Acer Adds New Predator Gaming Series, More

Acer announced several PCs on Tuesday including a new "mainstream" gaming rig.

Tuesday Acer said that it added a new mainstream model to its Acer Aspire "Predator" gaming desktop PC line-up, joining the current high-end "monster machine," the Aspire Predator AG7750-U3222. Acer said that the new entry--the Aspire Predator AG5900-U3092--was engineered to "excite" mainstream gamers with impressive hardware yet stay reasonably affordable.

Under the hood, the $1,349.99 AG5900 sports an Intel Core i7 870 CPU with Intel Turbo Boost Technology, 8 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, a rather meaty 1.5 TB SATA hard drive, and AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5850 with 1 GB of discrete video memory. Gamers wanting to build upon this rig at a later date will have an extra 5.25-inch optical drive bay, three open 3.5-inch HDD bays, two open PCI Express x1 slots and an additional PCI slot. Other features include twelve USB 2.0 ports, three audio jacks, an HDMI port and more.

For consumers looking for something compact for the kitchen or bedroom, Acer also announced the release of its AspireRevo AR3700-U3002 nettop, costing a mere $349.99. About the size of a book, the mini-rig uses an Intel Atom D525 dual-core processor, discrete Nvidia Ion graphics, 2 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and a 250 GB SATA hard drive. It also has a multi-in-one card reader, an HDMI port, six USB 2.0 ports, 802.11 b/g/n wireless, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and Windows 7 Home Premium.

Also on Tuesday Acer announced two all-in-one desktops: the new 21.5-inch Acer Aspire AZ3100-U3072 and the revamped Acer Aspire AZ5700-U3112, now sporting a 23-inch HD multi-touch display. The former AIO rig--the $599 Aspire AZ3100--uses a 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon II 170u processor, Nvidia GeForce 9200 graphics, 3 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and a 500 GB hard drive. It also has an integrated webcam and microphone, six USB 2.0 ports, 802.11 b/g/n wireless, an HDMI port and more.

As for Acer's revamped Aspire AZ5700, the AIO PC carries a $1099 price tag and is "fueled" by Intel's 3.2 GHz Core i5 650 processor and Intel HD graphics. There's also 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, 1 TB of HDD space, six USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, 5.1 channel audio, and more. On the software front, the AZ5700 comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium and Acer's TouchPortal suite of applications.