Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) review

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 ($3,799 to start) is Acer's premier gaming PC, and the new 2023 model has arrived with the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 series GPUs and Intel Raptor Lake 13th Gen chips.

After spending a week with a top-tier 2023 model I'm confident the Orion 7000 remains a great gaming machine—and you should expect no less when you're paying nearly $4k or more for the privilege of owning one.

And while the Orion 7000 looks as imposing as ever in its all-black chassis, the fans get so loud there's no chance you'll be able to sneak in gaming time without everyone in the house knowing because this machine gets loud. The configuration we tested is one of the loudest gaming PCs I've ever reviewed, and our testing team agrees. You'll likely hear this PC before you see it, even when it's sitting idle.

But if you can stomach the loud fans and eye-watering price tag, I'm pleased to report the Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) remains one of the best gaming PCs you can buy—here's why.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Price and availability

• Predator gaming PCs start at $1.2k, Orion 7000 series starts at $3.7k
• Our top-of-the-line Predator Orion 7000 review unit costs a cool $4.5k

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 is the top dog in Acer's Predator series of gaming desktops, and you can buy one at Acer's website as well as at third-party retailers like Amazon. 

A new Predator Orion 7000 can be yours for as low as $3,799, which is hardly cheap. But you get what you pay for, because that model comes with a liquid-cooled 13th Gen Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB HDD and a 1TB SSD for storage.

The PC we reviewed is even more powerful, which explains why it costs nearly $5k. Our Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) review unit arrived with a liquid-cooled Intel 13th Gen Core i9 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and the same 2TB HDD/1TB SSD storage arrangement. 

If you were to buy the same machine yourself direct from Acer it would cost $4,499, which is a lot to drop on a new PC. But you get your money's worth from this machine if you're planning to play the latest games at 4K resolution or higher, as this review will show.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Design

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 series PCs have traditionally been housed inside big, monolithic full tower cases, and the 2023 model is no exception.

I'm a big guy, and even I have to take a deep breath and brace myself before hefting our Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit to move it around during the setup process. The tall, deep tower cases measures roughly 19.9 x 19.1 x 8.6 inches, so it takes up quite a bit of space on a desk. While I did set it up and use it as a literal desktop during the review process, I much prefer keeping it tucked away underneath the desk.

Speaking of, the Predator Orion 7000 case remains a gorgeous piece of work. The tempered glass panels on the side and front give you an enticing view of the innards, which are illuminated with customizable RGB lighting and cooled by fans at the top and rear of the case.  The glass panel is easy to open when you want to get inside the PC, though you do need to unscrew a pair of screws on the rear first. 

The big fans at the front, top and rear of the case do a great job of looking cool as they cool your PC, though they do get incredibly loud under heavy load. 

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Ports and upgradability

• Plenty of ports on front and top, but still not enough USB-C jacks
• Top-mounted hot-swappable drive is a nice touch

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 offers a plethora of ports, as befits a PC of this size and price. 

The lion's share of the ports are mounted on the rear, including two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, three more USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port. There's also an RJ-45 Ethernet jack and a triptych of audio ports for microphone, audio in and audio out.

The  Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in our review unit gives it an additional four ports for hooking up displays: 3 DisplayPorts and a single HDMI out.

Up front you'll find a complement of USB ports and audio in/out for easier cable routing, as well as a hot-swappable drive bay. Specifically, there's a set of 3 USB 3.2 Type-A ports (one Gen 1, the other pair Gen 2), one USB Type-C port, a microphone jack and an audio out. 

There's also a USB3.2 Gen 2 Type-C hot-swappable drive bay on the top of the case, which is a nice bonus that lets you quickly swap SSD drives without much trouble. If you're the type of person who likes to keep a drive full of your Steam games handy, this PC case makes it easy and fun to quickly swap them out.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Gaming performance

• Great for 4K gaming
• Demolishes any game at 1080p

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 we received for review is great for 4K gaming and an absolute monster at any lower resolution, to the point that if you've got a 1080p monitor you can likely count on getting 100+ frames per second in your favorite games.

That's the least you should expect from a gaming PC that costs nearly $5k, of course. I'm pleased to report our Orion 7000 review unit had no trouble running all my favorite Steam games at 4K resolution with all the settings cranked to max, though I sometimes had to rely on Nvidia's DLSS upscaling tech to get great 60+ FPS framerates in demanding games running at 4K.

Case in point: Even our beefy, expensive Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit struggles to maintain 30-40 FPS when running Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with all the graphical settings cranked to max and no help from DLSS. But when I flipped on DLSS 3 the game began running at a smooth 60+ FPS, with barely any noticeable change in image quality. 

But even without a boost from Nvidia's upscaling tech, our Orion 7000 unit is a bona fide beast in the gaming department. Our performance testing lab put it through its paces by running benchmarks for a variety of games at both 1080p and 4K resolutions, and as you can see from the results (charted below) it demolishes most games at anything below 4K.

To give you a sense of what kind of power you're getting for the (admittedly eye-watering) price we charted the performance of our 2023 Acer Predator Orion 7000 against the performance of the Alienware Aurora R15 I reviewed earlier this year, which costs roughly the same and has basically the same components inside. I also included the performance test results from last year's Orion 7000 with its 3090 and 12th Gen Intel CPU, to give you a sense of what kind of performance boost you're getting from the 4090 over last year's model.

As you can see, it's quite a boost. Even in 4K our Orion 7000 managed to deliver a steady 100+ FPS in games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, DiRT 5, Far Cry 6 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, making this a great machine for 4K gaming.

And when you dial the resolution down to 1080p it can run anything you care to play at incredibly smooth framerates, to the point that we clocked it running Total War: Warhammer 3 at over 250 frames per second at 1080p with all settings cranked to Ultra. When we cranked the settings down to Low just for funsies, this Orion 7000 with its RTX 4090 and 13th Gen Core i9 CPU managed to run the game at an incredible 559 frames per second. If there's a monitor on the market that can refresh that fast, I've yet to see it.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Overall performance

• More than enough power for most day-to-day work and play
• Outperformed slightly by a smaller, quieter Alienware Aurora R15

When you're paying upwards of $4k for a PC you darn well expect it to handle day-to-day tasks with ease, and that's eminently true of the new Acer Predator Orion 7000. 

I used our review unit for all my work, play and day-to-day tasks for over a week, and not once did I experience any crashes, stuttering or performance issues. This PC arrives running Windows 11 and if you don't mind working next to fans that occasionally sound like jet engines it's a great machine for getting things done.

I could easily imagine someone using the top-tier components inside to power through some video edits or game development work, and our testing suggests it's well-suited to the task. 

As you can see from the chart of results below, our Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) review unit blows past last year's model yet falls a bit short of matching the performance of Alienware's smaller, lighter Aurora R15. And while it generally blew past its predecessor, in our drive speed test (which clocks how fast the system drive copies 25GB of multimedia files) the 2023 Orion 7000 was actually slightly slower than the 2022 model (1,233.8 MBps vs. 1,495 MBps). 

In every other test, however, our review unit blew past its predecessor. The 13th Gen Core i9 CPU in the Acer Predator Orion 7000 sped through the Geekbench 5.5 multi-core CPU benchmark, earning a score of 21,380. That beats last year's Orion 7000 by a solid 6,000 and gives you an idea of the raw CPU boost you're getting by investing in a machine with the latest 13th Gen CPUs instead of last year's 12th Gen chips.

However, the similarly-priced Alienware Aurora R15 with the same Intel Core i9-13900KF CPU earned a slightly higher score (22,494) in the same test. In day-to-day usage you likely wouldn't notice the difference, but it's worth knowing.

A similar story played out when we put the new Orion through our video encoding test, which times how long it takes the PC to transcode a 4K video file down to 1080p using Handbrake. Our review unit completed the task in 2 minutes and 26 seconds, a solid minute faster than its predecessor. However, it still couldn't quite match the speed (2:17) of the smaller, faster Aurora R15.

Since every PC mentioned in this section is optimized for gaming and costs over $4k these minor differences in benchmark performance shouldn't give you much cause for concern. The Acer Predator Orion 7000 remains an absolute beast in 2023, and while it sometimes falls behind similarly-priced and -specced gaming PCs you should have no trouble using it for both work and play.

However, keep in mind it will get hot and loud even when you're just writing and answering emails, as I discovered while writing this review.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Keyboard and mouse

• Included keyboard and mouse are unremarkable but nice to have
• Customizable RGB lighting on both

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) comes with a wired keyboard and mouse that are serviceable and nice to have. While they can't match the quality of the best keyboards and the best mouse you can buy, the fact that Acer includes them at no cost is a welcome addition.

Both keyboard and mouse sport customizable RGB lighting, and they each offer extra which make them slightly better than basic USB peripherals. The full keyboard has big keys with nice travel that feel satisfying to type on, as well as a row of four media controls. The mouse, meanwhile, has two extra buttons mounted above the thumbrest and a DPI switch for quickly shifting sensitivity on the fly.

Neither is likely to outclass your favorite mouse and keyboard, but having both included at no charge is a nice bit of added value.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Software

• Little bloatware
• PredatorSense and PredatorArc are the utilities to pay attention to

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 comes with a pretty clean Windows 11 install marred only by a handful of Acer apps which are easy to ignore or uninstall.

Don't ignore Acer's PredatorArc and PredatorSense apps, though, because those are what you use to customize things like the PC's fan speeds, RGB lighting and overclocking profiles. You'll generally use PredatorSense to dial in these settings on your PC, while the PredatorArc app is for customizing the look and bindings of the included mouse and keyboard.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Verdict

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 has long been one of the company's premier gaming PCs, and the 2023 model we reviewed proves it's still a stylish beast of a machine that will make nearly any game you throw at it look great and run smooth.

Our test results and my hands-on experience prove this rig is great for 4K gaming, because the RTX 4090 and 13th Gen Core i9 CPU inside are powerful enough to deliver silky-smooth 60+ FPS framerates at 4K in just about any game, even with all the settings cranked to the max.

That's still a rare feat in PC gaming, and you start to understand why when you look at the $4.5k price tag on our Orion 7000 review unit. At that price you damn well expect a great PC, and weak points like underwhelming drive speed or obnoxiously loud fans start to feel a bit grating.

If those issues sound like dealbreakers, you might also consider the Alienware Aurora R15. You can get one with the same components as our Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit for basically the same price, and performs nearly as well in games ( and even better in some performance benchmarks) yet runs quieter and takes up less space on a desk.

But if you've got the cash and don't mind a loud PC, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 is a great choice that can be configured to be a beast of a 4K gaming PC. Those looking to spend less can get plenty of fun gaming at 1080p on a great entry-level gaming PC like the Acer Predator Orion 3000, but if you want killer framerates at high resolution the 2023 Acer Predator Orion 7000 delivers—you just might want to invest in a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones to go with it.