Acer - Predator Orion 5000 Gaming Desktop - Intel Core i7-12700F - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 - 1TB Gen 4 SSD - Black

Excellent computer, purchased for my son. He’s very happy. I was happy because I got it for 12 months interest free. Everyone is happy and now the computer is almost paid off. Still runs great, very fast. The only thing I would upgrade is the fans.

works great weighs more than my sister and that is quite a bit. 10/10 would break my back carrying it again

The ultimate gaming pc for beginners once you get this in your possession you will witness the superior power of gaming technology! I mostly play warzone and I tell you the experience will change you forever. Once you get a taste of PC gaming tech there’s no going back to consoles

Happy with the purchase…looks great…no issues till now

This PC is amazing - performs like a beast. Running 240+ fps on shooting games and never has any overheating issues even with long gaming sessions. Also just looks super cool.

Acer created a pretty great prebuilt for people wanting to game out of the box asap. I commend them for choosing quality parts for those not too tech savvy to provide an excellent experience. Even after setting up Windows 11, there is little to no bloatware to remove. Just remember you need to supply your own monitor and speakers (unless you plan of using headphones all the time). In the box is a well protected PC, mouse, keyboard and your typical paperwork to get you started. ---Included Hardware--- I have built PC's many years so the first thing I like to do is open it up and check the insides. Now the included diagram shows that the tempered glass side should be easy to remove with the press of a button to remove, but forgets to tell you to unscrew the 2 side panel screws to make it so. Props to ACER for making sure all common plugs prone to becoming loose in transport are held down with tape. The 3080 is securely and I mean securely fastened to the chassis in multiple areas to not only protect it from coming loose, but also to prevent the dreaded GPU sag. Cable management is a solid 8/10 keeping clear to maximize airflow and look aesthetically pleasing. Your 1tb boot drive is a Micron NVMe. Also included is a 2tb Toshiba 7200rpm mechanical HDD for storage in the easy-to-use swappable 5.25 bays. 12th gen i7 12700F CPU with air cooled heatsink and ARGB fan is good enough to play the latest AAA titles with no fuss while paired with the RTX 3080. 16gb of generic DDR5 made by Samsung is installed running at 4400mhz. The rig is powered by a LiteOn 800w 80+GOLD PSU and a good choice given all the components. The motherboard is a proprietary micro ATX that gives you little options for upgrades down the road. Including the CPU fan, there are 4 total aRGB fans to bring in, cool and exhaust airflow in the case, but I find the design to be constrictive for the front fans to bring in adequate cool fresh air as the intake is just ~2" side grill around the front glass. ---Performance--- I use my own KB and Mouse and also using an UW 3440 x 1440p OLED for my experience. Gaming is no issue as I prefer 2k (1440p) gaming. Most of my time was spent on Starfield. Playing on Ultra, I got a respectable 50-60fps at all times, but according to my tests, I was GPU bottlenecked all the time too. Other games played just fine on High/Ultra settings as well including GoW, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and of course Baldur's Gate 3. When even being a last gen CPU and GPU, they both perform excellent for modern gaming. If you are a 1080p (FHD) gamer, then this will fit and exceed your needs. ---Cooling--- Even though the tower stays quiet, performance for the fans leaves more to be desired. Yes you can use the included Predator Sense software to not only control the colors of the fan, but also speeds. I left it on AUTO while gaming the first couple of days and noticed, no matter what temps were, they never changed in speed. I do NOT like temps rising in the 90s-100s C for CPU ever. Blame this for always water cooling my rigs lol. But when I decided to manually set the fans speed %, temps dropped almost instantly. I do not know if that's a glitch in the software or if the software's curves are set differently but I do not want my electronics to wear out faster than they should. ---Upgrades--- *Skip this part if you don't want or plan on changing out parts* While limited, you can upgrade a few things and I HIGHLY recommend you do if you want the best out of this Predator. 1st is the RAM and the most annoying part of the upgrades. 16gb is not enough for modern day gaming. I decided to get a 32gb kit from Best Buy as DDR5 has dropped so much in price recently and they were on sale. So take note, the RAM slots from left to right (of the CPU) are 4, 2, 3, 1. DIMM slot 4 is BLOCKED by the underperforming big heatsink and must be replaced if you want to use 4 sticks of RAM. Since I only wanted to replace 2 sticks, this wasn't a big deal for me. Next when I went into the BIOS, the RAM was recognized but only at 4400 speed instead of the rated 6000. I went to enable XMP as you should and found it to be disabled?!?! After researching, I found out that ACER shipped the rig with an older/outdated BIOS R01-A1. I had to go into Windows 11 Settings - Windows Updates - Advanced Options - Optional Updates and the new firmware was there. After downloading and installing the recent BIOS should be R01-B0. From there, XMP option was enabled, but I quickly learned my RAM was incompatible. As I turned on XMP and restarted, I was in an infinite BOOT LOOP for about 5 minutes until the BIOS just reverted back to factory settings. Found out the kit was incompatible and set it aside for a new build later and went back to buy another kit at lower speeds. Installed another kit rated at 5600MHz and enabled XMP and this time it worked. This whole situation alone is the reason for knocking off a star. 2nd is the CPU cooler. As the heatsink gets in the way anyways for the RAM and in my opinion doesn't cool to my standards. I opted for an AIO 240mm. There is space on the top for either a 120mm rad (don't even think about it) or a 240mm. Once the old heatsink and thermal paste was removed, there is plenty of clearance to install the rad and fans with no issues. Not only does this open DIMM slot 4 if you want to upgrade down the line, thermals dropped dramatically to a nice comfort level. 3rd is the weirdly placed slot for adding another NVMe drive. Not saying it's a bad thing at all. In all honesty, it made installation easy and gave the PC a "unique" look (take a look at the pics). It is on the right side of the MB directly above the GPU. It installs outward and actually screws into the CASE for mounting. In the end, if you are just looking for a PC that is great all around for doing multiple things including gaming, streaming etc, this Predator is definitely a looker. If you have some skills in the hardware area too and read above, this tower will last you a while before even thinking about replacing it.

For a pre-built desktop I think Acer got some things right and other things leave my head scratching. For a PC that will game using a 12 Gen Intl i7 and a 3080 card means you'll have a decent time gaming. You can play just about any game without too much worry especially at 1440p without issues I think based on my testing. Unboxing was easy and the way they lock the Video card down for shipping means no worry with it getting loose. Overall the Cable Management was well done and nicely done. I like the fact they included 2 3.5" HDD bays and they are both wired up. The computer shipped with one 2TB Drive for slow storage and there is another bay above it and all you'll have to do is slap the drive in, no wiring or cables need to be added. Overall everything fit and was firmly attached and survived shipping without an issue. The Keyboard is typical Office OEM membrane keyboard. Nothing great and recommend using your own. The mouse was a bit better, fit nice and seems to work well and has RGB if your into that. Its nice if you don't have spares, but I'd highly recommend swapping them out for better ones. The case itself is large, but nice. I was worried that the glass front might block air, but they have large channels on the side to allow air to come in. The fans are fairly quiet and do an ok job keeping the air flowing over the parts. The only complaint on the cooling is the choice of cooler for the CPU. Downdraft Slug cooler, bigger then the OEM cooler, but not enough. This was one of the few computers I've been able to thermal throttle when benchmarking. I'd have perferred a double fan tower cooler to help keep the CPU under tjMax and not throttle. While in gaming most likely won't push to that limit, but still wish for a better cooler, to keep fans a bit quieter. The 12700F is a great CPU, but I wish Acer had not chosen the F SKU as having an integrated GPU is handy for troubleshooting, but not a deal breaker. The Acer made 3080 LHR GPU performed well. Just make sure to update the drivers when you get it as they will be definitely a few revs. behind. In fact I forget to upgrade the Drivers and in Speed Way bench run the difference in using recent drivers was a 21% improvement. Overall the parts chosen do a good job and 3dMark has it faster then a Gaming PC 2023. So that is good to know from other devices we are in a good place. The 16GB is a bit on the smaller side these days, esp. if you wanted to stream. One of the first upgrades will be to move to 32GB of RAM to have a more comfortable experince. I do wish Acer used a better Motherboard though. The 2nd NVME slot for a second SSD on the MB, required them to tool the case to have the screw hole to hold it in place. Such an odd choice. But even with that it performed fine. Software wise I wish Acer reduced the extra "added" software including the McAfee Antivirus. However it was easy enough to clear off all th extra unneeded software. Overall you this is a decent performer, just wish for a bit better cooling, but if you want to game this is a solid choice.

TLDR - With a few caveats, (heat/power consumption, not efficient/proprietary motherboard/slower ram + only 16GB) this is a super solid 1440p gaming desktop for the time being, and should run 1080p ultra at higher FPS for at least a few years. Looks great, boots/runs quickly in all normal tasks, nice lighting. (bonus RGB Keyboard and mouse, mouse is actually solid, but I would get a dedicated gaming keyboard) CPU - the 12700f is decidedly last gen, and seems like its an odd choice in a PC in 2023, BUT luckily Acer realized this, and they set PL1 to 180w! To put that in perspective, the 12700k has a stock PL1 of 125w. So the 12700f is completely unleashed to run as fast as it can, WITHIN thermal limits, which is one of my caveats I have. They put a large, flat heatsink/fan, but in my 20+ years of PC building/repair, it’s probably only rated for dissipating somewhere around 90-120w. Tower heatsinks in line with the needed thermal load do not cost much, so personally I’d think about upgrading that. (I hit 101c in Cinebench R23 and the new 2024 version, and it thermal throttles) BUT because of the 180w PL1, it’ll still sit right at thermal limits and push extremely solid numbers, listed below: 3DMark time spy CPU - 14389 Cinebench R23 multi - 20804 Cinebench 2024 multi - 1052 GPU - the RTX 3080 is also obviously last gen, but with the crazy pricing of new 4xxx series cards, the 3080 still has a place in 2023. (this is a “Predator” branded 3 fan OEM unit, hits 90c+ memory junction, which is still fine, but hot) Luckily 10GB of GDDR6X is still solid, and over a 320bit memory bus, you have extremely solid memory bandwidth. It does struggle in Starfield (like every GPU does), but you can still pull 1080p high around 50-55fps in the worst areas. In MW2 using the built in benchmark, I pulled 142fps at 1080p ultra, and 68fps at 4K ultra with zero scaling. With scaling enabled, you can get good high refresh level of around 170-180fps at 1080p @basic settings with DLSS set to “quality”. (still looks decent, and is great for a 144-165hz+monitor) GPU Benchmarks below: 3Dmark Time Spy - overall score 17061/Graphics score 17640 3Dmark Speedway - 3783 3Dmark Time Spy Stress Test - 97.3% “passed” (will stay solid for long gaming sessions) Ram - The Ram in this Predator is one of the low points. Only 16GB of DDR5 4400 really holds back at least a few % more FPS. The space that this system competes with, should have double the ram, and even just regular JEDEC speeds of DDR5 4800. (or XMP with faster speeds/timings, RAM is cheap these days) SSD - the SSD is a Micron unit (Crucial’s parent company) that is actually VERY quick, and not what I expected in an OEM prebuilt. Crystal Disk Mark 8.0.4 turned out peak speeds of over 6GB/s read and 5GB/s write. I’m used to OEM companies saying “PCIE 4.0 drive included” and having the drive be only slightly faster than the fastest 3.0 drives. Cooling/fans/software - the “frostblade 2.0” fans do move a good amount of air at speed, but end up being quite loud. Leaving the option on “auto” or tuning the fan speeds to suit your tastes is way recommended vs the LOUD top speed option. The RGB and fans are all editable with the predatorsense app, which is barely a 2/5 in my book, its slow, clunky, and looks dated. Luckily you can set and forget, and not always be using the app. Power supply - the power supply is OEM, but I could see its an 800w 80+ gold rated LiteOn OEM unit, which is impressive considering the specs. You could get away with a 650w gold PSU, but would be pushed, BECAUSE using my kill a watt power meter, this system will pull near 500w during hard areas of Starfield!! This is only a bit less power than my 7700x/7900XTX system will pull. (system showing 99% GPU usage and higher CPU usage when I hit 497w) To summarize, if you’re looking for a stylish, solid, fast, albeit power hungry and hot, you will not go wrong with this Acer Predator Orion 5000!