Acer 1810T Timeline - Fried motherboard?

First ... apologies if I might have found this on my own but my Acer has died, I'm out of the country on holidays and stuck trying to resolve this at a busy Internet cafe. I am generally a very good forum citizen, please cut me some slack here.

My 1810T, purchased 18 months ago, has died. It will run for 15-20 minutes but then things heat up like crazy and everything goes nuts. The fan, HDD, etc all seem fine and the repair guy here (who is supposed to be great and ran tons of diagnostics) said it's the motherboard. I *severely* hope he is wrong.

I have SpeedFan installed and it shows the HDD at 31 and up to 41 and the processors (once I open Firefox) heat up almost immediately to 53, 54c. Before I was monitoring w SpeedFan it was BSD and showing Memory errors.

One BSD came with HDMI plugged in to TV, the laptop screen went vertical bar codes and died (which my research says may be overheating graphic card). After cooling overnight, no issues.

I just got off the phone with Acer who basically said their out of warranty fee is $200 to repair it (plus whatever shipping hoops I need to jump through as I'm currently on extended holiday in Mexico).

I think it's outrageous that this computer, which was $500, is almost rendered obsolete by the main component dying 18 months in. Not to mention that I *love* it. I have a recent acronis image, so not worries on that front.

Finally ... my questions. Are there known issues with the motherboards on these machines? Is there something else ... maybe the repair guy is wrong?

What can I try? Getting the computer out of the country for repair is going to be risky (I may never see it again), and expensive.

Is it worth paying the repair fee and carrying on with the Timeline ... they only guarantee the repair for 90 days.... or should I put the $200 towards a new machine? What would be a good replacement?

I realize I'm asking a ton of questions and perhaps not very clearly. One thing that is clear .. I am grasping at straws. I won't be able to get a decent replacement for a while.

By contract, my Gateway MA7, which is almost 6 years old, and runs on only 2MB of RAM is a dependable workhorse of a machine and I am sick that the Acer, supposedly their better line, has such major issues so quickly.


BTW, the Timeline is used lightly (my Gateway is the workhorse) ... I surf the net, listen to music, travel with it. And it is clean as a whistle ... I run Kaz and just switched to MSE when it started having problems, spyware, malware, cache, all of that stuff is clean and tweaked.

Any and all help, ideas, links to resources, whatever ... would be so appreciated.

And I'm sorry this is not more concise.

Thank you!

 

The only thing I can think of is to repaste the CPU/GPU and maybe the problem was a bad connection bewteen the core and the heat sink. For 400 you can get the new IB 11.6" replacement for the 1830T due out in a month or two. If you hit a sale at staples you can get a Samsung 11.6" I3 notebook for >$400. I don't think the repair is worth it, since you get better graphics from a new core and a full year warranty (although for the future, the extended 3 year would have only cost $170 )

 

Bronsky, Thank you. Can you expand ... what is IB 11.6" (what does IB stand for?).

Yes, well the extended warranty. Hind-sight.

How can I test the fan on the laptop? I am not convinced it's working. I installed SpeedFan but it doesn't acknowledge/find the fan or allow me to change the speed.

I'm unwilling to accept the motherboard diagnosis until I do more of my own testing. B/c the repair guy told me there were no issues with the computer, and when I asked what he found about the over-heating he said, uh, oh I forgot to look at that (the only reason I brought it in) ... and quickly diagnosed 'fried motherboard'.

I will try to reach him tomorrow and find out exactly what tests he did.

Thanks for your reply Bronsky. I like the saying under your name 'wait and hope'. My new mantra.

 

IB = Ivy Bridge Look at the V5. http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/649880-upcoming-acer-laptops.html

You might download 1810tray which can help you control your fans. http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/421850-1810tray.html

 

Thanks Bronsky. Will try that for the fan.