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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7Enigma - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
And this is where the real deals are to be had. Once you get above $400-500 the home builder that takes quite a bit of time to research deals (probabably not buying all at the same time) can come out ahead (or the same price for superior components). But on less than that, and especially if the OS is needed, there is just no way to compete with the volume sales of the large builders.Fantastic deal you got there!
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adonn78 - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
It would ahve been better to go with an athlon II x4 chip and got a system with a 5770. It would ahve been able to play any game then. I understand that this is a pre-built system you probably found off newegg. They also got a $710 plus $20 shipping ibuypower pc with the above specs I mentioned and can play just about any game out of the box at 1920x1200. An extra $60 goes a long way. in fact there are systems with better GPU's for less than $635 such as a 5750. Anything less is unacceptable even for a casual gamer.MrCrispy - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
People who CAN build a pc are never going to look at a prebuilt, least of all an Acer.People who can't (and who you don't want to!) don't care about upgrades, overclocking, component quality etc. They will buy a pc every 3-4 years then get a new one. During this time the pc will be supported by warranty and do everything they want.
For these people, its much cheaper and a better option than 1) building one 2) asking someone else to build one
Thr pc is an appliance for most folk, how many times do you upgrade the video card in your tv or the cpu in your car?
rgriswold - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - link
If this puppy has 6 sata connections on the motherboard, is it not possible to use a sata cable extender to have a port or 2 on the outside of the case? esata hard drives seem to be the way to go for external backup.As far as this system goes, I think it is a fair price. I bought one for $600. I do not play games on my pc. I have a ps3 connected to a 52" HDTV. So, the ATI card is fine for me and has to be a little better than the integrated graphics. 6 gig vs 8 gig, will I really feel the difference? I think 6 gig will be fine. I am not multitasking 5 things at once.
BTW, anyone ever used one of those current/wattage (kill-a-watt) meters on a pc? Just curious as to how much current is actually being used when running various apps.
CrimsnTide09 - Sunday, August 22, 2010 - link
http://www.staples.com/Acer-AM3400-U2502-Desktop-P...So for $299 (without available coupons) it must be a steal!!!!
Received it for $292 shipped to my front door!
No Saint - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I no longer see this in M'sia but they seem to replace it with Aspire M3400-655X7.AMD Phenom ll x 6 1055T / AMD 880G chipset / 2GB DDR3 / 500 GB HDD / Radeon HD4250
One PCI Slots, Two PCI Express® X1 slot & One PCI Express® X16 slot
10 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI, 1 x Dsub VGA, & 2 x PS/2
Etc
You get the idea...