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Completely packed in a bite-sized box, this small form factor Acer Nitro PC feels like it has a bit of a Napoleonic complex. The angry, red LED eyebrow on the front of the machine sits next to perhaps the largest power button I’ve ever seen, as if to say, “Press it and I’ll finish you off.” Although that stance isn’t completely unfounded – the mid-range CPU/GPU combo can handle itself in a bunch of games at 1440p.
In theory, that combo should also be great for productivity-style tasks, but the storage really lets it down.
Bolstering a nice tiny 238GB PCIe SSD boot drive with an HDD (even a 1TB one) is, frankly, a mistake. Just go for a bigger single boot SSD, folks. Here that means I’m not able to play most of today’s games with the fast load times an M.2 solid state drive would have had. Case in point, the FFXIV Shadowbringers benchmark choked at 32.9 seconds while loading the hard drive; in this day and age that is quite unacceptable.
If you manage to fit anything on the SSD, you’re looking at around 12.7 seconds of load time, and even that falls a bit short compared to other computers in the same, and even lower price brackets.
Nitro 50 spec
CPU: 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
Front I/O: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C, microphone, 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: Acer Nitro 50
OS: Windows 11 Home
Warranty: 1 year standard
Price: 1,300 USD (opens in a new tab)
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark raises my concerns there, with only a passable 1,381 index score for the SSD, and only managing a terrible 155 points for the HDD. Basically, expect to spend a lot of time on read/write assignments. This is probably the main reason the Nitro stumbled in the PCMark 10 Express benchmark as well, with a score of 5,757.
Additionally, you cannot purchase 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 purchase comes with a much more reasonable 512GB PCIe SSD for your $1,300. It’s still paired with a 1TB hard drive, so the data side is still slow, but that eliminates many of our immediate issues with the Nitro 50.
That’s unlikely to change the PCMark score, which would indicate that overall productivity isn’t its strong suit. But the Aida64 Extreme benchmark score of 41,015 shows that the dual channel 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM can handle the stresses of multitasking quite well.
That RAM will give you a better chance when it comes to gaming too, and after spending most of your day installing your games on the HDD (ridiculous), the Nitro 50 manages to pack a punch when it comes to gaming. . 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 performs well with single-core Cinebench R23 scores of 1,697, and multi-core scores of 11,595. That gives it an edge in rendering, and an average composite performance of 34.14 fps when testing with X264 v5.0.1. All of that is a good indication of the i5 12400F’s excellent gaming power, and while it’s no match for iBuyPower’s $200 more expensive i7 12700f in terms of multi-core performance, maybe think of it as paying yourself $200 to wait a little longer long for return.
The 4K 3DMark Time Spy Extreme benchmark gave it a bit of trouble though. A CPU score of 4,068 is lacking compared to other machines we’ve tested, which will depend on the RTX 3060’s contribution; this is not really the card for 4K.
In real-world gaming benchmarks, the CPU saw 82fps averages in Hitman 3 Dartmoor—that’s on ultra-graphics settings at 1440p, with sim quality set to best. Not a terrible score, especially when you put it next to 43 fps averages in Metro Exodus Enhanced. The performance of F1 22 with ray tracing turned on was disappointing at 29fps, although the test was performed on the rainy Belgian track with anisotropic filtering at x16, and graphics set to ultra high. However, it never dropped below 26fps, so it still remained playable. You can definitely hit smoother framerates with a bit of tweaking, which is the general feel of this machine.
The rest of the gaming benchmarks were all done at 1440p on ultra settings, and all were more than playable thanks to the core components, although for an additional $99 you could have yourself the NZXT Streaming PC which manages another 20fps in Far Cry 6, 18fps. in Hitman Dartmoor, and 17fps in Metro. It doesn’t sound like much, but considering the excellent thermals and more impressive (and larger) NVMe SSD, it’s almost a no-brainer.
Gaming respects
The Nitro is a nice machine for gaming that it really is left on the storage side.
The main problem with high power components, however, 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 times of CPU and GPU in the low 80 °C. It’s not the worst we’ve seen and won’t have your components melting, but it could definitely be better.
The bottom line here is that, while the Nitro is a nice machine for gaming, it’s really let down on the storage front. The configuration we expected to have 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 jam a hard drive in there. Frankly, that machine would perform at about the same level as the one in front of us here, and with that bigger boot would also garner a much higher score.
Sure, I would have been much happier with even a single, speedy 1TB SSD, rather than some additional 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 a bit more to one of the two spare M.2 slots, but these storage items really make the Nitro hard to recommend.
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