Acer Nitro Gaming Desktop | 256GB SSD

Description

Acer Nitro Gaming Desktop Description

Intel Core i5-12400F, GeForce GTX 1650, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, Windows 11 Home (N50-640-ES11)

 

 

Packaged snugly in a bite size box, this small form-factor Acer Nitro PC feel like it’s got a bit of a Napoleon complex going on. The angry, red LED brow on the front of the machine sits beside possibly the largest power button I’ve ever seen, as if to say, “Press it and I will end you.” Though that attitude isn’t entirely baseless—the mid-range CPU/GPU combo can handle itself in a host of games at 1440p. 

In theory, that combo should be great for productivity-style tasks, too, but the storage really lets it down. 

Bolstering a pretty miniscule 238GB PCIe SSD boot drive with an HDD (even a 1TB one) is, frankly, a mistake. Just pick a bigger solo boot SSD, people. Here it means I’m not able to play the majority of today’s games with the speedy load times an M.2 solid state drive would have provided. Case in point, the FFXIV Shadowbringers benchmark choked at 32.9 seconds when loading from the hard drive; in this day and age that’s pretty unacceptable. 

If you do manage to fit anything on the SSD, you’re looking at around 12.7 seconds load time, and even that’s a little lacking compared to other PCs in the same, and even in lower price brackets.

The 3DMark Storage Benchmark furthers my concerns there, with only a passable 1,381 index score for the SSD, and just managing an abysmal 155 points for the HDD. Basically, expect to spend a lot of time on read/write tasks. This is likely the main reason the Nitro stumbled in the PCMark 10 Express benchmark, too, with a score of 5,757. 

On the plus side, you can’t buy this exact spec. Acer has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to send us a machine for review you can’t buy. The system you can buy comes with a far more reasonable 512GB PCIe SSD for your $1,300. It’s still hooked up with a 1TB hard drive, so the data side is still slow, but that takes away a lot of our immediate issues with the Nitro 50.

That’s unlikely to change the PCMark score, which would indicate general productivity isn’t its strong suit. But the Aida64 Extreme benchmark score of 41,015 shows the dual channel 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM can handle the stresses of multitasking pretty well. 

That RAM will give you a better chance when it comes to gaming too, and once you’ve spent the majority of your day installing your games on the HDD (ridiculous), the Nitro 50 does manage to pack a punch when it comes to gaming.

 

 

Acer Nitro Gaming Desktop Technical Specifications

Desktop Type	Gaming
Desktop Form Factor	Mid Tower
CPU Brand	Intel
CPU	i5-12400F
Memory	8GB
SSD Capacity	256GB
Hard Drive Capacity	None
GPU	GTX 1650
Operating System	Windows 11 Home
Wireless LAN	Wi-Fi + Bluetooth
Keyboard and Mouse	Yes
Weight	10 kg
Dimension	13.3″W x 6.41″H x 13.7″D 33.78cm x 16.28 cm x 34.79cm
Power Supply	500W
Product Condition	New
Model	DG.E2VAA.003
USB ports	1 x USB Type-C 4 x USB 2.0 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
Display Ports	1 x HDMI

 

Additional information

Brand	Acer
Condition	New
Colour	Black
Model	N50-640-ES11
Mfr#	DG.E2VAA.003