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Review on πŸ’» Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 Desktop: 10th Gen Intel Core i5, 12GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 10 Home by John Banks

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Minimum Needed: Minis

I'll start by saying this is NOT a gaming PC, it has a crappy graphics card but that's not critical to me, I bought it to replace an aging Linux File server that recently spontaneously shut itself down. I wanted to add two more disks and install Ubuntu on them. When I opened the box I was very disappointed, the machine is very small, maybe a microtower, how can I fit two more 3.5 hard drives in it? After opening the back, my fear was confirmed that there were no more free compartments. There are two free SATA ports on the motherboard, but there's just no way to connect the drives. At the same time, everything is at a minimum, there is only one spare outlet, I had to use an extension cord. After some fiddling around I was finally able to attach a drive to one of the walls with just 1 screw, yes that's right just 1 screw, ideally there should be 4, 2 would be minimal but I had to be content with just 1 screw. The second drive had to be placed on the bottom of the case with no fasteners, and I had to be careful not to let any of the metal parts touch the motherboard. Eventually I was able to get everything working but barely, PS made a big mistake by plugging in two data drives before installing Ubuntu, I pre-allocated a few slots on the main nvme drive for Ubuntu, but stupid Ubuntu chose one of my data drives to install, erased all my data (luckily I have a backup), I had to do it all over again. Getting rid of Grub proved difficult, I ended up having to create a Windows installation disk, remove all partitions and reinstall Windows to permanently clean the bootloader. May I recommend it? No, would I buy it again if I knew? probably not because I don't really see a clear role that this machine fits for to use as a gaming PC? You seriously need to invest money in a graphics card. Use as an office car? Why not a laptop? more comfortable. Use as server? You saw the problem. I think maybe for those who don't like laptop (I don't know why) to surf the web etc.? Yes you can play "some" games on it, yes you can use it as an office computer, and yes you can turn it into a server like I did. but it sucks doing one of those jobs. Oh by the way when I was writing this review the CPU fan started making a little hum, I had to go in and put a damper on the fan to silence it.

Pros
  • Best
Cons
  • Communication with Seller