Acer Predator Orion 7000 2025 review – a well-built, quiet PC in a decent case

Regardless of the tacky cyber-Sauron Predator emblem on its entrance, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 feels prefer it’s been designed by a staff of real PC {hardware} fanatics, in contrast to many mass-produced gaming PCs. It has an enormous 360mm AIO cooler to maintain its CPU cool, and its full-size tempered glass facet panel offers a premium window onto a tidy PC construct with RGB lighting agogo. Even the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card is vertically mounted in a PCIe riser, and with loads of room to breathe as properly.

This Acer PC’s appears aren’t fairly up there with the newest aquarium-style instances from the likes of Hyte, however there’s respectable airflow, and the machine has an actual heft to it whenever you pull it out of the field, due to the massive quantity of steel within the chassis – it is a far cry from the plasticky instances and messy wiring you generally see in mainstream gaming desktops. During the last couple of weeks, I have been operating a number of of the newest video games on the Predator Orion 7000 to see how properly it copes with them, in addition to benchmarking utility software program, to see if this machine is a contender for our greatest gaming PC information. 

Specs

The important thing part on this Acer machine’s spec is, after all, that Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, which sits proudly in its vertical mount with all three of its followers on full show. This GPU is as quick as you will get except you may stump up the money for the mighty RTX 5090, and I discovered it to be a formidable GPU in my full RTX 5080 evaluate. When it comes to specs, it is mainly half an RTX 5090, which suggests it could wrestle in some video games when you max them out at 4K, but it surely’s a implausible card for gaming at 2,560 x 1,440.

It has 10,752 CUDA cores, that are the tiny processors that work in parallel to render the graphics in your video games – the extra the higher, and that is a lot for most individuals’s gaming wants. It additionally has 16GB of super-fast GDDR7 VRAM, which is ok for 1440p gaming, though you will push the bounds of this quantity of reminiscence when you max out demanding video games at 4K with path tracing enabled. There are rumors that an RTX 5080 Tremendous is on the way in which, with 24GB of VRAM and an otherwise-identical GPU, however the unique RTX 5080 continues to be an important performer.

This graphics card additionally totally helps the total Nvidia DLSS 4 suite, which suggests it could deal with multi-frame gen, Nvidia’s intelligent new tech that makes use of the GPU’s AI cores to insert as much as three additional frames between those genuinely rendered by the GPU. It isn’t a repair for a foul body charge, but when your GPU is already operating at a good tempo, this tech works rather well to {smooth} out the body charge additional, trying nice if in case you have a monitor with a quick refresh charge.

The CPU is much less particular, with this Acer machine using an Intel Core Extremely 7 265KF, which is mainly the identical because the 265K, however the “F” on the top of the mannequin identify denotes that it is had its built-in GPU disabled. In my Core Extremely 7 265K evaluate, I discovered that this chip was massively extra power-efficient than Intel’s earlier chips, and it ran surprisingly cool as properly. Nonetheless, it additionally lagged behind different CPUs in our gaming benchmarks, not solely struggling to beat AMD’s newest chips, however even Intel’s earlier 14th-gen Raptor Lake CPUs.

It isn’t a disastrous inclusion – as we’ll see within the benchmarks afterward, the facility of the GPU means you may nonetheless play video games properly on this method, but it surely’s disappointing that Acer hasn’t used one in all AMD’s new X3D CPUs right here, such because the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, that are a lot stronger in relation to gaming efficiency.

On the plus facet, the CPU is cooled by a robust AIO cooler, which appears nice with its RGB followers and glowing Predator emblem on the pump unit. What’s extra, it has an enormous 360mm radiator mounted within the roof of the case, offering a great deal of cooling capability without having to make use of quick (and noisy) fan speeds. Certainly, throughout stress testing in Cinebench, the system remained surprisingly quiet, and the CPU temperature by no means went above an absolute peak of 84°C (many of the core temperatures have been significantly decrease).

One other respectable inclusion is the 32GB of Orion-branded RGB reminiscence, which is definitely made by Adata, utilizing SK Hynix chips, and runs at 6,000MT/s (with CL40 latency timings). That is a very good step above the vanilla 5,200MT/s sticks you generally see in mass-produced gaming PCs.

In the meantime, storage comes within the type of a 2TB OEM SK Hynix SSD, which is mounted within the M.2 slot above the graphics card. It is a PCIe 4.0 SSD, quite than a brand new PCIe 5.0 one, and it appears fairly fundamental with its naked PCB and sticker, with no heatsink connected to it. Nonetheless, it does offer you a good quantity of cupboard space, and I examined it as operating at respective sequential learn and write speeds of seven,097MB/s and 6,498MB/s in CrystalDiskMark, so it is nonetheless fast.

Lastly, whereas the I/O plate on the again appears a bit sparse in comparison with a number of the newest motherboards, it does cowl all of the necessities. You get 5 standard-size Kind-A USB ports, with two USB 2 ports you should utilize for gadgets the place velocity does not matter, equivalent to printers and gaming mice, and three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports you should utilize for faster gadgets, providing a prime velocity of 10Gbps. There’s additionally a high-speed Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port right here, which may be useful for connecting a number of gadgets to at least one port to reduce cable litter, whereas providing an enormous bandwidth of as much as 40Gbps.

Design

I will be trustworthy, I usually anticipate to be underwhelmed by the design and construct high quality of mass-produced gaming PCs, as they usually lack the eye to element you discover in a construct from an impartial system builder, however the Acer Predator Orion 7000 is a refreshingly good construct. The case is likely to be an enormous monolith, and the Predator helmet emblem would possibly look a bit tacky, but it surely in any other case appears nice.

The tinted, full-size tempered glass facet panel affords a view into the inside so you may see all of the RGB lighting, and the vertically-mounted graphics card appears hanging too. It is plugged right into a PCIe riser that plugs into the motherboard’s prime 16x PCIe 5.0 slot, with its 12VHPWR cable neatly plugged into the highest, and there is loads of room for the graphics card’s followers to breathe earlier than the air will get blocked by the glass panel.

If there’s one oddity concerning the graphics card alternative, it is that the tasteless, all-black design of the cardboard’s entrance does not actually lend itself to being considered in a vertical mount behind a glass panel. If it have been a colourful card with RGB lighting on the entrance, you may perceive it, however the one lighting sits behind the GeForce emblem on the highest edge, and even that is largely obscured by the vertical mount when you have a look at it from the facet. This specific graphics card would arguably look higher simply slotted into the motherboard as regular, with out the PCIe riser.

The opposite draw back of the vertical GPU mount, after all, is that it blocks entry to the remainder of the motherboard, though most individuals are unlikely to make use of additional PCIe slots lately, and there may be nonetheless a minimum of room to put in your individual alternative of the very best gaming SSD within the two spare PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 slots on the board. The highest M.2 slot, the place you will at present discover the SK Hynix drive, additionally helps PCIe 5.0, so you may probably transfer this drive to one of many different slots and set up a high-speed PCIe 5.0 drive with a heatsink right here later.

In the meantime, a cleverly-positioned cable tidying plate within the prime proper of the inside allows Acer to cover numerous the wires from sight, leading to a tidy construct – it appears massively higher than the inside of the Alienware Aurora R16, which had a large number of GPU cables clearly seen behind its plastic window.

All of the lights look good too, and there are numerous them, with three RGB followers within the entrance, one within the again, and three within the roof, plus the distinctive RGB Acer Predator emblem emanating from the AIO cooler’s pump unit. All of the lighting is straight controllable from the Acer PredatorSense software program app, from which you’ll select a variety of results, together with static, respiratory, wave, and rainbow motions, together with the velocity and coloration of the lighting and transitions. Weirdly, the RAM RGB lighting is present in a separate space from the followers, however you will get all of it synced up and searching good to match your setup.

PredatorSense additionally lets you decide from a number of completely different efficiency profiles, from quiet to turbo, all with completely different fan speeds. I ran all our benchmarks on the Balanced profile setting, as that is the default, however the machine ran impressively quietly all through all our benchmarks, and with none disturbing temperature spikes both.

You will have to ensure you have room for this method’s large case, but it surely’s a a lot tidier construct than the smaller Alienware Aurora, and it is nice to have a real tempered-glass panel on the facet as properly. Eradicating this panel to entry the inside is not a tooless job, but it surely’s not an excessive amount of problem – you simply take away two Philips type-2 screws and push down a giant block on the again, and there is an audible clunk because the panel comes free.

Benchmarks

Because of its mightily highly effective GPU, the Acer Orion 7000 can generate some glorious body charges within the newest video games at prime settings, even at 4K in some instances, but it surely’s at 2,560 x 1,440 the place it actually shines. Let’s begin with Doom The Darkish Ages, which has the good thing about supporting the brand new Nvidia DLSS 4 suite in full, and runs rather well on this GPU. Working it on the great-looking Extremely Nightmare settings at 1440p leads to a 104fps common and an 80fps 1% low, and that is with none assist from DLSS.

That additionally offers you loads of headroom to extend the body charge additional with DLSS, and with upscaling set to High quality, and multi-frame-gen maxed out, the Acer Orion 7000 clocked up an incredible common of 339fps, whereas the latency remained responsive sufficient at 28ms. The sport feels fast and responsive at these settings, and it appears super-smooth.

You possibly can even run the sport at 4K on the Extremely Nightmare preset, the place it averages 60fps with out DLSS, and 88fps with DLSS on the High quality setting. Enabling multi-frame gen right here pushes the typical as much as 228fps, however the latency additionally will increase from 25ms to 38ms. In the event you actually wish to give this machine a exercise, you may also allow the extremely demanding path-tracing mode, which engages a complicated type of ray tracing to present you super-realistic lighting.

We suggest enabling DLSS on the Balanced setting if you are going to allow this mode, as it is very demanding, and DLSS 4 on the Balanced setting nonetheless appears good, because it makes use of Nvidia’s new Transformer mannequin. Working these settings at 1440p resulted in a median of 75fps with 1% lows of 61fps, and it is completely playable, with the latency at 31ms. Enabling multi-frame gen pushes the typical as much as 217fps, however the ensuing 41ms latency begins to chunk into responsiveness at this level.

Likewise, the great-looking, however GPU-punishing, Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle runs nice on this machine. Run it on the Extremely preset, and it’ll fortunately run at 93fps at 4K and 142fps at 2,560 x 1,440. You may also max it out on the Supreme setting with path tracing enabled with the Full RT settings, the place it averages 73fps when you set DLSS to High quality. It nearly runs at 1440p with these settings too, averaging 56fps, with a 45fps 1% low. Enabling multi-frame gen at these settings actually will increase the latency, although, which we measured at 52fps.

In all honesty, I would just run this sport at the usual Extremely preset with none of the trail tracing and AI trickery. It appears implausible, and it runs actually easily at 4K with none want for DLSS.

This PC additionally had no hassle operating Name of Obligation Black Ops 6 on the Excessive graphics preset, averaging 147fps at 1440p with the latency measured at simply 16ms, and 102fps at 4K with 20ms latency. This sport does help DLSS upscaling and body gen as properly, however you do not want it.

Lastly, the veteran GPU beater, Cyberpunk 2077, additionally runs properly on this machine, with the good thing about full help for DLSS 4. Allow the extremely ray tracing preset at 2,560 x 1,440, and set DLSS to High quality, and the sport appears very good and runs at 97fps.

You possibly can then allow multi-frame gen, and watch the body charge leap to over 300fps, whereas the latency stays cheap at 34ms. 4K is a bit an excessive amount of of a stretch for this machine, but it surely appears nice at 1440p. You possibly can even allow the Overdrive setting with full path tracing, and DLSS set on Balanced, and it averages a stable 83fps, with a 63fps 1% low and latency of 28ms.

That is all good, but it surely’s irritating that it might have been higher if Acer had used an AMD X3D CPU, quite than an Intel Arrow Lake chip. As some extent of comparability, an RTX 5080 on our last-gen AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D take a look at rig averages 70fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p with the Extremely ray tracing preset, and no DLSS, in contrast with 64fps on this machine. The distinction is not disastrous, but it surely’s vital, and it hurts the worth of this machine in relation to gaming.

On the plus facet, the 20-core Intel CPU is unquestionably faster than the eight-core Ryzen 7 9800X3D in relation to multi-threaded utility software program. Working Cinebench R24, the Acer Orion 7000 produced a multi-threaded rating of 1,849, whereas the 9800X3D solely hits 1,361 on this take a look at, and the lower-clocked 7800X3D solely scores 1,059. In the event you use numerous closely multi-threaded software program, maybe for video encoding or 3D rendering, then this CPU’s additional cores assist it out. It is only a disgrace the gaming efficiency lags behind.

Value

The Acer Predator Orion 7000 worth is £3,299 for the spec we reviewed. US pricing hasn’t been introduced for the brand new up to date vary with Nvidia Blackwell GPUs but, however the UK worth works out at round $3,700 as soon as you’ve got eliminated VAT from the UK worth and transformed the foreign money. The earlier Orion 7000 with an RTX 4080 and Core i7 13700KF value $3,799 at launch, so we anticipate the brand new PC to launch in the identical ballpark.

We’ll persist with the UK worth for comparisons, as it is a recognized amount, but it surely’s costly for the specs on supply. Comparatively, an Alienware Aurora R16 with the identical CPU and GPU, plus 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, prices £2,998.99, and is at present on supply for £2,498.99. The Acer would possibly supply a superior construct, but it surely’s exhausting to justify spending an additional £300 on it.

Head to impartial UK system builder Scan, and you will get a system with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a 360mm AIO cooler, 32GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and an RTX 5080 for £2,799.98, and it has a nicer-looking case too. At MSRP, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 is just too costly, but it surely’s price contemplating when you discover it on supply for a considerably lowered worth.

Alternate options

Alienware Aurora R16

Alienware’s compact space-age rig takes up much less area in your desk than the Orion 7000, and it has a less expensive worth for a similar core spec as properly, particularly if yow will discover it on supply. It does not have the real tempered glass facet panel and premium steel chassis of the Orion, and the cable tidying was slapdash in our evaluate pattern, but it surely nonetheless appears good, and it affords equally stable gaming efficiency.

Learn our full Alienware Aurora R16 evaluate for extra data.

Verdict

It is a disgrace the value of the Acer Orion 7000 is so excessive, as I am in any other case pleasantly shocked by the standard of this gaming PC. The chassis is sturdy, the inside is tidy and properly designed, and Acer has balanced airflow and cooling rather well, leading to a quiet-running system that does not overheat. This PC is likely to be an enormous glowing monolith, but it surely appears good and it is properly constructed.

In the meantime, the specs are largely on level, with an important GPU, a good reminiscence configuration, and loads of cupboard space. It is also good to see a very highly effective AIO CPU cooler used within the construct, and the 1,200W PSU offers you loads of headroom to improve to an RTX 5090 at a later date.

There are two points, although. One is the selection of CPU, which might be tremendous for an all-purpose PC that is largely aimed toward productiveness, however there are a lot better gaming CPU decisions from the AMD secure proper now. The opposite is the value, which is significantly greater than the price of a similar-spec PC from both Alienware or an impartial system builder. In consequence, it does not supply nice worth at its normal worth, but it surely’s completely price contemplating if yow will discover it cheaper.

That brings me to the top of this PC evaluate, however when you’re through which CPUs are higher decisions for gaming, take a look at our information to the very best gaming CPU, the place we take you thru all our favourite chips proper now.