Acer adds Ryzen 5000 CPUs to its Nitro 5 gaming notebook
The company is also updating the Aspire 7 and 5 with new AMD chips.
Today, Acer is launching a new pair of Nitro 5 laptops that can be specced to include AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 series mobile chips. Users have the choice of either a 15.6-inch, or 17.3-inch model, both of which can be specced with the Ryzen 9 5900H, paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. Since this is an affordable gaming machine, you also get a wide variety of monitor options, from a QHD screen with a 165Hz refresh rate through to a HD version that can run at up to 360Hz for competition players.
AMD’s new Ryzen 9 5900H is a chip that has generated no small amount of excitement amongst the PC gaming fraternity. Leaked benchmarks via WCCFTech suggest that the new chip can outperform an equivalent Intel Core i7 in both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. The highest-end version of the 15.6-inch Nitro 5 available will set you back $2,299, and includes the 5900H, a 156Hz QHD display, 32GB RAM, a 1TB SSD and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080.
We got to see the smaller of the Nitro 5 models in its (inhuman) flesh, and there’s much to like despite its role as an affordable machine. Certainly, Acer is trumpeting that the Nitro 5’s better cooling technology will help it run more efficiently than similarly-priced rivals. It’s better-looking than previous generations of Max-Q laptops, too, which always sacrificed some of their design flourishes in favor of better thermals. The keyboard is, in our experience, a little too springy for fast-twitch competition but then, that’s what peripherals are for.
I’m nitpicking, but I think the single USB-C port on the chassis is a bit of a stingy move given how quickly we’re adopting the standard. There’s plenty of people who may not have the disposable cash to throw at upgrading their peripherals, sure, but it would have been nice to have one on both sides. That aside, the sacrifices and compromises here are sufficiently well-hidden (for now) that you may not notice that you’re using a (pretty) cheap gaming notebook. We won’t know for certain until we can put the finished version up for some real stress testing, but for now, the Nitro 5 makes a good first impression.
At the same time, Acer is updating the Aspire 7 (and 5) with new AMD chip options, with the top-end model getting a Ryzen 5000-series chip and up to a GTX 1650 GPU. Naturally, you’ll be able to order up to 32GB RAM, a 1TB SSD and WiFi 6 as options on this machine, as well as user-controllable fan speeds. The middle-tier Aspire 5, meanwhile, gets an (as-yet unspecified) 5000-series chip paired with AMD’s Radeon RX 640 GPU, up to 24GB RAM and wither a 1TB SSD or 2TB HDD.
Acer’s Nitro 5 will be available in 15.6 and 17.3-inch versions in North America this February, with the base models priced at $750 and $850, respectively. Naturally, that price will skyrocket as soon as you start adding parts up to the aforementioned top-line system, which will set you back $2,299. The Aspire 7 and 5, meanwhile, will arrive in March, with the base models set for $750 for the 7 and $550 for the 5.
