The Acer Aspire M3400: How Much Does $649 Buy?
by Dustin Sklavos on August 5, 2010 3:45 PM ESTAcer Aspire M3400 Conclusion
If our review of the Dell Studio XPS 7100 was mostly favorable, its half-priced and half-powered competitor from Acer has a lot more explaining to do.
Let's start with the positives: the Aspire M3400 is a reasonable value for the money. At $649 it's a touch too expensive to be what would generally be considered a disposable desktop, replaced in three years, but the 800 series AMD chipset, Phenom II X4, 6GB of DDR3, and fast hard drive make a good case for it. And as much as I like to bag on the Radeon HD 5450 (and I do so love to bag on the 5450), at least the dedicated graphics will let you play a few modern games. Heck, if we compare it to our mobile offerings, the HD 5450 surpasses everything up to the Mobility HD 5470.
There's a problem, though: while the Aspire M3400 is a reasonable value, you can actually still do better building your own. $650 will get you a better everything from Newegg or Amazon (quickly becoming a favorite for California customers dealing with an onerous near-10% sales tax): better parts, better warranties, better expandability. Even if you're not a hardware enthusiast, though, we can find better alternatives.
Acer produced a system for Grandma Millie, assuming Grandma Millie wants to edit video or play Doom once in a while, and it can at least be pretty hassle free. She's not going to hook up the system just to be irritated because it's unresponsive (which you know is due to the amount of crapware that came installed with it), but the problem lies later on. That 300W power supply is an albatross hanging around the M3400's neck, ensuring that you'll never get too much more out of it than you already have. You can certainly replace the power supply later, but that just adds to the cost of upgrading. This is money that probably could've been saved up front.
It's disappointing: Acer normally produces some excellent values in the mobile sector at least, and you'll be lucky to find dedicated graphics at all in this price bracket. The problem is that a cursory visit to Newegg reveals an HP Pavilion P6510 at just $519, and the difference in user experience between this tower and that Pavilion is going to be slight. Are 2GB of DDR3, a Radeon HD 5450, and a 4MB L3 cache worth an extra $130 to you for the Acer? What if the HP came with wireless-n standard and a bigger hard drive? Perhaps you really care about a discrete GPU, in which case you can look at this CyberPower system that drops 2GB RAM and downgrades the Phenom X4 to an Athlon X4 but adds an HD 5670 and a 600W PSU—and cuts the price down to $610 to boot.
At the end of the day the Acer Aspire M3400-S2052 isn't necessarily a bad desktop, but it has a hard time justifying the pricetag given the compromises, and the configuration seems marketing driven rather than technology driven in places. Your $649 wouldn't be wasted on the M3400, but we're convinced the money could be better spent—or saved—elsewhere.
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fishak - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
So you returned your system to factory config, loosing all your settings, programs, and tweaks. You had to reinstall everything you liked, and again dump everything you didn't.I suggest using a free imaging tool, like Macrium Reflect, and make an image of your OS/program partition once you have it set up the way you like it. That way, it's very simple and fast to return your system to your specs- and not the factories.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
Not really. I had a backup using Acronis that I used to restore data, photos, etc. I did not restore from that because I was having some problems with some programs when I made the backup, so I restored to factory original and just restored my data.anactoraaron - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
I still prefer WHS :)Bonesdad - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
You say you can build a better machine than this Aspire, then do it...build a machine for $650 and put it to the test against the Dell and the Acer. I bet it might exceed both of these machines.mckirkus - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
If you don't mind a generic power supply and generic motherboard (probably where they're saving money) then it looks like a deal. But if you want a system that lasts those are the only two items I think about.frozentundra123456 - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
I have an acer with an E4500 and probably the same 300 watt power supply. I am running a low power 9800 GT without problems, although a quad core CPU will use more power. I would think the reviewed system could use a GT240 or HD5670. If they could have included one of those cards instead of the 5450 it would have made a much more functional system.The power supply in OEM systems is one thing that really irritates me though. How much could it cost to make the unit 400 or 500 watts instead of 300W. If it is the same as the one in my comp, the unit in that computer does not even have 2 four pin leads to use with an adapter for a 6 pin connector.
reapergato - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Yea... Amazon is quickly becoming a FAV for CA residents.... kinda like the same way Newegg is the fav for WA state residents..... I cant stand that nearly 10% sales tax in WA state so i refuse to buy anything from Amazon. They nail me on tax and shipping.... Newegg is usually free shipping... and no tax. =)Phate- - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
300Watt is more then enough, for anything. If there is a problem with the power supply it'll be the quality or the lack of connections for a better GPU. But with 300Watt you can run anything, except HD5870 (or higher) and GTX465 (or higher), if it's a decent power supply. Any decent power supply can provide (a lot) more then indicated on it's label and in the very least, it's made to provide the power indicated on the label, non-stop.An extreme example is the Corsair VX450, a review of it on hardwaresecrets.com:
They pull 570Watt from it while it still is operating WITHIN ATX-standards, without to much ripple/noise and still having an efficiency of 81%.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-VX4...
I'm not saying I would recommend someone buying a 300Watt PSU, when his config requires 280Watt, but if it's a decent powersupply, there is no problem, at all. I can understand the complaint about the PSU, but the wattage is not the important factor here.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
Yes I wonder this too. Except for the prompts that pop up automatically, I dont really think having the extra stuff there is a problem with all the processing power of a new computer. I benchmarked Company of Heros with my system in the usual configuration, security essentials running, etc, and then used game booster to shut down all unnecessary programs. I could not tell any difference in the frame rate.frozentundra123456 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
The acer 300 watt power supply is not a very good one, and as I stated, I could not find even 2 x 4 pin connectors for an adapter, much less a 6 pin connector. The total amps on the 12 volt rail is only 18. So I think you could run anything that does not require an extra power adapter, but you are out of luck otherwise.Just a theoretical question. What if you used something like a HD4770 or HD5750 that has an adapter but uses very little power? Would the computer know the adapter was not plugged in and give an error message, or would it work ok unless the card overloaded the power supply?