Customer Ratings & Reviews

Gaming If you’re looking for anything gaming related streaming or productivity, this is one of the best desktops you can find on the market With those three items, this desktop shows no weakness and has the power to do it all day no issues The high refresh monitor rates are comparable to professional systems and plenty of memory, although I’m a firm believer of you can never have too much memory so there is room to add on. I really like the the style of the unit: same lighting style and the tempered glass gives me an extra sense of Security. Unfortunately the game I play call of duty can each consume well over 100 GB and this is Only a 1TB SSD so add another 2TB SSD asap and don’t worry about later. There is also the fan noise while gaming that can put a drone noise in the air so headphones will offset that. Otherwise get use to it. I was worried that when gaming I would need to close my Discord, browsers, and my editing software but it can run it all in the background seamlessly. No glitching, so far. I’m trying to trip it up so I turn everything on and open everything run a game leave the game playing in the background go to the browser and so far the wait time is very minimal and the screen refresh rate again is super high, so I’m getting high-quality monitor views of whatever I’m looking at whether to be a video game a video emails editing, social media it all lens to how well this computer was built and the fact that I didn’t have to do any of it myself. I just plugged it into a keyboard and monitor updated all of the software connected to my Wi-Fi and I was good to go. This is actually a very good system.

Acer has put in great combination of CPU, GPU and Memory options into this sleek looking PC that I would love to show off at my desk. I enjoyed the unboxing experience and the additional foam inserts to avoid the GPU and CPU cooler from moving around during shipment. As I easily connected all the peripherals and started through the Windows process I had my first "Oh, that's interesting" experience. I searched Acer's product and support pages but I could not find anything related to the Acer Nitro 65. I understand that this is a BestBuy Exclusive product but you would still think that it would be beneficial to have a support page to see firmware and bios updates straight from the manufacturer itself. I thought I could just shrug it off if the overall out of box experience was good but that was not the case. After getting situated with Windows and being able to login and view the bloatware included like McAfee, Dropbox, express vpn (which were all removed), I made sure I booted into the BIOS to see what was going on. To my surprise, there was some performance options that were off by default and left too much on the table for me not to take full advantage of the CPU itself. After all, this thing is packed with a powerful Ryzen 9 9900x. I fully expected it to dominate in multitasking with ease. Also with the 9070xt, I fully expected it to excel in 1440p gaming. Color me unimpressed when I go to boot up and monitor my temps while running bf6 and I quickly see myself being bottlenecked by my CPU getting hit with high temps. I ended up running benchmark tests to ensure I was not just limiting it to in game experiences since most games should rely more on GPU over the CPU for performance but I know BF6 does utilize a higher CPU usage than most. My CPU CCD1 and CCD2 temps max at 88.8c and 90.0c when running Cinebench 2024 CPU multicore, and I get a score of 1631. When playing bf6, the CPU fps drops periodically from hitting temps of 97.8c and 94.6c at the CCD1 and CCD2 sensors. Even with my case side panel taken off, I still get thermal throttled. I believe the safe spot for this CPU should be 90c. I started some other titles like Counter Strike 2 and I still could not overcome the high CPU temps. Just for the sake of trying to run the game, I lowered all my settings and still could not get past this. My thoughts are that this CPU would benefit from a more powerful cooler and I could try undervolting to lower CPU temps. The case itself isn't ideal for airflow but it does look dang cool. Overall, I plan to utilize this PC to its fullest potential one way or another. You shouldn't be afraid to tinker with this even with it being a prebuilt. Swap out the CPU Cooler, add 2 more SSDs, throw some more RGB fans while in there! The customization for modding for the better of this machine is available to you. If you want this to just work out of the box expect to hit it's limits.

The Acer Nitro 65 is a very solid pre-built gaming desktop that performs well given the price point, pairing a Ryzen 9900X with a Radeon 9070 XT and 32gb of RAM, resulting in a machine that handles not only high-end gaming tasks, but productivity tasks with ease. This is a great option for anyone not looking to go the route of custom building a PC, while leaving the door open for future upgrades. The specs on this machine are the obvious headline here, with the 9070 XT being the star of the show. It's a seriously capable GPU that performs extremely well in triple-A titles at both 1440p and 4k, and it's the kind of card that's going to stay relevant for years. The system overall feels very responsive, and games run great, no doubt owed to the 9900X and the 32gb of RAM included. Once considered the bare minimum, 32gb is actually a luxury these days given the price, and it's great to see Acer squeeze this in rather than try to cut costs with something like a single stick of 16gb RAM as you may see in other builds. Overall, this machine stands out from other pre-built machines I've owned in the past because of the components: all reputable, off-the-shelf components instead of proprietary OEM parts. You get a Gigabyte motherboard and GPU, along with Kingston Fury memory. No proprietary motherboards or connectors, or layouts that lock you into their ecosystem for eternity. The Nitro features all user-upgradeable components, giving this machine a longer shelf life than other options. The case design here is also another win for the most part. I'm a big fan of the tool-less panel removal system implemented here, which makes getting inside the case as easy as can be. Additionally, there's a generous amount of airflow promoting mesh, with the side-panel implementing dual intake fans, allowing Acer to feature a wrap-around glass front and side panel that looks phenomenal without sacrificing much on thermals. And for those who are beholden to RGB, this case has plenty of that as well, with the included fans, RAM, GPU, and case bottom all featuring addressable RGB lights. It's slightly understated, but well designed and should please all but the most RGB hungry gamers. Another positive note here: Acer kept the bloatware of this system to a minimum. Frankly, this is unexpected in the world of pre-built machines, and the only real piece of bloat here is the included McAfee antivirus suite (which is semi-annoying to remove, for the record). Beyond that, the out-of-box experience is clean and uncluttered, making this feel much closer to a custom built machine than your typical pre-built. One more note on the components here: they work very well as part of a local LLM setup. I set up a dual-boot with Linux to run the ROCm build of Ollama, using the Qwen3 14B model, and things have been functioning very nicely. The 9070 XT's 16gb of memory is on the lower side for this type of setup, but as models have gotten more efficient, it's become more viable than it used to be. Paired with the raw horsepower of the 9900X, audio transcriptions, meeting summaries, and my general local prompts have been very responsive and quick overall, making this a very nice bonus as a high-end gaming machine that can also function as a capable local AI workstation. With all the positives, there are a few things worth pointing out. First, the 9900X, while being a very solid chip, and genuinely excellent at productivity and aforementioned AI tasks, is rather underwhelming for gaming. In this machine, it's the clear bottleneck at 1440p (though this goes away at 4k). It oddly almost feels like a budget-conscious choice in the build; the X3D variants of this latest generation of Ryzen chips are the better option for gaming given their huge L3 cache, but those are the more premium chips and would undoubtedly add to the cost of the build. The CPU overall performs well enough, and given the AM5 socket, you thankfully have a number of options for upgrading down the line if you so choose. Second, while I like the case layout, I was a little underwhelmed by the overall build quality. It feels quite plasticky, which is a bit unexpected for a machine in this price range (which admittedly gets you less these days given the out of control pricing on components), and feels like an area where Acer trimmed costs. And finally, on the topic of trimmed costs, the motherboard also feels like an entry-level budget pick that's out of place with the rest of the components. As mentioned, it's an off-the-shelf component (the Gigabyte B850M C), meaning it has a standard layout and can be upgraded down the line. But its price point shows to a degree; you get Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5gb ethernet, a rear Q-Flash plus button (making BIOS updates a breeze), and a passable amount of high-speed USB ports, but you're saddled with a single full-bandwidth PCIe slot and an underwhelming VRM setup. The VRM in particular likely restricts the level of CPU you could utilize here, and also has limited cooling capacity. Overall, this is an incredibly solid machine. It nails the things that matter most: a modern and powerful GPU, ample system memory, a solid CPU, and a clean out-of-the-box experience with user-upgradeable components. There are some compromises, but they feel logical on the backdrop of today's component costs, and none of them undercut the fundamental functionality of this strong gaming PC. If you're looking for a capable, upgrade-friendly gaming desktop without completely breaking the bank, the Acer Nitro 65 is a strong contender that's well worth your consideration.

I absolutely love this machine, and here’s why. Since I haven’t owned a tower PC in years, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from a specs perspective. I’ve always used laptops with Nvidia graphics, so I’m not very familiar with AMD’s cards, and having only owned one Acer Chromebook, I’m relatively new to the brand. My first impressions, however, are very positive. The case is covered in tempered glass, and there’s no shortage of LEDs on the fans, graphics card, and RAM modules. There’s even a view strip along the bottom and front that reflects the lighting, adding to the ambiance the lights create. The overall design looks very premium, which I really appreciate. I’m not a PC builder, so it’s nice to have everything ready to go right out of the box in a design I would’ve likely chosen myself. The star of the show is the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, and it does not disappoint. Manufactured by Gigabyte—a quality brand—it features 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM, which is plenty for nearly any AAA game. I mostly play racing sims, and this card handles them beautifully. On my 49” Samsung OLED 240Hz monitor, this machine runs Forza Horizon 6 like butter. It maintains a smooth 60+ FPS even under heavy load on ultra settings, and it stays impressively quiet while doing so. I’ve also tested Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and despite it being a power-hungry title, it runs very well. Every other game I’ve tried has been chewed through with ease. The motherboard is also made by Gigabyte and offers enough slots for future expansion. It comes with 32GB of RAM, which should be more than adequate for most gamers or CAD users. While I have no need to upgrade the RAM right now, it’s worth noting the CPU is a beast; the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is built on a 4nm architecture, making it both power-efficient and smoking fast. If I recall correctly, this Acer model actually offers slightly better graphics performance compared to its Intel/NVIDIA cousin, even though that version is about $100 cheaper. The only real bummer out of the box is the 1TB SSD. Since games, programs, and AI models are getting massive, I plan to add or upgrade the storage within the next few months. As for cooling, the four fans do an efficient job of keeping things cool and stay nearly silent most of the time. Even when you max everything out, the fans are never loud by any measure. You also get all the typical connections, including USB-C, USB-A, and accessible ports on top of the machine. The graphics card includes two DVI and two HDMI ports, allowing me to drive my secondary 34” OLED monitor alongside my main one. In fact, you can connect up to four displays, and this monster will handle all of them easily. In the box, you’ll also find the standard keyboard, mouse, power cable, and network cable. In summary, the Acer Nitro gaming PC is a serious bargain for just about any gamer or professional. It’s quiet, cool, beautiful, and incredibly powerful. At the price point Best Buy is offering, I can easily recommend it to anyone.

This is the current top of the line Nitro 65 desktop available only at Best Buy. The Acer Nitro 65 has thoroughly changed my opinions on buying a pre-built desktop. I have bought a few of the desktops from the company with the ET logo, and this Acer is simply impressive. The one giant sticking point with every previous pre-built desktop has been the proprietary nature of the cases, motherboards, and/or cooling solutions. Each of the previous pre-built I’ve had was not upgradeable. The Acer Nitro 65 is completely, refreshingly, upgradeable! Every part is PC desktop standard. Beyond the motherboard, which is an OEM board, (mATX standard) and the branded Nitro CPU cooler - everything is industry standard and for sale today. The power supply is not a big name, but it is High Power branded, which is a well-regarded ODM, it is also standard size and can be upgraded if you somehow want more juice. The case is sturdy, sleek, and very good for cable management behind the equipment. It has a great bottom section that houses the power supply separately, it even has a nice opening for your GPU cabling, which is usually a pain. This lower section hides all of the extra wiring for the power supply, and the bracket for the installation of SATA drives, and two cables are included. The lighting on the fans is bright, fun, and I really like the light strip embedded in the lower case vent area, super cool. Acer’s cable management is quite good, someone took their time and put this guy together right! The cool curved glass front on this case allows me to pop it open on hot days or when it might need more air. No parts were loose, the CPU heatsink was intact and well pasted, overall, quite the feat making such a hot rod computer able to handle shipping without damage. I’ve learned from experience how easy it is for a shipped custom desktop to be ruined in shipping. This case has mounting available for at least 6 more fans if you want to really make a lot of noise! Additional fans are a good idea, as this case, in looking good, chokes the airflow optimized fans that draw in the cool air for all the parts inside. The outer panel’s vent holes do not align with the inner frame’s unnecessary, similarly sized vent holes almost completely choking the air intake. On top of that, there is a fairly fine mesh filter sandwiched in between. This seems to be in the interest of looking good rather than performance. If you want to keep the looks and also have good cooling in this case, you’ll want to add a fan or 2 on top of the lower compartment to draw air into the case more freely. All of this adds up to more noise and much higher than needed temps. Acer bundles their RGB keyboard and mouse, both of which are not bottom of the barrel devices. They will serve a beginner for while until they decide what kind of gaming keyboard and mouse to get themselves. The real meat here is the high performance internals. An AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with 32GB of 6000MHz (EXPO 1) DDR5 RAM and AMD’s top of the line RX 9070 XT with a whopping 16GB of VRAM. The NVMe drive is the Lexar NQ7A1, not the fastest by far, but fully capable of handling every game I can think of now. There are three NVMe slots available, one is on the back of the motherboard. The slot just below the cpu is on the CPU’s direct PCIe bus which is the the ideal position to put your fastest drive with games, and you can use one of the other slots for your C:\ drive and enjoy maximum performance. I would strongly recommend separating your game and system drives onto 2 physical NVMe drives. As fast as they are, when you’re using one drive for everything, you can have stutters and quick loading delays as Windows and the game are arguing about who gets to use the one drive, this can ruin your game experience and you can run Windows from a tiny NVMe drive, very inexpensive compared to the insane prices on the big ones. The mounting position of the primary NVME is right out in the open, not getting hot GPU exhaust blown on it. Even in the Battlefield 6, which is the most demanding game I have installed on here, the drive doesn’t go over 62C. RAM speed matters, and the Nitro 65 doesn’t skimp there either, as the included RAM is high performance with XMP and EXPO profiles. EXPO 1 is the setting for the full speed the RAM is capable of, and EXPO 2 is a slower, more stable setting if you have issues. The Gigabyte RX 9070 XT has a great, gigantic cooler that has handled all of my games without complaint. The fans can be a bit loud when my room temperature is high, but normally, I don't even notice them. This is AMD’s top current card, and it’s no slouch. The star of this show is the Ryzen 9 9900X. This is where I found the limits of the system out of the box. This is an ridiculously powerful CPU that is designed to always push itself to the limit of the power and cooling available to it. Options for “unleashing” the processor are available in the BIOS setup, but doing so will require the installation of a much beefier CPU cooler, designed specifically for AM5, and no, “compatible” doesn’t mean “works”, it just means “fits”, as I found out with the cool looking Nitro custom CPU cooler which has one of these universal mounts and claims compatibility with AM5 at 170W cooling capacity with no caveats. After capping the Ryzen down to 162 watts, it’s designed power threshold (Auto sets 200W available, whew), the factory cooler just can’t keep up under CPU heavy gaming like Battlefield 6 (the whole point of my getting this guy) and causing hard throttling that makes the game unplayable. This is easily corrected with the addition of a high mass, high performance air cooler or liquid cooler. Adding the PBO boost after installing a be quiet! Dark Rock Elite cooler, the AMD 9900X has gained 32% in single threads and 19% in max core loads in 3DMark CPU Profiler, WOW. The GPU does not have much headroom in my experimentation, but I’m just getting started. The CPU improvements also seem to have stabilized the RAM, which did not want to run full speed at first. Out of the box, all is well. You’ll want to immediately make sure you are on the latest BIOS/firmware package from the Acer support site to make sure you have the latest heat, performance, and security improvements introduced by AMD. Uninstalling and deleting the minimal bloatware only takes a few minutes, then you’re ready to game. When the rainbow show gets too much, first try out Windows 11 lighting options, then if that isn’t satisfactory, install the Gigabyte Control Center software and it will be able to control all of the RGB lights. It’s only basic control, but you can access all of the lights as opposed to SignalRGB. OpenRGB is also a great option. It’s interesting how much performance the Acer Nitro 65 appears to have left on the table, but it’s quite easy to do my own upgrades, learning at the same time, gaining performance that’s already waiting. It’s surprisingly upgradeable and this case is a breeze to work in. The low cost and no-cost updates and upgrades available here makes this a special machine. An excellent machine that has untapped performance and a solid foundation for upgrades galore. Recommended, but you should be ready to do a little upgrading if you want to wring all there is out of this hardware.

Performance is great. The review really could boil down to that one short little sentence. But performance is not absolutely everything, and there are a few minor gripes I have with this machine. But we will start with the positives and loop back around to that at the end. Packaging and initial setup. Five Stars here, while the outer box it was shipped to me in was too big and as a result took quite the beating in transit, the actual box the tower came in was packed incredibly well. Super dense impact resistant foam wrapped this tower, and it's tempered glass fishtank like side/front well and protected it nicely from the dangers of bouncing around in the back of FedEx's finest delivery and transit trucks without alloing anything to be cracked or broken. Inside the case a combination of an expanding foam pack and a dense foam bracket kept the GPU and other bits firmly in place and free from damage. Despite the box arriving in the wrong orientation from the "This Side Up" labels. The quick start guide was simple and to the point for this specific machine, and not a generic pack in that could have gone in with a whole line of machines, so that's greatly appreciated for buyers who may not be as tech savvy. And thanks to the care and detail in the packaging material, there were no loose connections that needed reseating. It was just as simple as the quick start guide suggests, pop off the side panel (toolless experience just pull from the indicated corner and it pops right off, same on both sides.) Remove the expanding foam pack and the gpu retaining foam bracket thing, and while I took the time to check all connections to make sure they were firm and in place, none were loose, and the packing looks good enough that that's probably going to be the case for most buyers. The Windows Out of Box Experience is what you would expect. An hour+ long slog of entering info, logging in or creating an account, waiting for updates etc. But once on the desktop, she's a snappy machine ready to go. The included Keyboard and mouse will get you through until you buy the keyboard and mouse you actually want, they are nothing fancy, they feel like they will get the job done, and are nice to have on hand in a pinch should a Doritos and Mountain dew tragedy strike mid all night gaming session. Performance is what you would expect from a high-end Ryzen 9 CPU combined with AMDs current flagship, the 9070 XT. I played a good mix of games, Windrose, an early access pirate open world sandbox survival crafting game and it easily allowed me to run it at ultra settings on my 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor. Equally amazing performance on other titles such as Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Death Stranding 2, and Battlefield 6. The 16GBs of VRAM offered by the 9070XT let's this graphics card really stretch its wings in a lot of titles. Ray tracing can be a little hit or miss, with team green taking the lead in that regard, but we're no slouch here either, though if you want to enable ray tracing, consider also running upscaling to give it a little more breathing room for those additional calculations. Ray tracing can be a really heavy load. To put things in perspective you would have to significantly spend more money to have a markedly better performing GPU. So you are getting some seriously good performance at the price point. Visually the tower looks nice all lit up. But controlling the RGB is a little iffy. This setup relies on windows' own built in Dynamic Lighting settings. And they are quite limited. While it looks like the fans have individually addressed RGB, I cannot see how to control them from the windows settings, so your stuck with only a few options, breathing, rainbow color shifting, single color select, match the accent color of the desktop, etc. Or you can turn off dynamic lighting and the fans default to rainbow unicorn vomit mode. Speaking off, the RAM seems to be permanently in said rainbow mode and I haven't found a way to change that. Now, things I really feel need to change. Acer, you have a good base to work with here, it's relatively clear of bloat, and I'll give McAfee a pass, that's a decent partnership, but what really bothers me is this pre-installed Ad platform. That unprompted will occasionally just pop up out of no where with a partnership deal, with adobe, drop box, or some other software vendor. If it was just part of the out of box experience I could give it a pass, got to make that bag somehow, I get it. But after I have setup the machine, installed my own selection of applications games etc. I should not be getting random popups in the middle of me working on things to ask me if I want to join adobe cloud, or setup Dropbox with xxxGB of free storage for the first year or whatever. You have one viable and acceptable timeframe to do that it, and that's during the oobe. This would have been a near perfect review score from me without that. The only other issue I came across was the ram was not configured in the bios to use an XMP profile for maximum performance. For anyone who wishes to know, The GPU in mine as well as the motherboard were both Gigabyte brand, the ram was Kingston Fury. I was mildly confused at getting a Gigabyte GU as Acer has their own 9070 XT. I expected a lot more Acer brand in house components and aside from Acer Nitro braning in the Boot splash, Acer stuck to majority off the shelf components.

THIS… IS the Acer Nitro 65 Gaming Desktop, A mid to high range prebuilt pc with tons of power and plenty of curb appeal. Let's take a look at how Acer's pairing of the AMD 9900X and 9070XT stacks up to the competition. Taking the Nitro 65 out of the box for the first time and taking off the protective packaging, I am actually really shocked at how well this case looks. From the elegant strip lighting tucked away into the bottom of the case to the wrap around LED Fans, Acer has perfectly toed the line between tasteful RGB and a refined look. This case does have a wrap around glass facade that does a really good job at not only elevating its aesthetics but makes it somewhat easier to work on as well. Moving to the backside and removing the rear panel, acer has done a great job at cable routing as well as making it easy to track things back and remove/replace it. Overall, build quality is fantastic and is obviously made by experienced builders. Now what we are all here for… Performance! This PC is a 1440p beast and honestly does a great job on 4k titles as well. While I knew that the 9900X was a beast, this was my first time with an AMD GPU since the RX580 back in 2018. That being said, I am very pleased with its performance and software support. AMD Adrenaline is honestly a very close image to Nvidia's App… and that's not a bad thing! Comparison wise, the 9070XT soundly beats the 5070 while having 4gb more of VRAM and trades blows with the 5070ti at a better pricepoint. The only tangible edge that Nvidia has over AMD in this comparison is that DLSS is marginally better than AMD’s FSR4 and Nvidia still leads in Ray Tracing / Path Tracing. Frames wise, using FSR4 on ultra settings, I was clearing over 200FPS on COD Warzone, CS2, Valorant, Battlefield and Forza 6. When switching to 4k, I was averaging 100-150fps on those same games. Needless to say, performance isn't anticipated with the acer 65… It's expected. Something I wanted to note was the 32gb of Kingston memory @ 6000mhz, Acer didn’t cheap out on the ram (or really anywhere overall) and in an era where ram is one of the most expensive parts of a build… Acer did the right thing. Lets talk temps and largely my only gripe in a near flawless system. At this pricepoint I expected a watercooling setup or a more comprehensive air cooler. While I was never limited by temps or thermal throttled, a more comprehensive cooling and fan setup would squeeze out a little bit more performance for a longer period of time. The air cooling tower could also do a bit more to add to the aesthetics than it does currently as well. The gigabyte fans, while cool looking, aren’t exactly known for their performance. Something relatively easy and cheap to upgrade down the line. Overall, Acer has done a great job at building a competitive gaming pc in a package that you can grow into and upgrade overtime. With a motherboard that supports 3 m.2 slots, 128gb of ram and room for expansion cards… this PC is built for the long haul. While I can complain about the fans and the air tower, it still is competitive and not a truly limiting factor. Acer has knocked it out of the park with this game ready 1440p machine and put on display their ability to build a cool and competent machine. I am always thrilled to game on this machine and I am sure you will share the same sentiment. Until next time :)

My Impressions Jumping straight to the point for this review: The Nitro 65 desktop could handle anything I need. Between the AMD Ryzen 9 processor and the AMD Radeon 9070 graphics card, it seemed to do well with everything. All of my complaints were really centered on Microsoft and nothing to do with the machine that Acer has put together. Memory & Storage – I would have liked to have had more memory and storage. The 32GB of RAM provided is generally good. I would prefer to have 64GB in my gaming PC. The 1TB of storage shared with the OS is somewhat minimal, especially if you are going to install lots of games. I would prefer to have a 2nd hard drive added for storage, perhaps an additional 2TB. It’s clear what Acer provides in the specs, but it’s something to consider. You can easily upgrade these two things, and I’ll mention this more under Future Expansion. As I mentioned, the graphics card did well. Just a reminder that Windows defaults to 60 FPS out of the box. You’ll want to change the setting to allow for higher FPS. In my case it went from 60 FPS to 240 FPS, which can make a pretty big difference. Overall, the computer was quick and the resolution and FPS during gaming were great. This appears to be a solid pre-built system. Build Quality & Appearance The overall appearance is good. There’s quite a bit of RGB lighting set in a case that’s half glass with a curved edge. It’s not the most premium build that I have seen, but it’s nice for a pre-built gaming PC. The spacing of the fans seems a little odd to me. I usually like to see them lined up in 3’s. Sound – It’s pretty quiet. Like most PCs, the fans will speed up when there’s a more demanding task, but they are still generally quiet. Mouse & Keyboard – These are nicer than most out of the box PC peripherals that I have seen. They’re not the highest quality build, but they do have RGB to match the PC. The keyboard uses rounded keys and that has taken a little time getting used to. The rounded corners allow for more of the lighting to be seen. It’s not a loud or clicky keyboard. Future Expansion One thing that I do like to understand about gaming PCs is how much they can be upgraded if I wanted to do so in the future. Here are a few things that I noted: RAM – It comes with two sticks of 16GB DDR5 RAM. There are four total slots available. Per the motherboard specs I found directly from Gigabyte, this can be expanded to 256GB. Notably, Best Buy’s website says that it expands only to 128GB. I think that this may be an error. M.2 – There are three M.2 slots. Two of them are used right out of the box. There is one available M.2 slot at the lower right of the motherboard, which I may use to add another hard drive. PCI Express – There are 4 PCI slots, but most get covered up by the graphics card. There’s only one visible at the bottom of the motherboard. Conclusion I would give the Acer Nitro 65 desktop a 4.5 star rating, but since that’s not an option I will mark it at 4 stars. It’s not quite perfect for me, but it is a really nice machine. I do think a lot of people will enjoy it. I may do some upgrades to this such as: Add more RAM, Add an additional hard drive, and upgrade the keyboard and mouse. Performance-wise, it did well without changing any of these things.

This Acer Nitro 65 Gaming Desktop is a solid out of box prebuilt PC with solid performance across the board. I have previously used NVIDIA GPUs and wished to try out an AMD Ryzen/Radeon paired set up and have not been disappointed so far. To start, the box itself has a nice graphic on the side. Obviously that has no impact on performance but seeing a well thought out graphical design of a box can show there was effort put into a product from start to finish. The desktop is well packaged with padding and there is also internal padding placed around the components to help protect transit damage - my child has turned the padding into seats since unboxing, side note. Included with the desktop is the power cord, a mouse and keyboard. There is no display port or HDMI cable, which for initial setup did result in me scrounging up a cord as I left my previous computer hooked up to my monitor as well but this is a minor inconvenience. The case itself is sleek, having tempered glass on front and side panel - protected with both outer and inner film. The case feels nice to open/click close and there is RBG placed throughout the fans and also the bottom edge. The RBG can be controlled through Microsoft Dynamic Lighting (GIGABYTE Device). To get to this, just type RBG into search bar and go to change lighting colors, brightness, and effects. There is also RBG on the RAM. There is a WiFi antenna included with a slot to insert into the case - this is slightly bulky in size but is able to be adjusted pretty easy and does not block any specific port with the correct angling. The top of the case is probably the only critique I have on appearance, the actual metal frame has a cover on the top that is removable, this makes for simple cleaning but my cat got her claw stuck in it after a couple days - just awkward. Set up out of box to power on took less than 5-minutes. I initially tried out the mouse and keyboard included, they have RBG and are relatively basic in concept overall but will let you use the device out of box without added peripherals. I was disappointed in the peripheral connections but that is more personal preference. USB connections are solid with 8 on the back, 2 on the top of desktop. The USB-C are lacking with 1 on back and 1 on top. Now, many random chargers and peripherals seem to use USB-C to USB-C, so I have already filled up both USB-C connections (have ordered an USB extended to compensate). There are 2 DisplayPort and 2 HDMI connection points. Set up is simple. Windows 11 is installed on the device and once connected to internet I believe it took about 10-15 minutes to update and get logged in. The next 5-minutes I spent deinstalling random bloatware that had been added by Acer including good ol' Mcafee - but that is personal preference. Adjusted programs that start on bootup and within about 30-minutes from opening the box the desktop was ready to go. The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and AMD Radeon Rx 9070 XT have paired well for my performance needs. The 32GB of DDR5 RAM is decent for prebuild/out of box performance. There is a 1TB SSD, which SSD has become more than standard and anything less than 1TB should not be used at this point. I wish there was more storage out of box because I do enjoy downloading some larger games but this is as advertised without specific concern. Performance has not been disappointing and is performing as well as expected with reported hardware and specs. I have not had issues with overheating since starting use. I have noticed the fans will get slightly loud but it is not to a degree of disturbance - my wife did notice the fan going during gameplay though. To review normal tasks that I do on a daily basis - I have a 35" monitor which I tend to have 2-4 tasks open at once. This will include at times a bordered game, Netflix and multiple browser windows. With Netflix streaming, internet browsing and occasional smaller gameplay I have not had hiccups with freezing at start/end task, with loading or with closing out tabs. My previous desktop would freeze up a bit when closing internet tabs during this but so far this desktop is performing well. My standard games that I try out when I get a new device are FFXIV, BG3, GTA 5 (one day 6 will exist) and OSRS. The desktop has played all of these well, with rather generous graphics options for GTA 5 which can lead to some wonky GPU failures on lesser desktops. Overall, each game I have played has performed well during gameplay performance without leading to device overheating. Overall, has met my personal benchmarks for a quality performance device - out of the box. I have since been using my own peripherals, which once again slightly limited in set up due to only 2 USB-C ports and plan to expand storage for personal use reasons. This is my first Acer computer since using an Acer Chromebook about 5-years ago and would think it is a different company who designed this device. Overall, satisfied with product and would recommend

Wow! That’s the bottom-line reaction to my new Acer - Nitro 65 Gaming Desktop (with AMD Ryzen 99900X 2024 - AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT - 32GB DDR5 Memory 1TB Storage). Wow. I use PCs almost entirely for gaming because my day-to-day world is Mac-centric. But, up to this time, I’ve been using various PC gaming laptops. Great for mobility, but limited on power. I’ve experienced quite a range of capabilities with the laptops, but nothing even close to the Nitro 65. It’s a whole different level of gaming for me - and I’m loving it. Since this is my first serious desktop gaming PC, I can’t give comparisons with other offerings. I can only tell you I’ve been blown away by the Nitro 65. I’m now seeing what my games were actually meant to be. Quicker, more responsive, crystal clear, smooth movement, much greater graphic detail, and immersive, yet distinct, audio. I’m not enough of a specs geek to go in-depth on the processor and graphics engine. I can only tell you this is clearly a full-powered machine that delivers what you’d expect for this price - and more. Plus it comes with an surprisingly large number of connections and plenty of room inside for future expansions and/or upgrades. Beyond the performance, I’m thrilled with the design, the overall look, and the ‘ambiance’ it projects. A large black desktop with glass on 2 sides, it reveals an inner design that showcases the powerful components within. And it does this with a tasteful array of lights and colors that are beautifully understated. I’ve seen some of the more flashy gaming desktops and have been put off by their in-your-face lighting (imagine a ‘bonsai Las Vegas’). Whoever put the esthetic together for the Nitro 65 deserves recognition. Same with the keyboard and mouse. Functional and with subtle highlights. All of this leaves you with the feeling of a machine that is completely confident in its power and doesn’t need to overstate itself to be impressive. Wow. Investing in a PC in this price range is not a small thing, but if you’re looking into making that investment (or toying with the idea of a DIY gaming build), the Nitro 65 clearly deserves a close look. I definitely recommend it.