Acer ‘s Aspire TC-895-UA91 ( $ 429.99 ) is, in many ways, fair what most budget desktop shoppers are looking for. low-cost, compress, and in full featured, this basic mini loom includes the essentials, plus some extras that its like-priced competitors lack. Packing a “ true ” desktop-strength 10th Generation Intel Core i3 central processing unit with legitimately capable performance, a 512GB SSD, and defend for USB Type-C, SD cards, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, this basic personal computer has nothing major missing and a distribute to like. ( Some close priced machines trust on lesser laptop-grade CPUs. ) This combination of processing pep and feature set tops the competition on value, earning this Aspire our foremost 2021 Editors ’ Choice prize for budget desktops .
A No-Fuss Design
You can tell at a glance that this desktop is about the basics, and for this class and at this price, that ’ s perfectly okay. From its relatively compendious size to its modest search, there ’ mho nothing about the blueprint that screams “ powerhouse ” or “ dash. ” The count is euphemistic, and unless an all-black device clashes with your décor, it will blend in ticket with your agency or bedroom frame-up .
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It won ’ t take up a lot outer space on your desk or floor for a traditional tugboat, either, at 13.4 by 6.4 by 13.8 inches ( HWD ). The competing HP Slim Desktop ( 10.6 by 3.7 by 11.9 inches ) and Lenovo IdeaCentre 3 ( 11.8 by 3.9 by 10.6 inches ) are tied more compact, but that ’ s carnival enough when they ’ re tied less expensive ( and less mighty ), particularly when one has “ reduce ” right in the name. ( These machines, equally alluded to above, are based on lesser-powered laptop processors. )
Internal access is about arsenic simple as the rest of the build. Removing two back screws allows you to pull the leave english panel off the chassis, granting access to a basic inside. About one third base is blocked off by a metal backplate, onto which you could mount extra hard drives. ( A spare SATA power connection is hanging near, as are several SATA data connectors on the motherboard. )
Behind that is the house for the DVD drive, and below that ( on the motherboard ) the 512GB M.2 SSD. In the unobscured sphere, you can see the rest of the motherboard, including the mount CPU air travel cool. The power supply is contained in the top left corner .
Above-Average Features
The frame-up in our unit includes an Intel Core i3-10100 central processing unit, 8GB of memory, and the 512GB of storage. There ’ s a little room for expansion in terms of memory—ours is configured with a single 8GB pin, and there ’ s a unblock slot next to it. The board maxes out at 32GB of memory. There international relations and security network ’ t a huge measure of expansion possible, all in all, but if you do need to do alimony or some upgrades, there ’ s plenty of distance inside. ultimately, aside from possibly adding more RAM, this is meant to be an low-cost plug-and-play solution, so DIY upgrades are not the priority .
This motherboard does include a PCI Express x16 slot, but your options for adding a graphics calling card are limited. aside from the size restriction of the character for larger GPUs ( you have about 6 inches of headroom from the PCI circuit board backplane to the metal drive frame in movement ), the include ability add unit of measurement ( PSU ) is entirely 300 watts. It uses non-standard baron connections to juice the mainboard, however ( no standard 24-pin ATX power connection ), so swapping in a different, higher-watt PSU to ability a beefy graphics tease is a no-go, or at least not easy. A low-powered, slot-power-only television wag could be a solution, but you ‘re otherwise restricted. Some calculations we did on the venerable Outervision PSU Calculator suggest you could squeak in a GeForce GTX 1650 card with the PSU in this shape, provided the card is abruptly enough and does n’t need a dedicated world power connection. From here we move on to connectivity, a all-important part of any desktop. This arrangement offers an above-average choice for this price range, starting with a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB Type-C port, an SD card slot, and audio jacks on the front panel ( in addition to the disk drive mentioned earlier ) .
The rest are on the rear : two HDMI connections, four USB 3.1 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and an Ethernet laborer. This sum of connections is better than some competitors ( the IdeaCentre 3 and HP Slim wear ’ t have USB-C, for example ), one of multiple aspects that make this system a stronger rate than the less-expensive contest .
The inclusion body of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is undeniably useful, arsenic well, though most competitors do offer this excessively. The background besides comes with a very elementary wired mouse and keyboard, which do the job if you do n’t already own your own peripherals .
In drumhead, compared with the HP Slim Desktop ( which we rated well ), you ’ re paying about $ 50 more for a Core i3, double the memory, and USB-C. That processor is of detail interest, thus let ’ s see how it fared on the benchmark tests .
Performance Testing: A Perfectly Capable Core i3
To judge this system ’ randomness performance, we pit the benchmark test results against those of competing budget desktops, including several of the systems mentioned above. besides joining the fray is the late-2020 version of the Apple Mac mini, featuring Apple ’ s own M1 central processing unit, and another edition of the Acer Aspire we tested about a year before this one. ( See more about how we test desktops. )
The Mac mini is a lot more expensive than the rest, at $ 699, but it ’ s hush worth including here as a foil to these Windows towers. You ‘ll note that it ‘s absent from some of the results below—in those cases, those are Windows-based tests that the Mac mini and its macOS could not run. The early, older Acer Aspire is besides an interesting inclusion—it ’ s more expensive than this model at $ 548, due in separate to its Core i5 central processing unit, but keep an center on the performance differences in malice of that .
Productivity and Storage Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the personal computer benchmark specialists at UL ( once Futuremark ). The PCMark 10 quiz we run simulate unlike real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word action, spreadsheet work, web browse, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the accelerate of the organization ‘s boot drive. Both tests yield a proprietorship numeric score ; higher numbers are good .
While PCMark 10 international relations and security network ’ t the most important meter for high-end media editing machines, it ’ s an substantive measure for budget background. This demonstrates how well the Acer Aspire will be able to handle your daily home and basic office tasks, and this score is encouraging. We consider anything over 4,000 points to be technical, and you can be felicitous with that resultant role given the price. PCMark 8 shows that these are all rapid SSDs that ensure agile boot and load times. If you need to do more ( light ) function exploit at home than you did in the by, this desktop is up to the tax, though I ’ d hesitate to recommend it as your main work personal computer if your workload is strenuous. The Core i5 chip in the other Aspire whole is an Intel 9th Generation processor, and the leap to 10th generation in this whole closes the opening evening though it ’ s a Core i3 chip, thanks to the restoration of procsssor-thread-doubling Hyper-Threading in the lower reaches of the tenth Generation Core line. ( It was eliminated in many 9th Generation Intel desktop CPUs, including the Core i5-9400 in the older Acer. ) interim, this Aspire unit is much faster than the cheaper laptop-grade Athlon Silver- and Gold-based models, justifying the already modest monetary value difference. Does all of this hold up in the more demand media tests ? Let ‘s interpret .
Media Processing and Content Creation Tests
next is Maxon ‘s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is amply threaded to make use of all available central processing unit cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex visualize. The result is a proprietorship mark indicating a personal computer ‘s suitability for processor-intensive workloads .
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video recording editing test, another rugged, threaded workout that ‘s highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute time of 4K video ( the open source Blender show movie Tears of Steel ) to a 1080p MP4 charge. Lower ( faster ) times are beneficial .
We besides run a customs Adobe Photoshop image editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud adaptation of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test double. We time each operation and add up the entire. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, memory subsystem, and RAM, but it can besides take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the march of applying filters, so systems with knock-down graphics chips or cards may see a boost .
The clear answer is yes, the vogue from PCMark continues here. The TC-895-UA91 is alone a act slower than the Core i5-based UA92 and importantly faster than the HP Slim and Lenovo IdeaCentre 3. none of these is a speciate media-editing machine, to be indisputable, but the value of the Core i3 over the Athlon solutions is clear. If you need to do a refer of photograph or video recording edit, do n’t expect lightning speed, but the system will be able to complete the job without keeping you waiting all day .
Synthetic Graphics Tests
UL ‘s 3DMark suite measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demand and made for high-end PCs to strut their gorge. The results are proprietary scores .
Both Aspire units performed about identically here because, well, they utilize the same integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 solution from the CPU. The others trail behind a bite, but realistically none of these machines is up to the undertaking for 3D workloads or meaningful gambling experiences. If you want to load up some browser games, visually simpleton Steam titles, or 2D games like simulations or scheme games that lean more on the processor than the GPU, this background can do the job. If you intend to play games on your base background, though, you ’ d need something with a give graphics card ; check out our favorite bet on desktops, which include some more budget-friendly picks. As noted, the graphics-upgrade top on this personal computer is identical limited .
A Top-Value Budget Desktop
The Acer Aspire TC-895-UA91 looks to be the best rate so far among a recent crop of general-use budget desktops we ‘ve been testing from Acer, HP, Lenovo, and others, and there ’ s actually no room for complaint. Like the UA92 before it, this model has a heavy overall combination of features and components at a still-competitive price. It offers adequate performance superiority over the less expensive contest to justify its higher price, plus extras they don ’ triiodothyronine include, like USB-C support and an SD batting order slot, and more storage space .
This Aspire configuration achieves this without giving up much, very, early than making you settle for a slenderly larger ( though however covenant ) human body and an extra $ 50 in cost ( versus the HP Slim Desktop, our next-best pick ). We think the Aspire TC-895-UA91 is quite the fair rate, and the best current offer we ‘ve tested to date for budget shoppers looking for a general-use background for home. That earns it our Editors ’ Choice laurel for the category .
Acer Aspire TC-895-UA91
4.0
Editors ‘ choice
See It
$ 532.00
at Amazon
price as Tested $ 429.99
Pros
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Cons
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The Bottom Line
Acer ‘s Aspire TC-895-UA91 is one of the best values around for under- $ 500 budget desktops, with dapper Core i3 performance and solid all-around feature digest for the money .
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