A futher $100 cheaper than the last time this model was posted.
4 core. 8 threads.
1080p screen. 144hz.
8GB of RAM. Expandable with 2 slots.
512GB NVme SSD. Expandable with 2 NVMe slots.
Acer Nitro 5 15.6-Inch i5-10300H/8GB/512GB SSD/RTX3060 6GB Gaming Laptop $1098 + Delivery ($0 C&C/ in-Store) @ Harvey Norman
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That would be quite impressive if they managed to fit a desktop CPU into a laptop LOL
Fyi 11400F is a desktop CPU
Sorry yep I meant 11400H
this variant exists https://www.harveynorman.com.au/acer-nitro-5-15-6-inch-i5-11…
its just an extra $330 or so
I won't say "just" $330
Only $330
That's not worth it
Bought this variant for $1.2 a month ago. Excellent deal with newer CPU.
also bought on that deal a month ago with the 11400H - threw an extra 8gb DDR4 3200 and a crucial 1tb nvme ssd, haven’t used the extra sata slot. This deal still looks ok, I’ve read average things about the screen but in practice doesn’t detract from the experience (for some reason clarity improved a bit after installing all windows updates maybe a driver update needed). I use for photo editing and gaming. A bit of flex to the chassis but I wouldn’t say flimsy, the keyboard I quite like good feel and customisable colours. Trackpad does the job fine but I use a G305 wireless usually with it. The fans can be noisy - I throttle the cpu to 95% of max in the power plan I find that keeps temp down enough to stop the fans going full blast. Full blast not a big issue unless sharing a quiet room with someone.
@Squizz: When you say extra 8GB did you replace the original 8GB? the original 8GB is the really slow ram….
@R3XNebular: @R3XNebular Mine had 1x 8gb 3200 single channel, I picked up an additional 8gb 3200 from Amazon for $49. A mate of mine bought a nitro 6 months back that had the slower ram though.
@Squizz: Mine also had a 1x8GB 3200 but it is a 1RX16 which is slower than 1RX8. 25% reduction in FPS in some games. That's why you should replace the original 8GB.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Beware-of-the-single-rank-x16-…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XCeAdFqsKg&t=203s
JarrodsTech shows benchmarks of 1RX8 vs 1RX16 and the stock Ram vs replacement ram of both sticks. Do not leave the original one in if you intend to game…
Pretty sure that version was $1198 a while back.
its okay value but still pretty poor
I wonder how the new Ryzen 6800 will perform compared to this.
Wonder how much more expensive it is going to be too…
By far the cheapest laptop with RTX3060 so far.
There was a time the Nitro line-up was very cheap due to terrible build quality. From what I've heard, however, this isn't the case anymore. Seems like they're managing to spend less without skimping on the build quality.
Quite impressive
The laptop still feels cheap and the keyboard is quite bad. I had a GTX1650 variant which had sound issues with any bluetooth headphones and had to return it for a refund. Might be different for the RTX3060 if its a more premium build.
Picked this up 6 months ago, it's quite good for the price. All I've changed is upgraded the RAM to 16GB.
Not a single issue at all?
@kaikor: I have i7 version and added 16gb ram stick and 1TB m.2 SSD. It was really easy to do. No issues with laptop. I use a monitor and mechanical keyboard, so I'm not concerned with the plastic exterior.
They run hot and crank the fans like all graphics card laptops. Good price to performance for $1k.
Yep. Mines been flawless.
I upgraded from the original Nitro 5 years ago and never had any issues with it either.
I have a 3060 acer nitro (bought before this deal last time). I think the build quality is fine, but not great. I was and am happy with mine.
but the performance is worse than that of the previous gen 1650
lmao no it isn't!
were you thinking of a different GPU?
cheaper than rtx3060 card soon
but this is the mobile version, should be 95 W though, not sure
how many of these did Acer make, still not sold out at this price?
Hdmi 2.1 output
IPS panel ?
Not HDMI 2.1.
Yes IPS.
The i5 11th gen variants support HDMI 2.1, confirmed.
Yes but the 10th gen doesnt, it supports hdmi 2.0
Thanks OP bought one. Budget rtx for casual gamers.
Is the same model available any where else? Happy to pay more, just not spending a single cent at HN
??
Acer website directly IIRC
Maybe we should demand the job keeper discount that Gerry does at want to give back?
He made record profits during COVID because people were buying all his crappy furniture and overprice IT gadgets at insane markups. He didn’t need it to keep staff picking orders and processing payments.
Job keeper isn’t meant to be a pat on the back and a good boy biscuit, it was meant to keep the businesses struggling to keep the lights on day to day from going bankrupt or having to fire staff.
on acer's website as well as jb
JB don't even stock any Acer laptops! And neither is this model on the Acer website. Come on man at least provide links if you're trying to be helpful instead of just making unfounded claims.
How's gaming with this laptop but using external monitor and keyboard+mouse?
Works fine for me, but I'm not exactly playing anything too taxing on it.
I had a 1650 variant until I got my AS PC. I had upgraded RAM and it worked absolutely fine on Warzone low settings (90+FPS) and Halo etc.
I assume 3060 would be much better than that.
This was on external monitor with laptop screen off.No, the 3060 performs worse in average frames
Please provide some benchmarks where a 3060 is outperformed by a 1650 lol
I'm not sure if it can output 144 FPS over HDMI, but I've played a bunch of games on a 60hz monitor.
HDMI2.0 should be fine for QHD 144Hz
I'm using hdmi and get 144hz at 1440p on external monitor.
Great little machine for easier titles like Rocket League and Dota.
https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/dell-g15-5515-ryzen…
There is a Dell deal on eBay, beware the shipping time!
Which one they all seem to have 3050 gpu?
Yeah that's a 3050…
Is this the same one that was $1298 at Harvey Norman in October last year?
Fine so do we buy this.
Not sure about October, but this was the one for that price in November
Acer Nitro 5 15.6-inch i5-11400H/8GB/512GB SSD/RTX3060 6GB Gaming Laptop
I be had one for a couple of months. As mentioned pretty good for casual gaming. I have my Lenovo Explorer (previous OzB purchase!!) running nicely. Does get a little loud when the fans spool up.
I bought the 11400H variant in early December with all other specs the same. It’s been great as a casual/entry level gaming laptop.
I have nothing to compare it to but build quality feels fine.Yes this was a better deal. I got two for my kids for Christmas, and no complaints.
I was going to upgrade the RAM, but no need as yet.
8gb ram…?
Yes. You can upgrade with a matching 8g for dual channel, if or when you deem necessary.
Best bang for bucks. Bought last year and still going strong.
Upgraded RAM and add another 2.5" drive. Used as a desktop replacement.
Had one for about 3 months now, runs well. Make sure to use Acer Balanced power profile. It does get noisy under load, but it runs modern games very well at 1080 and I have had success at running some at 4k as well.
For the price you cant beat it.FYI i have the i5 11400H variant, i have managed to flash a VBIOS from an MSI gaming laptop to allow the RTX 3060 to run up to 130W power draw and this does help performance further and is stable on this laptop. GPU temps are fine peaking at around 75c on the GPU at 130W and "coolboost" set on the fans.
Do you have a link to where I can find more information on this?
Have to copy paste most of my reply to another ozbargainer but no in no way is this a safe mod, at least not for the nitro 5:
Most laptop vbios between the same 30 series model can be flashed interchangebly, this is true. However, just because you can flash it in no ways means it is a safe and good mod.
For one, there is the power supply problem, notebooktech's review of this same config pulls a peak of 190w from the 180w charger. Thats probably about as much juice you can squeeze out of the poor little charger, and thats with the stock 85w vbios. What do you think an 130w vbios will bring? There is no telling if it mess up with dynamic boost or any other power management issues. Even if you somehow get an aftermarket larger charger for the laptop. The onboard VRMs may not be able to handle the extra power neither.
For two, there is the thermal problem, the nitro 5 is really just using an old chasis over and over again with marginal improvements to its cooling, and the fact acer only allocated 85w to the 3060 (or any other gpu within the same chasis) meant this is the best they could put it with without the laptop morphing into a makeshift oven, or bomb, or even both. The thermal headroom is designed for that much power only and flashing a much higher vbios is going to ask for trouble. There is a grand total of 3(!) heatpipes with the thickest one running across both cpu and gpu, the cpu is already throttling under load at 90 degrees, and while the gpu seemed 'fine' with the stock vbios, any more may be the breaking straw.
now you might be thinking, the commenter above said their gpu temp only got to 75 degrees, that means there is enough thermal headroom right? No, because if you check notebookcheck's review, you will see that with a stress test the gpu rose to 79 degrees-thats with the stock vbios. If the OP's 130w vbios really kicked in he is only going to get a higher temp. This meant that he is in no way getting the 130w he thought he got, a bit higher than the rated 85w? yeah sure but not by a whole lot.
If you really are going to flash vbios, I would suggest flashing a slightly higher-say one from rog zephyrus line or the razer blade/stealth lineup-rather than a full powered 3060 vbios. You probably would still see a few % of gains much like the full powered vbios will bring but its much safer. Sure, vbios can be flashed around easily, but if your mobo fries and you want to take it to get repaired, I dont know if acer would honour the warranty if they found out you meddled with the vbios.
Some old comments elsewhere say there is/was also a 95W vbios? That might be a better fit.
Wow price is not too bad I reckon for those who need GPU processing for machine learning.
Got the 3050 i5 version for $700.
That was great value! Recommended.
Good for gaming older titles.
You mean the 1650 i5 version, right?
$400 cheaper nice
Is this the thunderbolt variant? Hard to tell.
No it isn't. It's the 11th generation CPUs that may have TB4
This may work better than the i7 3060 version I bought and returned during the previous deal. For gaming CPU would be less taxing therefore more thermal headroom.
Why returned it?
Thermal throttling issues on acer nitro. Well documented problem. Moment you are playing CS go at 300+ fps and all of a sudden everything crawls. Restart play for 30 mins and then problems start again. Harvey Norman tech confirmed the same issue and kindly gave a full refund.
As far as I can tell the issue was not thermal but power management related. The hard drive runs out of power and starts severely stuttering after heavy gaming. On my unit (11th gen i5 model) thermals were perfect but on every game it would eventually run out of power and be slowed to an absolute crawl. Thermal throttling is usually seen as a moderate decrease in FPS, these units were choking when they exceeded the limit.
As far as I can tell the issue was not thermal but power management related.
Thermal throttling is usually seen as a moderate decrease in FPS, these units were choking when they exceeded the limit.
Yeah I discovered that it was the High Performance power profile (which Godgodgod was also running at) that kills the laptop even if the temps were fine. Have to use Balanced.
@CVonC: Yes that's what I meant. Sorry not the thermal throttling but power throttling. And overheating power supply
@CVonC: Yeah mine would last < 30 minutes on high power and about 3-5 hours on balanced. Never a full day without a reboot though even on old games. It’s completely unacceptable for such a high powered laptop to choke on Dota 2 at 1440p when even a M1 MBA can handle that.
Played COD WZ 3-5hrs everyday in Hotel Quaratine. Didn't have throttling issues. However did have an issue where the gaming would revert from using the 3060 to the 11400H's internal GPU and the game would crawl to 30FPS. Setting the 3060 as the primary GPU in the Nvidia Control panel resolved this for me though…
@R3XNebular: That's not the issue power throttling is. Give it a few hot days or some other variables and it will start happening to yours as well. Check power brick, must be really hot. They have skimped too much on power design for this one.
@Godgodgod: R3XNebular also mentioned that they're using the i5, not the i7 you've been having issues with
@peter05: I think the problem is still there may be not so obvious as i7 or it 11th gen (every 40 mins ).
If someone can source a 240w adapter for Acer and test it would be the best.
I have a dell with rtx 3050 now with 180w and I tried a different 240w PSU and anectdotly I have seen less throttling when playing csgo on high fps. Overall dell isn't too bad as Acer in terms of the total throttling of the whole device though that forces a restart.
Also value wise Acer is the best however its a bit of a lottery.
@Godgodgod: it probably won't help to attach a more capable PSU to the unit, although its certainly possible that when it gets hot that the additional capacity could keep it at the rated 170/180W even under high temperatures. Buying a larger PSU would also require the test equipment to accurately measure the benefit, not just anecdotal "feelings" about how fast a game is running.
Anecdotally, neither myself or 2 others i know that purchased the i5 models have had any issues with throttling, 10th gen or 11th gen. There was one unit that had an issue with the screws on the heatsink not being done up causing temperatures to rocket but that isn't related to power supply/draw.
It's been well established for at least the last 5 years i would guess, that in laptops its not always best to get the highest model CPU, as you'll often find that you have tradeoffs with a high burst speed for 30 seconds and a slowdown, vs another laptop with less capable CPU just plodding along at 90% capability of the higher specd CPU but never throttling. You save some money too. This is especially prevalent in surface laptops that have had this issue ever since its first inception.
I think the i5 models have perfect balance to allow both the GPU + CPU to work at maximum for extended periods of time with no issues. Increasing the power usage for CPU will tip the scales and cause the system to be less than ideal
@peter05: Fair enough I am not negging. This is a well known issue(check forum). I also Siad this particular model may be better as it has a low powered CPU.
Can someone test this one with csgo high settings and may some other GPU heavy game cranked up to the max and report it there are any issues.
Again you may not have played the games I play at the settings and fps O would like to play so can't judge it from that point of view. I do believe these laptops need 240w PSU to perform efficiently.@Godgodgod: I've played CSGO at high settings and didn't notice any throttling. Both plugged into external monitor and using built in screen.
Have also been playing halo infinite and overwatch without issues
@Godgodgod: apologies i forgot to mention that i do see increased performance disabling the intel GPU when i run up a game. Not sure reasons why
@peter05: If gaming on an external monitor via HDMI (which is directly connected to the 3060) you will get a performance boost because it does not have to pass through the iGPU to render the frames if you were using the laptop screen instead.
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If only it was the 11400f version (this is still awesome for the price)