Acer Predator

Our final competitor in this 3-way comparison comes courtesy of Acer. It may seem an unusual choice in a round-upwards with two custom-bazaar PCs, but despite being a manufacturer arrangement, the Predator will certainly be able to hold its own confronting the contest in both specs and cost. What we're interested in finding out is how well it fares in terms of the quality of components used, attention to particular and the level of customer service before and after the purchase.

The Acer Aspire Predator G7750 is currently the only gaming system listed on Acer'due south website and it'south available though third political party retailers in a single non-configurable version.

At the center of the organization is a liquid cooled Intel Core i7 930 processor operating at 2.8 GHz. The water-cooling system looks identical to the one on Puget's gaming desktop and I believe they are both the Asetek 550LC. Also included is a whopping 12GB of DDR3-1333 memory from Samsung, 1.5TB Western Digital difficult bulldoze spinning at 7200 RPM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 graphics carte du jour with 1280MB of memory, 16x DVD RW optical drive, and a FSP Group 750W power supply backed by a standard eighty PLUS certification. Acer used a standard OEM motherboard featuring a watered-down American Megatrends BIOS, which offers a few overclocking options -- a rather atypical inclusion in a manufacturer PC. Amongst other things, users accept access to the CPU BCLK, multiplier, QPI Frequency, and retention timings.

Excluding the monitor, the Predator shipped with everything you demand to get your system up and running. Included in the retail box is the chassis, Logitech G11 keyboard, Logitech G5 wired gaming mouse, three different SLI bridges, a DVI adapter, ability cablevision, weight system for the mouse and an instruction manual.

In the case of the Predator its components add up to around $1,510 if bought separately, which ways you lot'll be paying a premium of around $320 for buying this system off-the shelf. This is the lowest premium of all iii only comparatively speaking you get a few lesser quality components -- the power supply, for example -- and won't receive the same level of personalized service or configuration options with your purchase.

Acer has certainly gone over the superlative with the pattern aesthetics of the Predator. Contrary to its proper name, nevertheless, the chassis resembles a Transformer more than a Predator. Information technology will fit a niche market, I'm certain, but minimalists demand not utilise.

Sure areas of the Acer Predator'south chassis light upwardly when the arrangement is turned on. The front bezel is a encompass that lifts up and rests on the acme of the case, revealing the system'southward "real" forepart bezel. Underneath the comprehend yous'll find a triangle-shaped ability button and two optical drive bays with doors that open out like a hook, a menu reader with provisions for CF, CF+, MMC, RS-MMC, SD, miniSD, xD, Memory Stick / PRO / Duo / PRO Duo and FireWire. And then at the bottom is a swing-open door that reveals four easy-swap hard drive bays. The 1.5TB hard bulldoze is installed in the right-most bay.

The correct and left side panels are virtually identical with angular designs, glossy metal flake paint and two arms that attach to the front bezel. Looking at the rear of the system we find a summit-mounted power supply and an I/O panel with the following connections: PS/2 keyboard and mouse, articulate CMOS button, ii eSATA ports, six USB ii.0 ports, FireWire port, dual Ethernet Jacks, Southward/PDIF jack and audio ports. Unlike on the Maingear systems, there are no USB three.0 ports.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 is the merely add together-in carte in the organisation and it features a single DVI port likewise as an HDMI port. On elevation of the chassis are four USB 2.0 ports and microphone / headphone jacks.

As you can imagine, getting inside the Predator is a scrap of a task due to the forepart bezel arms and the sheer size and shape of the side panel. Outset you need to remove the two large screws that hold the arms in place. Once this is done, there are 2 levers on the dorsum that need to be unlatched to allow you to slide the panel off.

With the side panel removed we can get a skilful look at the internals of the Predator arrangement. To our surprise beneath the flashy exterior we found that the system is basically only congenital on a standard ATX chassis. Acer has included articulate orange pieces within the system which I assume are to either aid in wire management or airflow. This is 1 area where nosotros see the benefit of a custom build. The internals here look pretty messy compared to the 2 other systems.

Removing the side panel was a existent chore, but reinstalling it proved next to incommunicable. The bulky side panel molding makes it very hard to line up when reinstalling, so after a while I simply gave up on trying and left it the best I could.

The Predator came with a copy of Windows 7 Dwelling house Premium 64-bit pre-installed, just like the other two systems in our round-upwardly. Still, this time around there were besides a few pre-installed applications, which is pretty much a given with manufacturer PC. Forth with a few Acer branded applications that might come handy like Backup Manager and the Acer Updater, there was too eBay Worldwide, eSobi v2, Google Toolbar, Identity Carte, McAfee Security Eye, MyWinLocker, Norton Online Fill-in and Welcome Center.

There was also a Netflix icon on the desktop for a quick sign-upwardly of their service. The bloatware on the Acer Predator is somewhat light compared to the average OEM system, merely the fact remains this is not something you accept to fool with when going the custom build route. Furthermore, you lot are required to create your own recovery discs with the Acer system. Both Puget and Maingear include these in the package as well as the actual Windows installation disc.