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Packed snugly into a bite-sized box, this small form-factor Acer Nitro PC feels like it’s got a bit of Napoleon’s twist going on. The angry, red LED brow on the front of the machine sits next to the biggest power button I’ve ever seen, perhaps, as if to say, “Press it and I’ll kill you.” Although that perception is not entirely unfounded – the mid-range CPU/GPU combo can handle itself in many games at 1440p.
In theory, that combo should be great for productivity-style tasks as well, but the storage really lets it down.
Augmenting a miniscule 238GB PCIe SSD boot drive with an HDD (even a 1TB one) is a mistake. Just choose a larger single boot SSD, people. This means I can’t play most of today’s games with the quick load times that an M.2 solid state drive would provide. Case in point, the FFXIV Shadowbringers benchmark choked at 32.9 seconds while loading from the hard drive; nowadays that is quite unacceptable.
If you manage to fit anything on the SSD, you are looking at about 12.7 seconds load time, and even that is a little lacking compared to other personal computers the same, and even in lower price brackets.
Nitro 50 spec
CPU: Driver Intel Core i5 12400F
GPU: Acer predator GeForce RTX 3060
RAM: Kingston 16GB DDR4-3200
Motherboard: Acer proprietary Intel B660
Storage: Kingston OM8PDP3256B-AA1 238.5GB SSD
Start I/O: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C, mic in, headphone
Rear I/O: 4x USB 2.0 Type-A, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
PSU: 500W
Case: Driver Acer Nitro 50
OS: Windows 11 home
Warranty: Standard 1 year
Price: $1,300 (opens in a new tab)
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark puts my concerns to rest there, with just 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 reading/writing tasks. This is probably the main reason why the Nitro topped the PCMark 10 Express benchmark, too, with a score of 5,757.
On the plus side, you can’t buy this exact specification. Acer, in its infinite wisdom, decided to send us a machine for review that you can’t buy. The system you can Buying with a 512GB PCIe SSD is much more reasonable for your $1,300. It’s still attached to a 1TB hard drive, so the data side is still slow, but that immediately eliminates our issues with the Nitro 50.
That’s unlikely to change the PCMark score, which would indicate that general productivity isn’t a strong fit. But the Aida64 Extreme benchmark score of 41,015 shows that the dual-channel 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM can handle the stress of multitasking.
That RAM will also give you a better chance when it comes to gaming, and when you’ve spent most of your day installing your games on the HDD (ridiculous), the Nitro 50 manages to pack a punch when it comes to gambling. . That’s thanks to the solid combination of entry-level core components: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (opens in a new tab) and Intel Core i5 12400F (opens in a new tab).
System benchmarks
Even as a last-generation CPU, the Core i5’s fared well with Cinebench R23 single-core scores of 1,697, and multi-core scores of 11,595. That gives it an edge in rendering, with an average synthetic performance of 34.14 fps when tested with X264 v5.0.1. That’s a good sign of the i5 12400F’s impressive gaming capabilities, and while it’s no match for the $200 more expensive iBuyPower’s Core i7 12700f in terms of multicore performance, you might think of it as paying yourself $200 to stay a little longer longer for rendering.
But the 4K 3DMark Time Spy Extreme benchmark gave it a little trouble. A CPU score of 4,068 is lacking compared to other machines we’ve tested, which will be the result of the RTX 3060’s contribution; This is not really the card for 4K.
In actual gaming benchmarks, the CPU saw an average of 82fps in Hitman 3 Dartmoor – that’s on ultra settings at 1440p, with sim quality set to best. It’s not a terrible score, especially when you put it next to the 43 fps average in Metro Exodus Enhanced. The F1 22’s ray-tracing performance was underwhelming at 29fps, although the test was performed on a Belgian rain track with anisotropic filtering at x16, with graphics set to high. It never dropped below 26fps though, so it was still playable. You can definitely hit smoother frame rates with a little settings tinkering, which is the general ethos of this machine.
The rest of the gaming benchmarks were all done at 1440p on ultra settings, and they were all more than playable thanks to the core components, but for an extra $99 you could have the NZXT Streaming PC which manages another 20fps in Far Cry 6, 18fps in Hitman Dartmoor, and 17fps in Metro. It doesn’t seem like much, but considering the big thermals and more impressive (and bigger) NVMe SSD, it’s almost a no-brainer.
Gaming benchmarks
The Nitro is a nifty machine for gaming it’s really let down on the storage side.
However, the biggest problem with high power components comes in the form of heat dissipation. The Nitro’s small form factor case with minimal vents doesn’t help in that regard; we are talking maximum CPU and GPU temps in the low 80 ° C. It’s not the worst we’ve seen and your components won’t melt, but it could definitely be better.
The bottom line here is that while the Nitro is a nifty machine for gaming it’s really let down on the storage side. The configuration we expected in the lab is this Nitro 50 (opens in a new tab) at $1,300 with a larger SSD, though Acer still felt the need to put a hard drive in there. Honestly, that machine performed at the same level as the one in front of us here, and with the bigger boot drive it would have scored much higher too.
Sure, I’d be much happier with even one fast 1TB SSD, rather than some extra spinning platter nonsense, but a 512GB drive is the bare minimum for a modern gaming PC. you can easily upgrade the storage later or add some more into one of the two spare M.2 slots, but these storage shenanigans make it hard to recommend the Nitro.
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