This decade-old Acer Predator gaming PC has NEVER been upgraded, so what's inside?
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- Опубликовано: 31 окт 2022
- I recently purchased an old Acer Predator G5900 gaming PC that dates back to 2011. Reviews were mixed at best due to the choice of processor and graphics card, so how does this machine hold up today, if it even works at all?
Thanks for watching :) 
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I remember looking at one of these! This was like my dream PC back in the day, I think I can safely say I'm glad I didn't have the money to buy one back then.
Lol
Right? I always wanted a pc throughout my teenage years and it wasn’t until I was in high school in 2017 that I was finally able to build my first one (AM4) and am so glad. Still use it to this day with a 5600x and a gtx1070 that I hope to upgrade in a week or two.
@@choppings54 1070 is still fine with 22 games
@@TaijiArban now with the 4090 the prices might have droped
@@corvoattano2757 I use a 1070 TI and I can play everything that came out this year
It's weird to think that 2011 was 11 years ago now, feels like yesterday!
Yeah it’s really weird
How old were you then, I was 5
If 11 years ago feels like yesterday then did you have a big weekend? Or are you a time traveler?
I suppose the clocks did change the other day.
@@Pividol I was way too young lmao
@@Google_Does_Evil_Now maby he's a kid. I was 24 in 2011. 2011 earth was like another planet back then. A far better planet for that matter even though it did start to decline in 2007. Now it's rotten.
"It probably drew quite a few people in with it's good looks and then disappointed them with the performance." Me.
Pre-builts in a nutshell tbh
gt330 lool update for 550 ti 1 week, 560ti 448 core lol
did you buy one of these?
@@Fernando-Rodriguez in 2010 i5 750 gt330 mi first pc, 750 euro for play battlefield 3 shit pc
@@oppresseddoggo7308 am still using Pre-bullshit pc and i hate myself
I had no idea how good I had it when my dad and I built my first computer. I built mine in 2011- 2012. It had a 3770k and a GTX 570. I gained on that thing well into 2017 and it was a beast until it finally short circuited its motherboard. It's crazy thinking how powerful that 3770k was when it launched. You could probably still play a lot of games with it.
My misses still uses my old 3770k@4.5 OC, 16gb 1866mhz, Gtx 970, it runs great at 1080p 60hz, even with newer games.
Yeah. I still use a i3 4130 for games with 16GB of Ram and an 4 gb rx 550. I actually maxed Elden Ring at 60 fps @1440x810 using an custom interlaced preset and 1369mhz clock on CPU/GPU.
The CPU is too old but I have a little secret and thats ReadyBoost using a 32 GB sandisk extreme pro USB 3.0 By starting the game than loading in I get around 35 fps. Than I have to turn my computer off and on (not restart) and than the game runs smooth 59-60fps as it bypasses the cpu for all models and textures.
It continues to run smooth until I load a different game and than I have to do the whole process again. It's a bit annoying but really... I get top quality performance on a very old rig.
@@samuelswenson1505 mind blown
I have 3 children now into computers, so I've really gotten a lot of mileage out of older hardware. I have what became the 3rd computer, a combination of my former builds.
It's running a 3770k at 4.5 with a noctua d14 cooler in it. I have 32 gigs of 2000 ram in it. A dedicated ssd for the operating system and another for games. And it's rocking a 6600xt :D. It still basically plays even the latest and greatest just fine. Some lower graphical settings and 1080p, but really for playing what they like to play like roblox, it's still a complete beast. I bought that setup as my main 10 years ago aside from the gpu, but i have to say even with the new gpu, there's a bottleneck obviously but it's not noticeable in gaming. Best era for longevity was certainly that Intel i7 series.
I have a fourth desktop using a 4000 series quad core (was a combination of pre-built stuff mixed with aftermarket stuff) and it has a 1650 super in it. It still runs everything modern even with that setup for the most part. Certainly in my house.
@@mayaddy6228 That's awesome man!! We had the ddr3 cranked all the way up to 2400 and overclocked the crap out of it with just a cooler master 212. That 3770k is just a beast of a chip. Super awesome that hardware has gone such a long way for you!!
Man I used to LOVE this case. This PC was also the first Gaming PC I've ever owned, however, I had the one with the i5 and I think 550 Ti
the one i bought had an i7 3770k and a GTX 560. it was a decent pc for it's day
I remember selling these when I worked in PCWorld back in the day whilst I was at uni. The appearance of them sold them more than the specs as it was 90% parents buying them for younger kids who were wanting a gaming pc.
I like the old cases they are future retro.
Yeah much better than a lot of modern ones in my opinion
Videos like these are one of my favourite things about this channel. So much fun.
The cooler looked adequate. I liked the idea of drawing in outside air, although even a couple cheap and mediocre fans would have inproved things considerably.
You're spot on, well done air ducting and directing can be so darn effective it's crazy, but not many people do it since it's easy enough to brute force it with better fans, and doing both is just too pricey for oems
They are still using that cooler even today in their modern systems. I have an old Sandy Bridge i5 Veriton that also uses this cooler. It's really a beast compared to the stock Intel cooler
Bought an acer predator at 13 years old in 2011, i remember it having a 550 TI and a i7 2600 in it. The 550 TI was a HOT Garbage OEM card, switched it out to a radeon 7870 a few years later and the i7 2600 lasted me all the way to 2018 when i upgraded to a ryzen 1700x. Then the i7 2600 was passed on to my girlfriend so she could game for another few years. Sold the pc with the i7 2600 this year for around 200 bucks with a 760 gpu in it. Almost 11 years of service and its still going on in someone elses pc right now.
Yeah, an i7 2600 is all you really need if you're not bothered about playing the latest games on the highest settings. It's what I have in my PC and it runs everything I play without a problem. It's amazing how it can still hold its own 11 years later. Like, imagine trying to play the latest games in 2012 with a CPU from 2001. Just wouldn't happen.
Thanks for jumping right into it at the beginning. Usually there's a skit or intro movie these days
These air cowlings make a lot of sense actually, as long as the side of the PC can breathe the need for an intake fan is pretty much eliminated.
I always save these coolers, they are REALLY useful if you are building something SFF!
Noctua makes something like it for their low profile coolers called the NA-FD1, adjustable from 5-45mm in 1mm increments iirc
Yeah these coolers are pretty efficient and also very silent,but an intake fan would have helped get some air in for the GPU cooler in case you would have something that gets hot
They are amazing for temps... But act as a giant Horn for Fan noise
the heatsink itself is a quite chunky boi aswell
@@dasdoin9600 i can't say i've ever had a pc run louder with it on than off. Probably because these horns were always quite important for the thermals inside.
@@ypoora1 i Had this exact cooler on a 775 Platform and replacing the standard horn with a simple tube quieted it down significantly
dont get me wrong i think "airfunnels"in general are great and my experience overall was more than positive
even the Intel stock cooler is suprisingly quiet when it gets a constant supply of fresh air and i think they are underutilised atm
I love your videos. They're so simple and always showcase cool and unique PCs and components.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you can upgrade this to. Good video.
The case is meant to get side airflow, which isn't as common anymore, but that fan shroud is definitely helping. Put that in, and a rear fan.
You also have to remember that back then, your monitor was probably 768p, or 900p at best. 1080p monitors were high end, so you probably wouldn’t have gotten this system if you played at that resolution. High refresh rate monitors also didn’t really exist yet. For the price it was targeting, the card would have been a little underpowered but would otherwise game just fine.
My monitor was 1600x1280 but I only ran it in 1600x1200
If I remember well, Medion made a pc with that funnel for the cooler a few years back and constantly thermal throttled the i5 8400 in it.
I always find it interesting to see those Sunon maglev fans in the Acer machines.
I hope you ended up fixing this. Also, what a beautiful case! NVM, I see YT suggesting another video with it.
Oh wow I had this PC! Thanks for the video. Awesome as always, sir.
Oh damn, I used to have a tower like this years ago, was the first tower I ever had as a hand-me-down from my pops.
This was my first PC, got it in 2010 and used it until I upgraded in 2017. At the time I thought it was super powerful since it was a desktop before I knew anything about PC specs. Though the GT 340 and dual core i5 were never up to much.
It was OK, since it could run games released for PS3 in that era .
@@aleksazunjic9672 I remember installing tons of minecraft mods back in the day, it got to about 170 mods before crashing which is more than I'd have expected.
9:10 that’s because it technically still is running in directx 11, just in _feature level_ 10_1. It emulated the 10.1 feature set while keeping the backing benefits of dx11
My dad bought a pc from Tandy and it was maxed out with everything. He bought a magazine that had a game called Jump Man and it couldn't even run that.
I think back in the late 90's but at least yours could run a game. Enjoyed the video.
Not a bad case for a sleeper build, nice selection of drive bays, may be limited for GPU size though if someone wanted to put a big beefy card in there.
I've been looking for a gt340 for my collection. Bit of a unique card. Technically it is the top of the line for the "300" series of cards. It was an OEM only card and is actually pretty tough to find.
hm
my fav tech channel..love the accent mate..keep up the great work!
My first gaming PC was a Acer Predator from 2012 that came with an i7-3770, 12GB RAM, and a GT 630 (lol). I ended up upgrading the GT 630 to a 660 Ti and I can very clearly remember cutting myself on the PCI brackets during the install. It lasted a good couple of years before I ended up doing my first build. Good times.
Still use this exact tower as my TV command center machine
You said the case would make a great sleeper, and my idea is an AM4 sleeper build, because there's still a lot of juice left to squeeze from AM4. If the hot-swappable bays (but SSD) can be kept, with a B550 board (leaves power delivery headroom for 58/5900 etc) and a Ryzen 5600 (finally getting cheap, 60w TDP helps crutch the poor airflow) and a solid modern GPU (ex-miner 3080 lesgooo), then it would be a cool video editing and gaming sleeper beast. It would be a full success sleeper build if all the I/O ports on the case can still function, because all that crazy front I/O is what made this era of PCs interesting and cool and also keeps it useful in 2022 for the content creator. Oh yeah, that weird old camera card? Just plug it right in, Bob's ur uncle. The build could be a whole series, and I'm sure the I/O would be the interesting part of the build. That and hunting down all the bits, used.
I always keep the cone on as it is not used to draw air into the case as he stated, that is what the CPU cooler/fan does. The cone is there to focus the air coming in onto the heatsink/CPU. Adding a rear exhaust fan to the cone design is quite effective. The cone design is also used on cars. They are called radiator shrouds.
awesome video. i had a build in that exact same case, in 2014. i got it as a gift from a friend, who found it in a second hand computer parts store. it interestingly shaped, but nothing to impress performance wise, just a regular case.
Man I love your videos.
Cheers from Chicago, m8!
Thanks mate!
nice vid as always! it would be so nice if you would let us know the actually tested pc specs in the description! thanks and keep up the excellent work!
This era of cases was really creative
I bought one of these from NewEgg at the beginning of 2011. An AG5900-U3092. Mine came with an i7-870, Radeon HD5850, 8GB of DDR3, and a generic 750 watt 80+ (Assuming you believe that) PSU. Definitely a step up from the one you got, but I probably could've done a bit better at the time, but didn't know any better. LOL! I put in a GTX970 when it launched, and it definitely breathed massive new life into it.
Also, I still have the 5850 in another build, and it's working fine 11 years later, no repaste, and no performance issues. Definitely a credit to ATI at the time.
That cooler is ridiculous lol. I forgot all about those funnels. Been a while since I've seen one of those.
Love the case! Great work as usual
Got my first desktop gaming pc in 2012, and 12 year old me couldn't be happier with one of these! Good times
Daaamn!! The old case designs were awesome!! , Makes me want to go get either my Aerocool XPredator X3 "Devil Red" or Aerocool Strike-X cases out of storage!! 😍
I really like the front hot swap drive bays. I don't like much else. It would be nice as a rebuilt sleeper, you could have a nice hot-swappable raid-1 going on in there.
They ain't hot swappable though. It clearly has stickers on them saying to shut the PC down before removal.
@@staples4335 They are hot-swappable. The warning on the front is simply a disclaimer.
The motherboard recognized drives as soon as they were inserted and they can be safely disconnected from Windows during operation.
may have to pick one of these up if i can find one. will sit good with my optiplex and sleep mod builds
G'day Random,
WOW! that is a cool looking Retro case,
I hope you can get the PC working again for some more content, like how does the GT340 compare to the IGP for gaming plus what to expect with a cpu upgrade,
something else I would be interested in is how the i5-650 compares to a modern 2c/4t CPU like the g7400 or our Hero the Athlon 3000G
Someone from Acer clearly saw Tron:Legacy when he designed the case. Nice video btw! :)
Hi Dave. I thought could this case be a good one to try out newer hardware and fans and measure temperature compared to some other modern case you have in your possession which have good temperature with around same amount of fans. Food for thought.
I remember seeing these in stores back in the day with that predator monitor thinking it was the best PC ever :-)
Would love to see that board maxed out :)
Such a great looking pc deserves a great upgrade
Great content. Love the videos as always.
I've already work on this model on our shop. first time cleaning since bought . and man, its worst than that. but after cleaning it all the way , and man , she works like new from 2011.
I've always been a fan (lol) of those side ducts. It seems like a no-brainer to get room temperature air to the CPU? I'm guessing the main trade-off (compared to modern, high-airflow, many large, low rpm fans) is load acoustics?
I remember having one of those as a teen. I still have the disk drive from that in my current pc. It's about 8 years old at this point lol
I knew acer was always around but I didn’t know they had the predator lineup this long ago
Yeah one before this too. Possibly more. The g7700 I think it was. Looked great
This PC made me dream of having my own, I saw one of these in an internet cafe years ago and it looked so nice that it became my dream brand. Years later, I was able to get my own predator although a laptop, it was the best laptop I ever had until I sold it to build my own PC.
Those sandy bridge boards usually don't upgrade to ivy bridge despite being the same socket 1155.
Holy heck i remember these Acer predator PCs thinking they must surely be the greatest thing on earth to look *THAT* cool back in the day.
Nice looking case from the outside but the inside reminds me of the Dell XPS 8700 case I used to have which was a pain in the arse to work in!
I kinda miss the fan cones. My younger self liked to imagine those as jet engines.
i just picked up an old alianware from 2007 holy shit what a trip down memory lane
4:25 Yup, still packing i7-2600K, only very modest OC, and so far got no trouble playing anything, and various multitasking and content creation tasks provide no challenge whatsoever.
Paired with the good ol' GTX 1060 6GB, it is still a great 1080p/60fps gaming rig.
Ive got one from my grandpa but its the older Version with i7-760
It shows me that prebuild pcs were in the past very good anstead of today
I still use my I7 2600K that i built in early 2012 as my main computer and it works just fine for what i want to do, i dont play any games though but i write and record/mix music which is a pretty demanding task, its easily the best computer that i have ever had. I also have an I5 2500K that i got used earlier this year for recording at the rehearsal studio and its great for that. The worst part with these is that they dont support windows 11 so i might have to get a new computer in 2025 at least, the 2500K is used offline though so i can probably use it for many years if it doesnt break down.
I'm still rocking my predator G3620 from 2012, it had a i7-3770, a GT640 gfx card (4GB), 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a 2 TB HDD, the only changes i did to it over the years were adding a 250GB SSD and replacing the gt640 for a GTX1050ti (2GB).
It has started to show it's age but i can still play a lot of games on medium-high settings.
BEST PC EVER
I don't know if you remember but I left a comment a while ago about how I found a 4770k in a Z87 Sabertooth board in a E waste bin, well today I visited the same E waste bin (first time since then) to drop off a old stereo and the only thing in the bin was a small pc in the back that turned out to be a Acer Predator with a 11700k and a rtx 3070. Fitting you would have a Acer predator video today of all things!
That's a great ewaste bin. I want a 4790K or my PC. I already have a Z-87 board.
Funnily enough I was started stripping down that exact pc (inc spec) yesterday. Love the case looks as well - I'd bought it for the case to be honest.
Likely the water damage. Some traces or chip legs would likely have rusted. If you could find the traces that're rusted, you could use some bodge wire soldered between where it was meant to connect, but on a modern board with so many tiny traces it'd be near impossible.
I remember the case and really wanted it!
Just upgrade the hell out of this old gaming PC, would love to see the result und further more the gaming Performance in late 2022
Oh wow I've never been this early though, I love the way this thing looks.
See if you can find an old in tact Predator Defender/Trooper I think they were called G7200 or something along those lines. I saw one in a PC world when I was 13 and spent a long time trying to find even a case. Managed to find the blue one (despite really wanting the offensive orange one) but I'd be impressed to see one running as it was.
Hi! love the videos dude! but i just wanted to say that you and GreenHamGaming sounds exactly the same to me its almost scary lol
You should do a budget build in this case.
Video was so cool I'm leaving a comment and liking just for the purpose of driving up engagement, I don't have anything interesting to add.
all 360° CPU coolers need a cone like that ( if the right panel has intake ) and an exhaust fan
don't throw that cone, i did that mistake few years ago
yea i was thinking its probably incase theres little airflow in the front
Oh my, I WANT that case!
I'd check the PSU first, it's possible it's on it's way out and only worked briefly without the power draw from the PCIE slot.
Also, I wouldn't get my hopes up for the Xeons, I'd be surprised if Acer supports them on this board.
The case is really cool tough.
Still rocking a i7 2600 no k with a 1650 in my HTPC, still does the trick for light gaming at 1080.
Thank you so much for doing this video !! Actually you are the best youtuber , because you think out of the box and do old pc reviews . Thats so good . I also have this setup , but doesn't have a graphics card . So should i buy gtx 550 ti 1gb card to run these games at even higher fps ? Please reply !
For some reason I felt pain when you removed the RAM sticks. ;)
Quite funny a friend of mine gave one of these to me a couple of days ago. I mainly reused parts of the case so I can finish my PowerMac G5 to ATX conversion
What I usually do with potentially dead boards is take the CMOS battery out and the RAM and then power the system on with just the CPU. Usually you'll get a load of beep codes for the missing RAM. This will tell you the board is still alive and will also reset it but won't harm anything. I've managed to bring a few boards back to life this way.
Also if you have a spare power button or just use a screwdriver to short the pins on the power header as the button on the PC could have failed and maybe bread board it with a different power supply... I know you probably know all of this but some viewers might not.
Looks like most used PC's that I pick up. Oh man a 340??? Keep that thing on the wall in a frame..lol., I have never seen a 340 ever. The performance was pretty surprising for this rig and you cleaned it up well.
in late 2011, a sandybridge 2600 on a h series board with a 560 ti and 8 gigs of DDR3 cost around 1k prebuilt
Bad Company 2 fried my GT 220 way back when it came out. I was fortunate enough to RMA the thing and get a new one.
If you revive the system it may be fun and interesting by to try a socket 775 Quad-Core Xeon (that doesn’t require modifying the socket). A lot of modern CPU coolers will also fit socket 775. There is a Forum Thread with motherboard compatibility for those old Xeons and the instructions on how to update the BIOS with the proper microcodes to support the Quad-Core CPUs. Most of the mobos in the list have been tested and sometimes even have a pre-modified BIOS you may download, although I’m not sure if you will find this particular Acer on that list (it doesn’t include many OEM systems…)
First gen core i didn't use LGA 775...
@@Gabu_ You’re right, I was talking about Xeon 34xx based on Core 2 Quad for Socket 775 and Xeon 54xx for Socket 771. Those are ancient processors and by no means cost effective, and much-much older than first generation Core i7/i5
nice case design
I bought this pc from a friend for $500 CAD 7 yrs ago, it came with a i7 2600 and a gtx 950(later upgraded to a gtx 1650 super) ive upgraded ram and threw in a ssd and a 750w psu(old one failed). its runs most games on medium/high settings. All my upgrades we done slowly as i could afford them. I bought a new pc yesterday but im keeping my predator beast for a back up. It was a great starting point for a gaming rig and ill keep her till she explodes!
My previous machine was a Pentium 4 and it had one of those little cone things. Some of the newer P4's ran hot so yeah I did what I could to negate that.
The machine I built after it was an i7 965 Extreme Edition on an Asus P6T motherboard....Still using that machine today! Built it around 2011/2012 too so it's been running for over 10 years just about. I have maybe redid the thermal paste once in it's run time when the rear audio jacks and USB ports stopped working after a CRT static discharge went into it through some headphones I was wearing when I was cleaning dust of the monitor so had to replace the motherboard. So not on the original motherboard sadly. I replaced it with an identical one to avoid issues having to reinstall Windows. My Windows install technically hasn't seen a reinstall since the first time I installed it around like 2012 or so. Been using drive image backups the few times I had serious mess ups with it and just recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 (first OS I used on this machine was Windows XP 64 bit Pro then Windows 7. Don't think there was an upgrade path from XP 64 bit so the Win7 had to be a clean install sadly else my OS install would have been a year or so older!
I tested migrating a clone of the drive to another computer I have via the sysprep tool and it survived so I suspect my upgraded OS install will continue to live on even after I finally retire this machine. :P
I should probably think about doing the thermal paste again soon though the thermals still look fine on it for now. This machine has seen all sorts of video cards. A Geforce 8400 was in it at some point. Not sure if I still have that one. Then a GT 240. Still have that one! Sits in a unused PC in the closet. Then a GTX 650. Still have that one. It's in another spare PC my sister used to use). My current video card is a gtx 780 Ti I got around 2021 when I got the stimmy. :P
A 2 core CPU certainly wouldn't have aged as well (and the Pentium 4 machine would be unbearable to use today. :P ). I'd have probably tried to upgrade away from that had my machine been using one. :P
I wonder if this is old enough to have non-proprietary front panel headers, so you can do a motherboard swap and make it some kind of sleeper
It's came with a standard, non-proprietary mATX mobo. So it's safe to assume it has standard front panel I/O. But honestly, it's not too difficult to swap out non-proprietary front panel stuff with off the shelf power button, USB, audio, etc.
The Acer Predator with a good look is the G7700 but they are pretty rare to find they look like transformers pc they are good for sleeper pc the orange one is cool
Perhaps the intermittency might be from that LiteOn power supply, could swap in another to check this, silver bombs are common in that era..
Was this PC from after Acer bought out Gateway? The case looks very similar to the Gateway FX PCs.
Still daily driving my Acer Predator from 2012. I7 2600k processor, 8GB RAM and Nvidia GT 630. Solid tower
Acer was pretty good back then my parents main one was an acer used to play AOE2 all the time on it
Really, the 2500k was so good that I actually could do a lot of decent gaming on it until recently. Granted, I was doing more strategy titles and not anything that really required a ton of frames. Finally Civ 6, Halo MCC, and Wreckfest really pushed that lovely old cpu to the point where I felt its age was too much to ignore.
I've seen a good amount of Acer desktop boards from this time period fail due to capacitors, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what killed this one too. If I recall it was near the CPU where it blew- on my Athlon 64 board at least.
I still use that cone for side intake because case i'm using only has side intake and just having the cone there lowers cpu temps by like 4-5 degrees under max load(cinebench or p95) and i'm using ryzen 7 1700 which doesn't run that hot(65W TDP) but it's still nice to get lower temps essentially for free since i had two of those cones at home
I love early 2000's boxes. Years ago I wanted to build a sleeper but it's a big ordeal and I went for a LAN case instead.
I had an acer predator with a I7 3770, 12gb of ram, 1tb hdd and some real small nvida card (like a gt 710 or something). I bought it as my first computer thought it would be good at gaming because of the branding and then discovered it wasn’t. Years later I learned about pc hardware, threw a ssd for boot and a rx 570 into it and had a solid gaming rig finally
Hmmm...i have an old Veriton with an i5 2400 that has the same style motherboard,same cooler,RAM and PSU. I guess the Predator only used a more "gamer" looking case and just added a dedicated GPU. I put my old R9 270x in it and i use it as a little "sleeper" PC for older games because the case looks like a regular office PC and i actually like that
aunque casi no entienda pero este tipo de videos de pc ya algo antiguos es satisfactorio
had a xeon x3470 that turbo to 4.1 n had nice oc, with 16gb ram all 4 dimms populated with tight timings does better than some 1st Gen ryzen 3s