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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strikeback03 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
Unless it really is just an internet and email machine for the grandparents, in which case you could use some flavor of Linux or other free OS. Of course you also wouldn't need a quad-core CPU or a discrete GPU then either.ImSpartacus - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
If I wanted a more fair comparison, I would drop that 460 in a heartbeat. That frees up $200 right there.If you are comfortable with using the double upgrade method (legal and supported by MS), you can get a copy of Win7 Home Premium for under $100.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
There's also a ~$30 HD5450 just to be fair. The integrated graphics would work fine for most people.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$600
-200
+100
+30
=~$530
I'm sure you could find a mouse and keyboard for $100, eh? :)
I can't wait for a good budget article! Too bad you can't freak out the readership with a few combos and some coupons. /That's/ how you can really get the price down!
Lunyone - Saturday, August 7, 2010 - link
Well you could look like this:combo:
$185 - $20 MIRc = $165!!
AMD Athlon II x3 445 3.1 GHz
AMD 4670 1 GB GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.asp...
Combo:
$100 + 13 shipping = ~$113
Asus EVO AM3 mobo
Antec 300 case w/1x120mm & 1x140mm Fans
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.asp...
$51 shipped!
Antec NEO 400w PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$89 shipped!
GSkill CAS 9 (at stock voltage) DDR3 1333 mHz RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$55 shipped!
SAMSUNG F3 Spinpoint 500 gb HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$19 DVD Burner
LITEON 24x DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Total $512 shipped - $20 MIRc = $492!! Now that is a good solid budget gamer build. You can find more savings if you shop some more, but this gives you an idea on a good starting (budget gaming) build.
ImSpartacus - Saturday, August 7, 2010 - link
I think my 500w PSU is comb'd with a free DVD Burner and my harddrive is about$10 more for the famous 640GB Caviar Black. I also suggest losing the 1GB on the 4670. It's money down the tube. Its 128-bit bus really only needs 512MB.I also suggest reviewing your choices for combos with similar RAM. I almost always find a good combo with RAM. While making my build, I actually found a different pattern of combos that allowed me to use EXACTLY the same items and save about $30.
Newegg is just cool like that. :)
Lunyone - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
That was just a quick example where you can save some $ and still have a good budget gaming system. As I stated, you can get better deals with some extra time and work.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
That sounds like a challenge, Jarred. ;)And I do so love a challenge.
Lazlo Panaflex - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
"McAfee, intent on taking over the antivirus market using any means other than actually producing quality software, is of course accounted for here."Man, that made me LOL! Two thumbs up, sir ;-D
Mercury Joe - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
The RS880 chipset supports Hybrid CrossfireX.Is seems to me that you can enable that and use both the IGP AND the HD5450 in a Hybrid CrossfireX and get some ok graphics out of this. You never said if it was enabled or not.
The posters here seem to want to slam this machine because it can not play high end games. People who buy machines like this are LIGHT gamers and internet browsers/e-mailers.
If I was a betting man, they have the HD5450 to support Flash hardware video acceleration for You-Tube. It is the cheapest and lowest powered solution to provide hardware acceleration. It also nicely complements the Hybrid CrossfireX solution.
Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
I admit I could be mistaken, but it's my understanding Flash hardware acceleration runs off of the decoder hardware and not the shaders. If that's the case, Flash wouldn't see any improvements from going with the 5450 vs. the 880G.The 5450 just doesn't make sense in this build. The light gamer would be better served with a 5550 or 5570, and everyone else would be fine with the 880G.
pbr35586 - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
Last year right before Windows 7 came out. I bought a Dell Inspiron 546 MT for $346.00 on sale. It came with a Phenom 9650 quad core, 4 GB of ram, 500gb hard drive. I also got a free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium 64 and free shipping. I added a $60.00 GB ATI 4670 card free shipping. Runs fine on my stock 300 watt power supply. It also came with a keyboard and mouse. This system may not be all that to some of you. But i can play COD Modern Warfare 2 @1920x1200 4 a/a. For light gaming and general computing this thing is fine and it was way below $500 including the sales tax i paid to Dell.