Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: Chic gaming PC with brute performance

After the Orion 3000 gaming PC could convince in our review just recently, the high-end Orion 7000 computer, which received a refresh in October 2022, now has to prove itself. In our Acer Predator Orion 7000 review, we take a look at what the chic all-in-one PC from the current year and with Intel Core i9-12900K has up its sleeve and tell you why even passionate PC hobbyists might weaken at this gaming PC.

Technical data

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: scope of delivery and design

• Modern, sleek design
• Removable 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure
• Mouse and keyboard included

You can get started right away with the Acer Predator Orion 7000, just like with the Orion 3000. In addition to the power cable, a manual and the warranty card, this gaming PC also comes with a high-quality mouse and keyboard combination right away.

In terms of design, the top model has a similar look to its smaller sibling and is completely black when switched off. However, there is one obvious difference. While the tempered glass side panel was optional on the 3000 model, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 comes with a view inside.

And it already leaves a very good, tidy impression, especially since the extensive RGB lighting comes into its own very well. The dimensions of the complete PC are a bit larger than its sibling with 485 mm x 219 mm x 504.8 mm, but the computer still looks comparatively compact, even though it weighs over 19 kg.

It is also noticeable that the number of fans has increased compared to the 3000. Two large Predator FrostBlade 2.0 fans are found in the front alone, and a total of four are distributed throughout the case.

Unfortunately, the Orion 7000 doesn’t have a practical handle like its smaller sibling. Instead, there is an almost identical, offset power button. Another special feature on the upper side: Here you can find a 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure that can be exchanged at the push of a button, which is connected via USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C to quickly expand the storage without opening the PC.

All in all, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 really does look extremely chic and high-quality and is at least as well-made. In terms of design, the complete PC certainly doesn’t have to hide behind self-built computers.

Interior and cooling

• Glass side panel can be opened quickly
• Thoughtfully designed and tidy interior
• Excellent maintenance capabilities

You can get inside the Acer Predator Orion 7000 very quickly. Only two Phillips screws have to be removed from the glass panel and it has to be released via the “Open” slider on the back.

As already mentioned, the interior looks well thought-out and tidy, and the cable management is also convincing across the board. I once owned a complete PC in 2014, where the cables looked quite different at that time.

It is noticeable that the graphics card is installed on edge. Of course, this makes perfect sense in terms of airflow. Because the warm exhaust air is directly discharged through the ice tunnel in front of it.

The motherboard, on the other hand, has a very simple look. The only thing that really catches the eye is the CPU water cooling with the Predator logo, directly to the right of it are the two 16 GB RAM bars in slots 2 and 4, so two more slots are still available and easily accessible.

Below that sits the M.2 SSD, but a second additional slot is also available here. In addition, two more 3.5-inch HDDs can be placed in the corresponding cage on the underside, while the generously sized power supply with 800 watts finds room on the bottom left.

This not only results in a very good airflow and a tidy interior, but the maintenance and upgrade options are also excellent.

Fans, cooling and noise levels

• Four large case fans (3 with ARGB)
• Excellent cooling performance
• PC gets very loud under full load

In total, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 uses four generous case fans, three of which (two on the front and the one on the back) have ARGB lighting. A fourth, unlit, sits directly above the CPU.

And these fans, namely the Predator FrostBlade 2.0, absolutely pack a punch. The cooling performance was already quite convincing in the Orion 3000. Here, however, it goes even further.

Even under full load and over the long term, the entire system never got above 54 degrees during our test. It gets a bit warmer with the CPU, peaks of 100 degrees occur here for a short time, but then the temperature drops again very quickly.

But the Intel Core i9-12900K is not known for its cool head anyway. In any case, the temperatures aren’t alarming at any time and I couldn’t determine a throttling of the performance, even during hours of gaming. It’s a similar story with the graphics card, which gets a maximum of 70 degrees warm on average.

On the other hand, the system’s volume marks a double-edged sword. In idle mode and normal use (including gaming), the system remains whisper quiet. An average of around 32.4 dB (A) is recorded here.

However, the Orion 7000 can get extremely loud under full load. I first noticed this in the Cinebench R23 test, when the fans sped up for the first time. However, even during 4K gaming, a full 70 decibels are recorded. Fortunately, this is very seldom the case, but when the fans do hit full throttle, it is quite (unpleasantly) loud.

If you don’t care about the noise, you can even overclock the CPU at the push of a button using the PredatorSense software and manually adjust the fan controls to optimize the cooling or adapt it to the increased performance.

Features and ports

• CPU, graphics card, RAM and SSD at current top level
• Convincing selection of ports that hardly leaves anything missing
• 2.5G LAN and WiFi 6E

The equipment of the Acer Predator Orion 7000 is more than respectable, although the new hardware refresh for the year 2023 is already in the starting blocks. The star of the system is of course the Intel Core i9-12900K CPU with 16 cores and 24 threads that clock with up to 5.2 GHz. The power consumption is 125 watts, while the CPU allows itself a maximum of 241 watts in Turbo mode. Thus, the 800-watt power supply never reaches its limits in view of the entire system.

In addition, there is a GeForce RTX 3080 with 10 GB GDDR6 VRAM, as well as 32 GB of fast DDR5-4000 MHz RAM from Samsung. The 1 TB M.2 SSD is connected via PCIe Gen4 x4 and should also be very powerful. Fast 2.5G LAN (Intel Killer E3100G 2.5G) and WiFi6E are of course also part of the package, as is Bluetooth 5.1. In short: Acer hasn’t skimped on the equipment.

The selection of ports doesn’t really leave anything to be desired either. You’ll find 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C and two 3.5 mm jacks in the I/O panel on the top.

On the back, you have 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 2.0, 1x RJ-45 LAN, three audio ports and – on the graphics card, two DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 available.

The Predator 7000 only lacks an SD card reader and a dedicated sound card. However, the onboard sound features DTS:X Ultra and thus creates a virtual 360-degree surround sound with connected headsets and speakers, which is completely convincing.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: software and RGB lighting

• Practical companion software
• Nearly no bloatware
• Nice, quite discreet, RGB lighting

Ex-factory, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 ships with Windows 11 Home, which is accordingly quick to set up. Fortunately, the manufacturer installs almost no annoying bloatware. However, the practical PredatorSense software is installed, which offers a real added value.

Within the software, you can not only keep an eye on system, CPU and GPU temperatures, but also, for example, overclock the CPU in two stages, manually control all fans (individually) and adjust the Pulsar RGB lighting.

Here you can choose from a number of effects, either globally or for individual areas, which you can adjust in terms of colors, speed and many other parameters. The RGB lighting cuts an excellent figure and looks relatively discreet and not too obtrusive, especially due to the slightly darkened glass side panel. This makes the entire gaming PC look even more chic.

Practical, gaming and benchmark test

• Excellent performance across the board
• Excellent gaming performance

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. With the components installed and the price, I naturally go into the Acer Predator Orion 7000 review with a certain expectation. A brute fast CPU, high-end GPU and a fast working memory should – at least in theory – provide for top rates.

By the way, you can also choose a faster RTX 3090 for the GPU, albeit for a surcharge. In practice, the Orion 7000 even exceeded my expectations.

Especially when it comes to demanding multi-tasking and gaming, the complete PC can only smile tiredly in most cases. Pushing it to the limit is actually only possible when you want to play the most demanding games in 4K and with maximum details.

To test performance, I consulted several benchmarks. I measured the productivity and system performance using PCMark 10 and Cinebench R23, and the AS SSD benchmark was used for testing the SSD. Gaming performance is measured using 3DMark’s Time Spy and Fire Strike tests, as well as various games like F1 22, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Final Fantasy XV, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 5, and more.

All of the tests I did were with the normal CPU profile, not touching the fan control. So, in theory, you can tease out even more performance in practice with just a few tweaks.

SSD benchmark

As with the Orion 3000, Acer also relies on an SSD from Micron for the Predator Orion 7000. More precisely, the Micron 3400 with 176-layer NAND, which is connected via PCIe Gen4 x4 in contrast to the mid-range gaming PC and thus performs much better in practice.

The CrystalDisk benchmark shows 6,582.41 MB/s in sequential read. Thus, the SSD actually scrapes the maximum of what the manufacturer has announced (6,600 MB/s).

The AS SSD benchmark shows a similar picture: Here, 5,036.22 MB/s read and 4,103.24 MB/s write are recorded in the end and thus more than double the performance of the Micron SSD in the Orion 3000. The installed SSD also performs excellently in 4K read and write and 4K-64-Thrd and achieves an overall score of 6,902 points in the end, which is sufficient for a top-7 placement among all SSDs tested by us so far.

Or in short, the NVMe SSD writes and reads with equal speed and definitely does not represent a bottleneck for the system.

Cinebench R23 and PCMark 10

I take a look at what the installed CPU is capable of in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, while PCMark 10 puts the entire system through its paces. I compare it to the Acer Predator Orion 3000 and the Gigabyte AORUS 17 XE4 (our review), which is the most powerful gaming notebook that has passed through our test course so far.

The higher clocked and increased number of cores of the Core i9-12900K promise a significantly better system performance on paper. But is this assumption confirmed in practice?

Indeed. The multi-core performance in Cinebench R23 turns out almost twice as high with over 26,000 points as in the case of the Predator Orion 3000 with Intel Core i7-12700F, as well as the Gigabyte notebook. The individual cores also work much faster, so that a higher result is achieved in the end.

Interestingly, the Acer Predator Orion 7000’s lead in the PCMark 10 test doesn’t turn out quite as big, especially compared to the Intel Core i7 12700H in Gigabyte’s already mentioned notebook. The laptop even has a minimal lead in the essential test, but the Orion 7000 then noticeably pulls away in the demanding tests in the area of digital content creation.

In summary: Acer’s complete PC also scores in these tests with a brute performance and doesn’t even come close to its limits in demanding video editing.

Graphics performance: 3DMark and gaming tests.

Although the Acer Predator Orion 7000 in our test configuration is “only” equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 including 10 GB GDDR6 VRAM, the graphics performance is also almost beyond doubt.

Of course: With an RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 3090, with which Acer also offers the gaming PC, even more performance is possible, especially for 4K gaming.

But the gaming PC can handle even the latest and most demanding titles in Ultra HD and with maximum details without really batting an eyelash and, if you go down to 1440p, even with frame rates in the triple-digit range.

Acer Predator Orion 7000 review: conclusion

In the test, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 is virtually emblematic of how complete PCs have developed in recent years. Not only does the potent gaming computer look outstanding and futuristic, it also relies on clean workmanship, cable management and high-quality components on the inside.

Apart from the high-end CPU, the fast DDR5 RAM from Samsung and the M.2 SSD from Micron are also on the highest level. The installed GeForce RTX 3080 from Nvidia also performs at the top as a graphics card – it is also praiseworthy that all components can be upgraded easily and in just a few steps. The installed power supply also has enough reserves for this.

I only have one point to complain about, and that is the very high operating volume of the gaming PC. It hardly ever reaches that in practice, even after hours of gaming, but when the fans are at full throttle, it gets pretty loud.

With the Acer Predator Orion 7000, you get an excellently manufactured, extremely high-performance gaming PC equipped with fancy RGB lighting, which absolutely lives up to its price. And in this form, it’s still well positioned for 1440p gaming in the next few years.

However, if you are thinking about buying it, I would perhaps wait a bit longer. Because the hardware refresh to the 13th generation of Intel Core processors is imminent, which means that the current variant should probably also drop in price.