Acer AME600-UR378 Desktop (Black)

Top of the line processer for "not that much." I've had the computer for a couple of weeks and compared to my Vista HP, it's night and day. Web pages just flash by without hesitation. My pictures are "breath taking." E mails load instantly. As far as Windows 8 there is a learning curve but I'm finally getting used to it and it's not that bad. The only thing on Acer's part that kind of irritates me is the hard drive which is 5400 rpm, when most drives now days are 7200 rpm. I'm not sure if it makes a whole lot of difference but it is kind of "hope you don't notice" kind of thing. I still would recommend this computer because it is a lot of bang for the buck.

Feb. 14, 2013... I just started playing Far Cry 3 on this computer. Far Cry 3 is very graphics intensive, so I thought it would be a good test to see if the Acer could handle it. I have not installed any upgrades, including using the Intel intergrated graphic system that came with the computer.I have been pleasantly surprised. The game is beautiful and runs with no lag at all. My older computer with a graphics card shuts itself off because it gets so hot playing this game. The Acer runs cool and quiet. Granted, I can only use medium settings,after that the frame rate is slow, but still the details are good. I can only imagine the potential of adding a graphics card.All in all for a stock computer it handles itself well.

There's nothing like a lot of CPU horsepower. Only the HD rotation speed holds this machine back. Windows 8 isn't as awful as some reviews indicated.

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For $710, this was a bargain. I could not have built it myself from components for that money. The processor alone is almost $300 on the retail market. 10 GB of RAM costs $90, a 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive is $100 (I don't know why the specs on this say it is a 5400RPM drive--mine is a 7200RPM Barracuda drive--did I just get lucky? Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200RPM 2 TB SATA 6 GB/s NCQ 64 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive) Then you add $100 minimum for a motherboard with USB3 and Bluetooth and wireless capability, $30 for a power supply, $40 for a case, another $20 for a mouse and keyboard, and $89 for Win 8 operating system, and you haven't even assembled it yet!

Yes, the BIOS is lame and crippled compared to what you would get on a higher-end motherboard, but it does everything I needed to make the machine work the way I want. I installed a Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD immediately after creating the 16GB recovery flash drive, and installed the original 2T Seagate drive in the handy removable front disk tray for data. It boots from switch on to the Win 8 metro screen in less than 8 seconds. My Win 7 i-3 laptop takes over a minute to boot. Win 8 has a lot going for it with such a compact kernal, and is not that hard to learn to use. With an add-on free utility you can make it look and act just like Win7 if you want.

The embedded Intel HD4000 graphics are plenty fast if you aren't a gamer, at least as fast as the Nvidia GT 630 card they sell in the Predator model like this one. I had a spare GT 620 card laying around and tried it in this machine and it actually slowed it down in the WEI benchmark. I am totally happy with how it performs, and it is a bunch faster than the last Acer Aspire desktop I bought years ago with a 4-core Phenom II 965 chip in it (which is still running well after 3 years, which speaks for Acer's reliability). Do NOT depend on their tech support though, they are a joke. Find out for yourself how to fix any problems--Google is your friend. The answers are out there to solve almost every complaint I see in these reviews. The Acer support site has answers for most of them if you look:

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I was initially iffy about buying this because it came with Windows 8 which gets bad reviews for usability. I have to say I found it quite easy to navigate and I'm not all that computer savvy. This unit has a lot of RAM and a fast processor. It really moves. The only thing to be aware of is the dvd drive is very flimsy. I would support it from underneath with one hand when you put a dvd in or it will probably break.

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I bought this to run Reason 6.5 music recording software. I needed something with the processing power to record live audio at CD quality. I am please to say the i7 chip easily handles this job even if I have multiple songs open at the same time something that used to freeze other laptops I owned. So far I have nothing bad to say about this machine and it was only about $700. The only thing I would change is I would like it to have two HDMI outputs.

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