Acer Aspire AXC-603-UB17 Desktop Review

Acer Aspire AXC-603-UB17 Desktop PC
via Amazon

Acer Aspire AXC-603-UB17 (DT.SW7AA.004) is a low cost compact desktop PC with a small chassis and the energy efficient entry level Celeron J1800 processor (power efficiency does certainly not mean lack of performance though) that is good for your day-to-day tasks of spreadsheets, word processing, internet browsing, emails, social media and light gaming at home, school or business (small or home based). System doesn’t include a monitor, you have the desktop tower itself as well as a standard Acer wired USB keyboard, a mouse, power cord and a Quick Start guide.

Acer Aspire AXC includes the dual core Intel Celeron J1800 processor (1MB cache) at 2.41 GHz speed that goes up to 2.58GHz with Intel Burst but no hyper threading (you have two cores and two threads), 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM (expandable up to 8GB) to run a few things smoothly at once, 500 GB Serial ATA-300 hard drive to accommodate quite a number of common and multimedia files and at faster 7200 rpm spindle speed (both the storage and memory are what you can expect at this price range) and Build Your Own Cloud- BYOC of Acer will give you flexibility in terms of size of your Cloud storage (with security and privacy of your data as well) and Windows 8.1 operating system that you can swap with Windows 10 in Summer or Autumn 2015 free of charge.

Intel HD graphics (Bay Trail) will allow you to play the not very demanding older titles smoothly but you will need at least a mid-range discrete graphics chip to handle those more advanced games. Having said that both the Celeron J1800 and its integrated Intel HD GPU offer great visuals with the right monitor and will run the graphics side of things efficiently and will let you enjoy your movies and games with also the help of High Definition Audio with 5.1-Channel Audio which seems to offer decent- loud and crystal clear sound- as claimed by the manufacturer but this will also depend on the type of monitor or external speakers you will be using. You can play movies or games from DVD’s or CD’s and with the HDMI output you’ll connect to your large screen HDTV or modern monitors for decent quality video and audio.

Stylish and sleek with soft front and metallic finish black Acer Aspire AXC-603-UB17 has the dimensions of 14.55 x 3.94 x 10.49 inches and weighs 14.34 pounds so it is pretty compact- about the size of a regular tower, and comes with a 16X DVDR/RW SuperMulti Drive, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connectivity (no wireless card and no Bluetooth by default), a USB 3.0 port at the rear for much quicker data transfers, 4 x USB 2.0 ports (front and rear- 2 each), Secure Digital- SD card, an HDMI port to experience your HD video and audio on the large screen, 3 x AUX outputs and a 1 mini PCI Express expansion port.

Conclusion: Acer Aspire AXC-603-UB17 with a progressive style is easy to set-up and operate. You need about a gigabyte of RAM to be able to operate the Windows 8.1 OS so you have approximately 4 times that amount so you won’t really experience much freezing or delays when you’re working on your tasks With a Passmark benchmark score of 1046 on the day of this review, the J1800 processor performs better overall than previous Intel Atoms but still would not be suitable for very complex programs or the latest games and the Thermal Design Power- TDP for the entire system is only 10 watts which should help the energy consumption greatly. There is no wireless card on it and no Bluetooth but we like that it is compact, is energy efficient, performs well in daily tasks, is suitable for work (more home-based or small businesses), schoolwork and entertainment purposes, the HDD is 7200rpm rather than 5400 rpm, the most frequently used ports at the front- is not a fancy system by any means and it certainly can’t be with such a low price tag but has a modern design, is compact and will do the job just fine. You get a toll free customer technical support from Acer and 1 year of limited parts and labor warranty with this unit.

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