Acer’s Predator desktop lineup has been the victim of some harsh criticism in the past, but this year’s AG3-605-UR1G is a vast improvement over last year’s offering. Its modest tower houses some potent hardware, and anyone who’s willing to take a risk on an off-the-shelf PC can find the computer at a reasonable price.
The AG3-605-UR1G’s plastic facade looks like a tank track, and the upper portion has two spring-loaded sections that ease out of the case with a handle – one holds the DVD drive, and the other hides a spare 3.5-inch hard disk bay. The chassis itself feels reasonably well-built, and its metal sides and face panels aren’t too thin.
Its 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-4770 processor paired with 32GB of RAM delivers enough processing power to comfortably run demanding games and other software at full resolution and high image quality settings. Its NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 graphics card with 4GB of dedicated video memory isn’t the most exotic card we’ve seen, but it still delivers fast frame rates in our tests, and it can play Days Gone at 60 frames per second on Ultra settings with no noticeable lag.
Acer includes its own gaming-centric software interface, called PredatorSense, which lets you adjust various laptop features – such as fan modes and keyboard lighting – with a few clicks. It’s not much to look at, but it’s less confusing than options from rival companies, such as Asus’ PredatorZone and Razer’s Synapse. The AG3-605-UR1G also comes with Norton antivirus, which is a bit too eager to notify you whenever it detects suspicious files or websites.