Erazer Engineer X30
Intel Core i7-14700F, 32.77 GB, 2000 GB, GeForce RTX 4070
Product ratings
Pros
Cons
4 reviews
I'm quite impressed
Review: it looks pretty, it's fast and is just what I need.
Back story: I've always built my own PCs; I upgraded my last one at the beginning of last year (2023 - new motherboard, CPU, cooler, graphics card) only to have it fail on me last Wednesday,.
It wouldn't start.
I'd power on, there would be some activity, and then it would switch off. A bit like the super-intelligent Holly in Red Dwarf (note to nerds - must watch). And then until some time had elapsed, it wouldn't switch on. And immediately turn itself off. I did the usual stuff of unplugging various drives, the graphics card, the other two cards etc., one by one. Same symptoms.
I reset the BIOS to factory settings. Still no joy.
Stuff it, I thought to myself (or words to that effect), I'll just buy a new one. This Erazer Engineer X30 caught my eye. I don't actually game, but I do quite a bit of video editing so I need a good CPU and a decent graphics card. Anyway, as Tim would say in Tool Time - MORE POWER!. It was reduced in price, and I could get the SUPER graphics card version for the same price as the non-SUPER. It had also fallen in price to 1795 from a high of around 2400 in July. I do note with some wryness that it's now 1729...
At the same time, I ordered an 4xHDD enclosure and a 1xM2SD enclosure. This is so I could see what was on the drives of my old computer - and retain the data for my use. My normal set up is C drive for OS (Windows), D drive for programs, E drive for user data. I have various other drives (HDD and SSD) for File History and other purposes. It's all backed up to a NAS in my cellar, but I digress.
The enclosures arrived on Thursday. The X30 on Friday. It took me some time to figure out how to open the case. This was a necessity, since I wanted to put my E drive in. I looked online and all I could find was "It's really easy and needs no tools". Great. Thanks. As it turns out there's a little knob on the side. Push that in, and the glass panel can really easily be levered out. Having figured that out, I eventually figured out that I needed to squeeze the internal HDD tray, put my E drive in it, and plug it in.
The back panel of the X30 is just screws. Once that was off, it was a simple matter of plugging in the SATA cable that came with the X30 - with the help of the motherboard manual from online as it isn't supplied - and digging around in the mass of cables until a power cable came out.
My former C and D drives were 1 TB each, so I deliberately ordered a 2 TB system. I booted up into Windows and shrank the C drive, removing 1 TB. Then I partitioned a 1 TB D drive. Now it's just a matter of reinstalling all the programs I need.
Oh, I'm English. "quite" means "extremely". So, really, I'm very impressed with the product.
Pro
- Easy to open
- Easy to add my HD
- Pretty.
Contra
- Nothing in the manual to tell you +how+ to open the case
- Nothing in the manual to tell you +how+ to add an HD
Good all-round computer
Pro
- Good price/performance ratio
- Good graphics card
- Quiet
Disappointed
At the moment I'm having to send it back because the bottom fan is making noise and spinning strangely.
I've always had Acer Predators and I wanted to change brands, and the comments were quite positive, so I'm regretting my choice for the moment.Pro
- Not too big
Excellent price-performance ratio for the components
Pro
- Compact housing size
- Good price/performance
- Beautiful combination of RGB and viewing window
- Quiet
Contra
- Pre-installed software
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