Acer Predator Orion 7000 review

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 ($4,499) is Acer's top-of-the-line gaming PC, delivering top-tier performance for those willing to pay for it. 

After spending some time with the latest high-end model packing Intel's new Alder Lake chips and one of the beefiest graphics cards Nvidia makes, I can confirm that you get what you pay for.

The glossy black monolith that is the Orion 7000 looks great on a desk, and the cooling in our review unit kept it running quiet—until we kicked it into high gear while gaming, at which point the fans made quite a racket. 

The price tag puts this top-tier gaming PC out of reach of all but the most resourceful and well-compensated, but you get what you pay for. It's one of the best gaming PCs we've reviewed thus far—here's why.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Price and availability

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 is available for purchase via Acer's website, as well as at third-party retailers like Amazon. You can get one for as low as $2,999 with a 12th Gen Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB HDD and a 1TB SSD.

However, the review unit Acer sent us is a top-of-the-line model which costs $4,499. For that you get a 12th Gen Core i9 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and the same complement of storage. As beefy as that is, $4,500 is still very expensive for what you get, so if you have your eye on this PC I recommend waiting for a sale.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Design

• Black monolith of a case is big and reasonably hefty
• Interior is easy to access

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 has a big footprint, measuring roughly 19.9 x 19.1 x 8.6 inches and weighing enough that moving it is a hassle. It could conceivably sit on your desk, but it's big enough and heavy enough that you'd better make sure your desk can handle it first. The size and heft of the case make it well-suited to sitting on the floor, an arrangement Acer facilitates by putting the front I/O panel on the top of the case.

Speaking of, the Predator Orion 7000 case is gorgeous. The black plastic and metal chassis sports tempered glass panels on the front and right side, allowing you to peer in and see the RGB-lit components in action. The glass panel on the side of the case can be swung open for easy access to the interior, though you'll need to unscrew two screws at the rear of the case (which can be done by hand) to pull it off.

The two RGB-lit 5.5-inch fans at the front of the case look great and do a good job of keeping the case cool without making too much noise. At the back there's another 4.7-inch fan, and there's a second 4.7-incher on the top that can be swapped out for a larger 9.45-inch fan if you care to do so. Under normal use these fans are whisper-quiet, but when you really bring the heat (or just switch the fans over to Gaming mode in the included PredatorSense software) they can get quite loud.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Ports and upgradability

• Plenty of ports, except USB-C
• Top-mounted I/O and swappable SSD ports makes this a great floor PC

You get a good complement of ports on the Acer Predator Orion 7000, as befits a big gaming desktop. However, if you've invested heavily in USB-C gear you might want to add a hub to the PC, as its complement of USB-C ports is pretty thin. 

Around back the motherboard gives you a pair of 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. You also get an RJ-45 Ethernet jack and a trio of audio ports: mic, audio in and audio out.

The  Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 mounted in our review unit gives it an additional four ports for hooking up monitors: 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, so you can quickly swap storage drives if you, say, need to swap out the drive with your work files for the SSD with all your games on it.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Gaming performance

• This PC is a beast
• Outperforms all but the most expensive gaming PCs

Our Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit is a beast when it comes to gaming, as it damn well should be given how much it costs. I spent hours happily playing games like Cyberpunk 2077, Total War: Warhammer 2, Guilty Gear Strive and Dark Souls 3 with no noticeable performance issues.

In fact, I was able to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with DLSS off and all settings cranked to max with no trouble, as the Predator Orion 7000 maintained steady framerates in the 55-60 fps range. 

But of course, maybe you're looking to play games in higher than 1080p. Regrettably I didn't have a 4K monitor handy during this review to see how well it runs games in 4K firsthand. But that's why we run a lot of our gaming tests at both 1080p and 4K—to give you a sense of what kind of horsepower you can expect at higher resolutions. The Predator Orion 7000 performed well in our series of gaming performance tests, as befits a machine costing this much, reliably delivering 100+ frames per second in games at 1080p and hitting 60 fps or above in almost every game we tested at 4K. So if you want to do some 4K PC gaming, this is a probably a good system for you.

To give you a sense of how it compares to the competition we charted the Acer Predator Orion 7000's performance in our tests against the performance of similarly-priced gaming PCs in the same tests. In general, Acer's machine performed nearly as well as the Origin PC Millennium (2022) we recently reviewed, and only a bit better than the Alienware Aurora R13 we reviewed earlier this year. That lines up with the pricing, as the Origin PC Millennium review unit we tested cost $5,184 as configured while the Aurora R13 cost just $2,979 as reviewed.

For example, Assassin's Creed Valhalla ran at 112 frames per second at 1080p and 63 fps at 4K on the Acer Predator Orion 7000. That's nearly as good as the more expensive Origin PC (115/63) and a bit better at 4K than the cheaper Alienware PC (114/56).

But the Acer Predator Orion 7000 also managed to achieve 124 frames per second running Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p, and 50 fps running the same game at 4K. That's slightly better than either the Origin (123/49) or the Alienware (112/43), which just highlights how close these PCs are in terms of in-game performance despite their significant price disparities.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Overall performance

• This PC can handle pretty much any work you throw at it
• SSD delivers speedy file transfers

When we put our Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit through our general suite of performance tests, it scored quite well, as befits a PC with such beefy internals.

First and foremost, let me reassure you this PC will have zero trouble with your day-to-day work. Even with 20+ Chrome tabs open and multiple video streams going, alongside a running copy of Cyberpunk 2077, this PC never faltered. 

When we put it through our gauntlet of general performance tests, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 acquitted itself admirably. You can see from the chart below how it stacks up to the cheaper Alienware Aurora R13 and the more expensive Origin PC Millennium (2022).

As you can see, the 12th Gen Core i9 CPU in the Acer Predator Orion 7000 blazed through the Geekbench 5.4 multi-core CPU benchmark, earning a score of 17,299. That's a fair bit faster than the (admittedly far cheaper) Alienware Aurora R13 (10,035), but still slower than the more expensive Origin PC (18,096). 

A similar scenario played out when we timed how long it took the Orion 7000 to transcode a 4K video file down to 1080p via Handbrake. It completed the task in 3 minutes and 26 seconds, which is faster than most PCs we review (including the Alienware Aurora R13) but still a smidge behind the Origin PC Millennium (3:22).

However, when we tasked the Orion 7000 with copying 25GB of multimedia files across its 1TB SSD the drive proved plenty speedy, moving bits and bytes at speeds of up to 1,495 MBps (megabytes per second). That's far faster than most PC drives, and it even outperformed the Origin PC Millennium (1,023 MBps). 

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Software

• Little bloatware
• Acer's PredatorSense software is great for tweaking RGB/fans/overclocks

Acer loads up the Predator Orion 7000 with a sampler platter of its software, including its photo/video editing apps PhotoDirector and VideoDirector. 

But what's really worth paying attention to is Acer's PredatorSense and PredatorArc utilities, which come pre-installed. The former is used to customize the Orion 7000's RGB lighting, fan performance, overclocks and more, while the latter is used to customize the RGB and bindings for Acer's Predator mice and keyboards. 

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Verdict

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 is everything you'd expect from the company's top-tier gaming PC. 

It packs the latest and greatest CPU and GPU, along with enough RAM and storage to ensure you have a good experience playing the best PC games on the market. It's also ridiculously expensive, though the remarkable inflation and supply constraints in the market over the last few years make the price tag feel a bit more normal than it should.

If you have the money to spend and want a fantastic gaming PC, you could do a lot worse than the Acer Predator Orion 7000. If you want something cheaper that still delivers the same heady blend of performance and design, I recommend the Acer Predator Orion 3000 or the Alienware Aurora R13. Both are great entry points into the world of PC gaming and while neither can match the power of the Acer Predator Orion 7000 review unit, they also cost thousands of dollars less.