This is the cheapest 6-core PC on the market, but it has one big flaw

Acer Aspire TC-875-UR12 - $429.99 from Micro Center

Acer Aspire TC-875-UR12 - $429.99 from Micro Center
(roughly £330)
This highly affordable desktop PC from Acer will outperform any other machine at this price point. It's powered by the 6-core Intel Core i5-10400 processor and features 8GB RAM and 1TB storage to boot.

Personal computers with 6-core processors are slowly displacing quad-core models in the mainstream market as competition heats up.

Take, for example, the Acer Aspire TC-875-UR12 (otherwise known as the DT.BF3AA.002), which embraces the traditional mini-tower design with a conservative and understated look.

It is powered by an Intel Core i5-10400 processor which, as its name implies, is a 10th generation Intel CPU. It's based on the Comet Lake architecture and features an Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU.

With six cores, 12 threads, a base/turbo clock speed of 2.9/4.3GHz and 12MB cache, this machine is no slouch and will outperform anything in the same price range.

Popular benchmarking software CPU Benchmark puts it almost on par with a former champion, the Intel Core i7 8700, which has roughly the same features but with a 10% speed boost.

There’s also 8GB of RAM (one slot, DDR4-2666), Windows 10 Home, a wired keyboard and a mouse, Gigabit Ethernet port, card reader, DVD writer, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 (probably an Intel AX200 card) and a whopping 17 connectors (including five for audio).

The one element we’re uncomfortable with is the fact it uses a 1TB hard disk drive with a 7,200RPM spinning speed. Yes it's fast, but an SSD would be far faster and much smaller too.

Note, this Acer Aspire PC has a 300W power supply unit, a total of four internal expansion slots (no free SATA ports apparently) and two expansion bays.

Bear in mind

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Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.