Acer Predator G5900 review

Acer’s Predator range of performance PCs is firmly targeted at gamers, with neon orange go-faster stripes, hard angular lines and insect-like mandibles that cover the disc drives. However, the G5900 is a much more modest than the heavily-designed, seriously overpowered and very expensive PCs that made up the original Predators.

The G5900 is part of Acer’s a current range, but despite this, its processor is an original 3.2GHz Core i5-650, rather than a more recent – and more powerful – Sandy Bridge i5. In our benchmark tests, the PC achieved an overall score of just 57, which is poor for desktop a system that costs almost £500. 4GB of RAM is modest but adequate for most tasks, but the 500GB hard disk is stingy.

Similarly, the tiny graphics card – a 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GT 440 – is drastically underpowered for a PC that’s targeted at gamers. It failed in our 1,920×1,080 Ultra quality Dirt 3 test and in our Crysis 2 test, although we finally managed to get a respectable frame rate of 57fps out of Dirt 3 when we set it to a resolution of 1,280×720 and High quality. This means that you’ll be able to play most of the latest games, but not without some fairly serious compromises when it comes to quality.

Inside the PC, Acer’s own-brand motherboard is compact, but fairly well laid out, although the case’s interior looks cheap and has one or two improperly finished edges. There’s one PCI-E x16 slot – currently occupied by the GT 440, which isn’t so big as to block access to the PCI-E x1 slot below, although upgrading to a larger graphics card would do so. Fortunately, there’s a second PCI-E x1 slot, as well as a PCI slot. There are six SATA ports – all SATA2 – of which four are connected. Only two of these are actually in use – the other two are plugged into a pair of 3½in hot-plug SATA bays that can accessed from behind the front panel.

There are two internal 3½in bays, too, of which one is occupied, and three 5¼in bays; the topmost has a DVD-RW drive in it. It’s worth noting that the position of the hot-plug drive bays limits the size of graphics card you’ll be able to fit if you upgrade; then again, the 500W LiteOn power supply isn’t equipped to handle the biggest and most power-hungry cards on the market either.

At the front of the PC are four USB ports – always useful – as well as an extremely versatile memory card reader, which can even take microSD cards. You’ll also find the obligatory mic and headphone ports. There are another eight USB ports at the back, along with a couple of PS/2 ports and analogue ports for 5.1 surround sound. That’s a decent number of USB connections, but you’re out of luck if you prefer eSATA, FireWire or USB3. The supplied mouse is comfortable to use, but the keyboard’s cramped, flat design and rattly keys were less than satisfactory.

The PC works well enough, has a handy one-year collect and return warranty and is reasonably well built, but it isn’t anything like good enough for its price in terms of performance, features or build quality.