Acer Predator Orion 3000 review
Our Verdict
Acer's Predator Orion 3000 is groovy for gaming at 1080p or fifty-fifty 1440p, but forget near 4K. Though its performance is slightly underwhelming, the fashionable, piece of cake-to-access case and sub-$2k price make this a peachy first gaming PC for those new to the fold.
For
- Fashionable design looks adept on a desk
- Easy to open up and upgrade
- Tranquillity, even while gaming
- Great 1080p operation
Against
- Underwhelming performance vs. contest
- Depression-quality keyboard and mouse
Tom's Guide Verdict
Acer's Predator Orion 3000 is groovy for gaming at 1080p or even 1440p, simply forget about 4K. Though its performance is slightly underwhelming, the stylish, easy-to-access case and sub-$2k cost make this a smashing first gaming PC for those new to the fold.
Pros
- +
Fashionable design looks good on a desk-bound
- +
Piece of cake to open and upgrade
- +
Repose, even while gaming
- +
Peachy 1080p performance
Cons
- -
Underwhelming performance vs. competition
- -
Low-quality keyboard and mouse
Acer Predator Orion 3000 specs (every bit reviewed)
Price: $1,949 (equally reviewed)
Processor: Intel Core i7-11700F
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Storage: 1TB Western Digital PCIe SSD, 1TB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA HDD
Accessories: Wired gaming keyboard and mouse
Ports:HDMI, 3x DisplayPort, USB-C iii.ii, 2x USB-A three.2, 2x USB-A 2.0, RJ45, mic jack, audio in, sound out, USB-C 3.2 (front), USB-A 3.two (forepart), mic jack (front), audio out (forepart)
Size:15.4 by xv.2 by 6.9 inches
Weight: Approximately 22 lbs.
The Acer Predator Orion 3000 ($829 to start, $1,949 as reviewed) is a mid-sized gaming PC that's attractive, affordable, and i of the best gaming PCs you tin can buy right now for playing games at 1080p to 1440p.
It'due south not a great choice if you're looking to play games at 4K, nonetheless, and its packed-in keyboard and mouse leave much to be desired. The Orion 3000 likewise fared slightly worse in our suite of performance tests than some similarly-priced gaming PCs, perhaps because our review unit arrived with only 16GB of RAM.
Luckily, the Orion 3000 has a stylish case that's easy to open if you e'er want to, say, add more RAM or swap out the GPU. It'south hard to imagine why you lot might desire to, though, given that at the time of this review in that location's a GPU shortage on and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 in our review unit is being sold at mark-ups of upwardly to $1,000 in some places.
That's more than half the toll of the desktop itself, making the prospect of purchasing an Orion 3000 purely to go your hands on a 3070 seem surprisingly reasonable right at present. In this review we'll walk you through the strengths and weaknesses of the Orion 3000, and evidence you lot why it'south got more going for information technology than a beefy graphics card.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Price and availability
- Await to pay betwixt $800 and $2,000
- Refreshed models with new 12th Gen Intel CPUs available this year
Pre-built Acer Predator Orion 3000 desktops can exist bought via Acer'southward website in a range of configurations, and you lot can besides discover them at 3rd-party retailers similar Newegg.
At the time this review was published you could buy an Acer Predator Orion 3000 for as low as $829, which gets you an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, a GeForce GTX 1660 Super GPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD for storage. At the higher end you tin get an Orion 3000 similar our $1,949 review unit of measurement, which packs an Intel Core i7-11700F CPU, a GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, 1TB of HDD and 1TB of SSD storage.
Acer is refreshing the Orion 3000 line with Intel'due south new 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs in 2022, which should help these meaty mid-range gaming PCs reach fifty-fifty better performance than what nosotros measured from the 11th Gen CPU in our review unit.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Pattern
- Mid-tower example is easy to open and tinker with
- Optional glass side panel looks great, and swapping it on is a snap
- Subconscious handle, headset holder and front port array are nice touches
The Predator Orion 3000 nosotros reviewed arrived packaged with a keyboard and mouse in a single box. The entire set was easy enough to unbox, and the Orion 3000'due south mid-tower case is hefty yet compact plenty (measuring fifteen.4 by 15.2 past six.9 inches and weighing upwards of 22 pounds) to fit neatly into near desk arrangements with minimal fuss.
The Orion 3000 could also sit down next to a TV if you wanted to play PC games on the big screen, but nobody will mistake it for anything but a gaming PC — the stylized blackness plastic and metal chassis sports a tapered design and a big RGB-lit fan on the front that might brand it hard to work into an entertainment center.
The Orion 3000'southward case feels sturdy and looks good on a desk, with an oblong forepart panel sporting two LED calorie-free strips and crowned by a glowing ability button. Near the bottom of the front end panel is Acer'southward 92x92 mm FrostBlade fan, which is lit by customizable RGB LEDs. The customization is conducted via Acer's PredatorSense software, which comes pre-installed and is also used to manage the internal RGB lighting and the pair of vertical lite bars which flank the fan and sew together the front end console.
The forepart panel of the Orion 3000 is a bit taller than the back, and the summit of it tapers back into a sort of handle that makes the desktop a bit easier to move effectually. Information technology'south been a long time since I had to bring my own desktop to a LAN party, simply it's overnice to know the Orion 3000 is easy enough to tote if I experience the need.
The instance arrives clad in matte black siding, only the Orion 3000 also comes with an optional tempered glass side console that you tin can swap in on the left-hand (when looking at it head on) side. It'due south a nice touch on that gives yous an middle-catching view of the Orion 3000'south RGB-lit internals, and I found the process of swapping the panel pretty quick and painless — a Phillips screwdriver and a few minutes of easy work is all that's required. My only gripe is that the four screws which hold the console in identify stand out prominently against the smoothen glass, marring the Orion 3000'south streamlined expect.
You tin can mar those smooth lines a bit more with the help of 2 handy features congenital into the front panel of the Orion 3000. On the height right is an extendable headset holder that sits flush against the front panel when non in use, only popping out when you printing lightly on it. It's a not bad feature, though the somewhat flimsy plastic holder only extends about ii.5 inches from the front of the desktop and might accept problem with truly massive gaming headsets.
Beneath the headset holder is a console that flips open up to reveal a few front-pacing ports, including a pair of USB ports and audio input/output jacks. The placement of these front-facing ports is user-friendly, though the fact that you have to have the compartment encompass open to admission them is something to keep in mind when setting upwardly your desktop.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Ports and upgradability
- Plenty ports to get by on, but you lot might want a hub for USB-C gear
- Example is well-organized and easy to upgrade, except for the motherboard
You might never demand to crack open that forepart port, but if you practise, it gives you easy access to a USB-C port, a USB-A port, and split headphone and mic jacks. Effectually the back yous'll detect another USB-C port, four USB-A ports (half USB 2.0, half USB 3.2 Gen i), an RJ45 Ethernet port, a microphone jack and audio line in/out ports. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU in our review unit provides an additional 3 DisplayPort jacks and an HDMI out.
That'southward a solid port selection, and information technology'south enough that yous may never need to invest in a dongle or USB hub — only you might want to, especially if y'all have or programme to invest in a lot of USB-C accessories. If you don't desire to plug the PC into a wired Internet connectedness, the Orion 3000's motherboard also supports Wi-Fi 6.
If you decide you want to upgrade the Orion 3000 down the route, Acer has done a good job of ensuring you tin can easily access the PC's guts. Our review unit arrived with its cables nicely routed and components neatly tucked into identify within the example, and it's easy to get at them once yous slide off the same side console.
The case is roomy enough to brand swapping out RAM, drives and cables low-cal work, fifty-fifty for someone with stupid big hands like myself. I tried non to mess with the components as well much during the review since this is a pre-built loaner PC, but I had no trouble getting into the example and fiddling with component and cable placement. The GPU, storage drives, RAM and CPU should exist pretty straightforward to swap out if you feel the urge, but you lot might run into problem if you endeavor to replace the motherboard, as it'southward an Acer lath with a unique pattern.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Gaming operation
- First-class performance gaming at 1080p/1440p
- 4K gaming is a struggle for this PC
- Functioning is slightly underwhelming vs. similarly-priced gaming PCs
While testing the Orion 3000 I had no trouble playing a suite of the latest games with our review unit plugged into my 1440p monitor. I spent hours watching hordes of ratmen binge beyond battlefields in Total State of war: Warhammer Ii with no discernible slowdown, and happily cruised effectually Forza Horizon five with the settings maxed out at a rock-solid 60 frames per second.
I had a flake more trouble running Cyberpunk 2077, though it was still plenty smooth plenty for my plebeian tastes. With all the bells and whistles cranked upwardly, our review unit could reliably deliver betwixt 30 to 40 frames per 2d at 1440p, though that number slipped into the mid-20s during heavy action. However, when I switched on Nvidia's DLSS dynamic resolution scaling tech in-game, it started running at a near-perfect sixty frames per second, only dipping into the mid-50s during heavy activity.
Through all of this I never noticed a significant amount of dissonance from the fans unless I switched them to their Gaming preset, at which bespeak the PC starts to audio a bit like a hulked-out air purifier. But when I left it on Motorcar, nothing stressed the PC plenty to brand the fans spin up above a gentle hum, even after hours of playing games.
| Acer Predator Orion 3000 | Dell XPS 8940 | Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition | |
| Assassinator's Creed Valhalla (1080p/4K) | 84/44 | 86/50 | 114/56 |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 94/71 | 110/74 | 106/93 |
| Yard Theft Auto V (1080p/4K) | 129/42 | 135/42 | 145/48 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p/4K) | 111/41 | 118/41 | 128/l |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 (1080p/4K) | 84/32 | 86/32 | 112/49 |
When we ran our Orion 3000 review unit through our suite of gaming benchmarks, the results were skilful just non nifty. The machine averaged a solid 84 frames per second running Assassin's Creed Valhalla at 1080p, but struggled to get above 44 fps running the game at 4K. We saw similar results in benchmarks for Far Cry 6 (72 fps @ 1080p, 46 fps @ 4K), Red Expressionless Redemption two (84 fps @ 1080p, 32 fps @ 4K) and a number of other games, cementing my belief that this is a solid gaming PC — as long equally you lot're not trying to play at 4K.
Compared to the similarly-priced Dell XPS 8940 we reviewed final year, the Orion 3000'south results look a picayune disappointing. The ii PCs deliver roughly equivalent performance in every game we tested on both, which makes sense since they both accept a Core i7 CPU and an RTX 3070 GPU. Even so, the XPS 8940 we tested consistently delivered a few more than frames at 1080p than the Orion 3000, fifty-fifty though its 10th Gen i7 CPU is a generation behind the 11th Gen in the Orion 3000. Of form, the XPS 8940 likewise had twice as much RAM — 32GB vs the 16GB in Acer's desktop.
Thankfully it's easy plenty to install more than RAM in the Orion 3000, if you're willing to splurge on the upgrade. And once more, given how scarce reasonably-priced RTX 3070 GPUs are right now, the Orion 3000 is a reasonable purchase if you're just looking for a 3070 in a pre-built PC that'south reasonably like shooting fish in a barrel to upgrade.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Overall performance
- Powerful enough to handle productivity tasks and creative work
- Notwithstanding a fleck underwhelming compared to the competition
When we put this meaty gaming PC through our general performance testing regimen, the Orion 3000 turned in solid but unremarkable scores. In the Geekbench 5.4 multicore CPU criterion our review unit earned a result of 8,048, which is decent, but well beneath what nosotros usually expect from gaming PCs, and what I expected from this PC with an 11th Gen Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a GeForce RTX 3070.
To give yous some context, that Dell XPS 8940 scored ix,019 in the aforementioned test, while the $950 config of the Lenovo Legion 5 gaming PC we reviewed final year (11th Gen Core i5, GeForce GTX 1660 Super, 8GB of RAM) earned a score of half-dozen,047. All the same, the Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition we tested in 2021 (a $2,640 gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU, an AMD RX 6800 XT GPU, 32 GB RAM, and a i TB SSD plus 2 TB HDD storage) achieved a score of 10,035 in the same exam.
| Acer Predator Orion 3000 | Dell XPS 8940 | Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition | |
| Geekbench five.4/v.3 (artificial operation benchmark) | 8,048 | ix,019 | x,035 |
| Copying 25 GB of multimedia files (MBps) | 730 | 439 | 638 |
| Handbrake video encoding (minutes:seconds) | 7:57 | 6:26 | 5:16 |
Likewise, our review unit of measurement took roughly eight minutes (7:57) to complete our Handbrake video editing exam and achieved a transfer rate of 730.iv MBps in our 25GB multimedia file copy test. Those are decent results that make the Orion 3000 a good enough desktop to get some serious creative work done, especially if you'll be moving big files around. All the same, similarly-priced gaming PCs like the XPS 8940 and Alienware's Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition were able to put up college scores in Geekbench and faster times in Handbrake.
The Orion 3000's disappointing functioning here is balanced out by its relatively affordable price tag. While it can't compete with the best gaming PCs on the marketplace, it also costs less than most of them — often times thousands of dollars less. And in my ain time using the Orion 3000, I had no trouble taking care of every task my mean solar day-to-day workflow throws at me, including lite photograph/video editing while multi-tasking betwixt way too many Chrome tabs.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Keyboard and mouse
- RGB-lit mouse and keyboard are included, but not great
- Keyboard feels mushy and unsatisfying
- Mouse is comfortable and good for gaming
The Orion 3000 arrives packaged with a wired gaming keyboard and mouse decked out in Predator trappings to lucifer the PC. I used both for more than than a dozen hours in the course of writing this review, and I can confidently say that they're fine.
I establish the keyboard to be serviceable but unsatisfying to type on, every bit the keys experience somehow both a bit also stiff to depress and too mushy to hands tell, by experience, when you've fully engaged the key. That said, I had no trouble using it to play games like Cyberpunk 2077, Total State of war: Warhammer II, and Typing of the Expressionless.
The mouse feels a scrap more than comfortable, and I found its complement of two tiptop buttons, two side buttons, and a scroll wheel with a DPI button below it (for on-the-fly sensitivity adjustments) to be merely the right amount of inputs for my gaming needs.
You lot can customize the RGB lighting of the keyboard and mouse using Acer's PredatorArc app, which comes pre-installed and also lets yous customize what the two side buttons on the mouse practise. The keyboard comes with no such customizable keys out of the box, though it does some media controls built into the top-correct corner.
While the packed-in keyboard and mouse are good enough to go by on if you need them, you lot're much better off ownership some you lot actually like and swapping them in. If yous want some ideas, bank check out our guides to the best gaming keyboard and the best gaming mouse.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Software
- No odious bloatware
- PredatorSense is handy for decision-making fans and RGB lighting
The Predator Orion 3000 we reviewed came with a suite of software pre-installed, including Norton Antivirus, DTS sound performance management tools, and demos of Acer's PhotoDirector and PowerDirector photograph/video editing apps. None of information technology is peculiarly aggravating or does much to interrupt you save the antivirus software, and all of information technology is easy to remove.
The merely pre-installed software I ended up getting whatever real utilise out of was Acer's PredatorSense and PredatorArc utilities, which are used to customize the Orion 3000's RGB lighting, fan performance, and mouse button bindings.
Acer Predator Orion 3000 review: Verdict
In a lot of ways, I remember the Acer Predator Orion 3000 is the perfect commencement gaming PC for someone looking to get into the hobby.
Yous tin can get one similar our review unit for less than $2k, and y'all'll withal enjoy the brawn of an RTX 3070 in a sleek, reasonably-sized case that lights up and looks practiced on a desk.
The case itself is easy to open when you're set to endeavor your manus at an upgrade (more RAM would be a good start), but even if you never upgrade it, this PC has plenty power to play the latest games at adept framerates for years to come. Plus, it arrives neatly packaged with a serviceable mouse and keyboard in a single box that'due south easy to open.
Only if you're looking for more power out of your prebuilt gaming PC, you'll probable be better off saving up a bit more than and splurging on slightly pricier contest like Alienware's Aurora desktops. That way lies truthful 4K PC gaming greatness.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/acer-predator-orion-3000-review
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