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Acer Aspire M5100 (AM5100-EF9500A)

REVIEW DATE:04.01.08

Acer Aspire M5100 (AM5100-EF9500A)
Full Set Tower Front Tower Back

REVIEW

By Joel Santo Domingo

Looking for a powerful yet reasonably priced desktop computer to do multimedia tasks? The Acer Aspire M5100 (AM5100-EF9500A) ($699 list) will fill that bill. It's a budget-minded PC with a quad-core 2.2-GHz AMD Phenom 9500 processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. It's a machine for those who want to get into photo editing or even video editing as a hobby without paying a fortune. The Aspire has some styling cues that set it apart from the boring dark-gray boxes on the store shelves. Does it have the chops to make you pay the premium over a sub-$500 budget box? Read on.

red arrow Read the Acer Aspire M5100 (AM5100-EF9500A) full review

Company

Acer Inc.

http://www.acer.com

Spec Data
  • Price as Tested: $699.00 List
  • Type: General Purpose, Value
  • Processor Family: AMD Phenom
  • RAM: 3 GB
  • Storage Capacity: 500 GB
  • RAID: No
  • Graphics Card: ATI Radeon x1250
  • Primary Optical Drive: Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW

Bottom Line

Acer's Aspire M5100 puts quad-core Phenom power in a sub-$750 desktop. It provides a little more oomph than your basic budget desktop.

Pros

Inexpensive PC with HDMI output. Quad-core CPU. FireWire port. Hidden media card reader. Some decent styling and design choices. Eight USB ports. Front USB ports are intelligently organized. It's at Costco.

Cons

Loaded with bloatware. Integrated graphics are not DX10 hardware compatible. Quad-core CPU is wasted with 690 chipset and 667-MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

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