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I have always been a gaming laptop kind of person. They’re plug-and-play, I don’t have to mess with the insides, and they come with the latest tech. for a decent price. Well, my ROG Zephryus G14 died on me in a 2 year span and I realized gaming laptops aren’t super sustainable in the long run anyway. So, that leaves me with building my own gaming PC or buying a pre-built. I fully intended to learn the ropes and build my own, but the prices for certain parts are still astronomical and I just don’t have the time. I’m sure a lot of other people are in the same boat.
I researched the best custom-build websites like Digital Storm, Corsair, Newegg, etc., but they all had their own sets of problems like price, poor customer service, etc. I ended up buying a Cyberpower PC on a recommendation from one of my friends. But that was DOA, as the GPU came damaged causing green lines all over my monitor. I returned that PC and decided to go for this Acer PC because Acer has a great community and decent customer service. There are some non-standard parts that will make upgrading a bit more difficult in the long run, but overall this desktop runs great for the price! It arrived packaged incredibly well and was pretty much plug-and-play for those of us a bit nervous to crack the case open. It’s a great beginner PC. I will say that the CPU runs hot, with the fans on max RPM it can get up to 90 to 95 Celsius. This can be fixed by upgrading the CPU fan. Others have recommended Noctua for that and I think that’s the safe bet.
It does run pretty much every game, but until you upgrade the stock RAM and CPU fan, you’ll have throttling/heat issues. Bumping down the graphics in games to high/medium offers a temporary fix to that if you want to hold off on upgrading.
I’m a naturally cautious PC buyer, so I’ll keep y’all updated on how it continues to run. So far so good.
Update:
After a little over a year of using this PC, I have very few complaints. I haven't run into any software issues. It handles day-to-day operations and more intensive activities with ease. It's easy to take apart and dust. However, I have gotten to the point where high temps are becoming a bit worrisome. It hasn't affected performance, but sometimes I notice a "mechanical" smell when running intensive games, which does not bode well for maintaining the health of your PC and its parts. This particular CPU supposedly runs fine around 80 Celsius, but I'd feel much more comfortable staying in the 60-75 range when gaming. So, I went through the process of upgrading the external fan and CPU cooler with Noctua fans (Noctua NF-A9 for the external fan and Noctua NH-U9S for the CPU cooler). The process went SO smoothly. My CPU does not hit temps higher than 75 C now, even with High settings. As previously mentioned, I was terrified of messing with the insides of a PC, but this was a breeze. I followed a guide on the Acer Community forum and had no issues. I'll link it here: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/643916/the-p03-620-upgrades-ive-made
For any upgrade needs on this PC, there are step-by-step guides and answers on the community page.
| Standing screen display size | 0.1 |
|---|---|
| Processor | 4.9 GHz intel_core_i7_11700F |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB HDD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia Ge Force Rtx 3070 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 5 |
