 24gb of ram and a mediocre video card and it will serve me well for the foreseeable future.
Do you mean that lower-quality OEMs like Acer cut a lot of corners, or that pretty much all OEMs cut corners?
Most OEMs cut corners, but there are some that cut more corners. For the average user who wants to browse the internet, listen to music and watch some movies, nearly any OEM will be fine.

People here love to hate any prebuilt computer, but in the end most people who buy OEMs are just looking to set it and forget it and this is a place where people want to customize, overclock, etc so OEMs get a bad rap here.
 
Do you mean that lower-quality OEMs like Acer cut a lot of corners, or that pretty much all OEMs cut corners?

All OEM's cut corners. No exceptions. What varies is the corners cut. Some will use terrible power supplies while others will cheap out and give you only a single DIMM, relegating the system to single-channel memory mode. Or, the case will have shitty airflow and generally poor thermal solutions or whatever. It's always something. Even high end boutique builders aren't immune to the mentality. However, more expensive system from high end builders cut fewer corners than OEM's like HP and Dell. Velocity Micro's Raptor gaming system is a good example of this. Some selections you can't change in the configurator could be better. The ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero isn't the newer Dark Hero or the Crosshair VIII Formula and for the price, they should be. The IC Diamond thermal paste they use isn't as good as Kryonaught, but it is cheaper. Models using an AIO cooler could use a better AIO than they do, etc.

However, with boutique builders you get great hardware, just not necessarily the best possible models offered in each segment .In the above example, the motherboard they offer isn't the best one offered by that manufacturer. Making that slightly cheaper selection is how they bake more margin into the cost of the build. You over pay for that hardware. This is how they can afford to warranty such hardware and pay the massive U.S. labor costs to build such machines. For the price they charge, you could build a system yourself with absolutely zero compromises with specs that shame the boutique builders at the same price or build the same exact machine for considerably less money than they charge you. Your choice.

But, people looking at OEMs either have very basic needs or they are looking at boutique builders and want what they think is the best with no effort on their part and they are willing to pay for it.
 
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