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Acer's Predator Orion 7000 has been a staple of the prebuilt gaming PC market for years now, but today at the brand's presentation ahead of IFA 2024, a new version of its flagship desktop has been revealed.
This update does more than than swap out the components inside the machine, however, as a new chassis design, innovative cooling methods, and a relaunch of its Predator Sense monitoring app could improve what I already deem one of the best gaming PCs on the market.
I reviewed the Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023) model last year, and while it was powerful enough to earn the top spot on our buying guide overall, I wasn't impressed with the machine's cooling abilities, nor its noise levels when trying to keep an Intel Core i9-13600K CPU below boiling point. It seems I wasn't the only one to notice this though, because inside the latest Orion 7000 chassis lies a new system fan and AOI cooler that the team at Acer told me came as a result of listening to feedback.
The new Predator CycloneX 360 system fan was shown off during Acer's keynote presentation, and it removes the borders between three frontal fans to increase the amount of airflow reaching the motherboard. This means a change from the older Orion 7000 chassis, which features only two frontal intake fans. The new three-fan setup will be used on the updated AIO CPU cooler, which utilizes a new pump header that I'm told has a much faster RPM than Acer's previous one.
Overall, these new designs are said to boost the desktop’s cooling efficiency by 15% and lower the motherboard's temperatures by 9 degrees Celsius compared to the previous model. I asked Acer if this would result in more fan noise as a result, but the team told me decreasing the volume was a priority and that the new system runs a lot quieter.
The updated Predator Orion 7000 will feature up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, and a 14th Generation Intel Core i9 processor. Interestingly, I talked to Acer's Manager of Consumer Stationary, and asked if we'd see more affordable configurations on the shelves for those of us who can't afford the best graphics cards and best CPUs for gaming. I was told that there are plans to launch other models, but they may only feature two frontal fans as opposed to three.
Elsewhere in the rig, the GPU is now mounted vertically - something which feels as much a stylistic choice as it is an evolution from what the brand learned with the Acer Predator Orion X, the ITX version of a Predator prebuild.
Storage and connectivity seem to be as optionally beefy as they have been on earlier Orion models. Thanks to a removable SSD enclosure on the top of the chassis, as well as multiple M.2 bays on the motherboard and an HDD tray, there's loads of room to upgrade your space for games and media.
The 1200W PSU keeps you futureproofed for upgrading parts later on as well, and the rig will come with either 16GB or 32GB of multichannel DDR5 RAM.
Lastly, Predator Sense, the proprietary monitoring app that comes with any Orion desktop PC, is seeing an update. There's now even some Nvidia integration for capturing gameplay, broadcasting to a streaming platform, and utilizing AI features.
The only thing I don't know about this update to one of my favorite gaming PCs is the pricing and release date. Either way, this all adds up to an exciting upgrade that fixes some of my biggest grievances with an enthusiast-grade gaming PC. It'll be hard to tell how effective the changes are until I get hands-on with it, but a brand like Acer listening to feedback and acting on it is always a good sign.
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