Skip to main content

Acer’s new workstations are more powerful than ever before

Acer has just announced that the ConceptD workstations will receive an update, and this applies to both desktops and laptops.

Made for creators and other professionals, the workstations will now benefit from Intel Alder Lake processors as well as the latest Nvidia graphics cards.

A woman sits on a desk. Behind her, the Acer ConceptD workstation stands alongside a monitor.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Acer’s announcement comprises a total of three products, all of which are continuations of existing product lines and have just received a much-welcome update: The ConceptD 5 laptop, ConceptD 5 500 desktop, and the compact ConceptD 100 desktop. Although we’ll start seeing these hitting the market later this year, Acer has already released the full specifications, granting us some insight into these beautiful desktops.

Recommended Videos

When we say beautiful, we truly mean it — the ConceptD desktop workstations have a very stylish, minimalist look that stands out from similar products. Let’s start with the ConceptD 500.

Combining a matte white chassis with amber lighting, it looks inspiring all on its own, and it was made to suit people who rely on inspiration on a daily basis — graphic designers, architects, 3D animators, video editors, and other professionals in need of a powerful workstation.

Housed inside the pretty, mid-sized chassis are some of the best components the market can currently offer. Acer’s update brings this desktop up to a 12th Gen Intel Core i9 processor as well as a choice of either Nvidia RTX A4000 or a GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card. The computer can support up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM and has plenty of storage to offer, with a maximum of 4TB.

The impressive ConceptD 500 is followed by the small form factor ConceptD 100. While it’s definitely on the compact side, it still should be capable of delivering ample amounts of power. Similar to the 500 in design and yet unique, it serves up a slightly worse set of specifications, but it still makes for an impressive workstation for those who don’t quite need the extra oomph of the ConceptD 500.

Acer ConceptD 500 desktop on a desk alongside a monitor and keyboard.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

In the ConceptD 100, users can expect to find either a 12th Gen Core i5 or Core i7 processor as well as Nvidia’s T400 or T1000 graphics card. These desktops also support up to 128GB of DDR4 memory but scale the storage options down a notch: Instead of a 4TB SSD, users can pick up a 2TB HDD and a 2TB SSD.

The last new release comes in the form of the refreshed ConceptD 5 laptop workstation, also available in a Pro version. For those who might need to take their work on the go, they will certainly make a solid option for resource-heavy tasks such as CAD modeling and various content creation.

The new laptops will arrive with an up to Core i7-12700H processor as well as Nvidia’s laptop graphics cards, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 SDRAM, and a maximum of 2TB SSD storage. The screen on these will also be quite impressive, with a WQUXGA OLED panel with 3840 x 2400 resolution that promises to deliver bright, vivid colors to aid you in your daily work. There’s almost no doubt they’ll make it onto our list of the best mobile workstations in the future.

The ConceptD 5 laptop will arrive in August priced at $2,499 and above, followed by the Pro in September, starting at $2,599. As for the desktops, the ConceptD 100 workstation will first open up availability in EMEA, starting at 999 euros in September, while the ConceptD 500 will be priced at 1,199 euros from the get-go.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Understandably, Stalker 2 is a bit of a mess on PC
Key art for Stalker 2. A character in a lit-up gas mask and a gun on their back.

Stalker 2 is one of those games I never thought would actually release. Originally announced 14 years ago, the project was shelved after developer GSC Game World closed its doors, only to be reignited in 2018. Then, as the originally announced 2022 release of the game approached, Ukraine, where the developer was based, was invaded by Russia.

There are plenty of games that suffer in development hell, but they pale in comparison to the struggles Stalker 2 has gone through. The fact that the game is even here is nothing short of a miracle. Like other titles stuck in development hell, though, Stalker 2 is far from perfect, particularly when it comes to PC performance.

Read more
Nvidia may keep producing one RTX 40 GPU, and it’s not the one we want
The Alienware m16 R2 on a white desk.

The last few weeks brought us a slew of rumors about Nvidia potentially sunsetting most of the RTX 40-series graphics cards. However, a new update reveals that one GPU might remain in production long after other GPUs are no longer being produced. Unfortunately, it's a GPU that would struggle to rank among Nvidia's best graphics cards. I'm talking about the RTX 4050 -- a card that only appears in laptops.

The scoop comes from a leaker on Weibo and was first spotted by Wccftech. The leaker states that the RTX 4050 is "the only 40-series laptop GPU that Nvidia will continue to supply" after the highly anticipated launch of the RTX 50-series. Unsurprisingly, the tipster also reveals that the fact that both the RTX 4050 and the RTX 5050 will be readily available at the same time will also impact the pricing of the next-gen card.

Read more
Valve adds DLSS 3 to SteamOS backend, but don’t expect an Nvidia Steam Deck
Ghost of Tsushima running on the Steam Deck.

Valve has made a significant update to its Proton compatibility layer, which is the basis of the Linux-based SteamOS operating system on the Steam Deck. The update brings several improvements and bug fixes, but it also adds support for Nvidia's coveted DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

The update for Proton Experimental rolled out on November 12, and it was spotted by Wccftech. Proton is the bedrock for gaming on Linux, and up to this point, Nvidia users haven't had access to some of the best features of Team Green's latest graphics cards on Linux. The latest update not only supports DLSS 3 Frame Generation, but also Nvidia's Optical Flow API. Optical Flow is critical for DLSS 3 Frame Generation, though the dedicated hardware for the feature has been around since Nvidia's Turing GPUs.

Read more