Just a bit of an addendum to what's already been said...
First, I do have to agree with the previous comment about using a laptop. Honestly I own 2 now (got both for free) and I almost never use them...not really sure what the facination is beyond "gadget fever". Personal bias aside however, the simple truth is that they are rather limited when it comes to flexibility of configuration. You can upgrade the ram and hdd to some degree, but that's about it...if you need a good vid card for stuff like animation and video rendering, etc., you're stuck with what came in the laptop. What's worse is that if you're video card or network card should fail (and it DOES happen) you're whole system is pretty much dead. Also equally important, laptops tend to run rather hot because of their compact size and rendering in a program like Maya with exasterbate that...my system here at home (a home built, i5 system with 16 gigs of ram) will jump a good 10 to 20 degrees when I have a large Maya batch render going. If you're serious about working in video and animation, my suggestion would be instead of spending money on your laptop which ulitmately is only going to get you so far, save your bread and put together a decent desktop system for this instead.
Now a few other things...
Since you seem fairly hardware savy, I suspect you probably already know this but if you do go to upgrade your ram, do remember that not all ram is created equal. Just because two brands/models may be marked DDR 3, doesn't mean you're gonna get the same performance. It would probably be worth your time to do a bit of research first and make sure you're getting some decent quality stuff and not just what's on sale at Microcenter that week.
For -any- video rendering work, FAST hard drives are pretty much essential. In most desktop systems, people will usually run at least 2 drives...one for their OS (and programs) with a seperate work drive (or 3). SSD drives certainly help but do keep in mind that because of their (current) size limitations, you're likely gonna spend a lot of time backing up files and moving files to a different drive. USB drives and such are nice for mass storage but even with USB 3, they are typically dogs when it comes to speed...not really fast at all.
Also, not sure how much or even IF this applies to a laptop, but traditionally Maya has always been a bit touchy about video cards. Not sure what AD's current list reads like, but I remember when I built this machine 3 years ago, I do go thru their "approved list" to make sure I got a vid card that was compatable with Maya (which was version 2011 back then...not sure this applies to newer versions either).
Also, being a brand name computer there, you'll probably want to make sure that it's pretty stripped. Can't really speak to Acer, but I know some name brands really tend to load their PC's with a lot of otherwise useless crap (HP and Dell are notorious). If you don't need it, turn it off or uninstall it. Likewise, while I don't really know if this applies to you or not, in general it never ceases to amaze me how a lot of people will have sooooooooooo much crap on their computers...desktop themes, screen savers, IM/Skype/chat programs, internet browers with Facebook & Twitter ALWAYS open, yadda, yadda, then wonder why their computer runs slow (BTW...I've seen Skype crash Maya). On my system here at home, I pretty much have my Antivirus and my color calibration loaded (along with sound drivers in case I'm working on a project with music or something) and -if- I'm using it, the drivers for my drawing tablet. Same goes for my printer drivers...I unload them if I'm working on a Maya project. I really only open Netscape or Photoshop/Illustrator when I need them and will usually close them out right away...at least if I'm working on a large project. Otherwise, that's about it...I don't even have a silly/cutesy image on my desktop...'tis just blue. The point is (obviously) that the more junk you have sitting in memory, the less system resouces Maya (or Max) has available.
Last but not least, please remember this...rendering files in programs such as Maya (or working in video in general) just takes time. You want pain? Try working in Vue...LOL! Seriously though, on my i5 system here at home...which btw performs on par with the Xeon equipped Macs up at the college (some of which have 32 gigs of ram)...I'm currently rendering out a Maya project where it's taking any where between 5 and 15 minutes to render a single frame. Just took 79 hours...just under 4 days...to render out about 7 seconds of footage for this project. Smart modeling practices, for example using low poly work or simple images where the camera will be at a distance and keeping you scene error free, etc., will help...a lot...but at the end of the day, as a former professor and good friend of mine recently reminded me, "the render will finish when it finishes". That's why the big boys use render farms 🙂
I suspect that's probably not what you wanted to hear, but good luck!
