Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

Hello all!

I've got the 5740g with i3 330m and radeon 5470 512mb, 3GB ram.

It's performance have been really bad for a long time even though I have reinstalled windows, I have tried linux etc. A couple of days ago I tried to dissasemble it to see if there was dust problems or the like.. didn't get very far but when I put it back together I didn't insert the battery. And since everything has just been going smooth as hell. Before even browsing was a mess but now it feels like I've got a brand new laptop! So I have known that the battery have been dead for a long time, it doesn't last longer than 1-2 minutes without power cord. However , I didn't know that a messed up battery would ruin performance totally.. wish I knew this a year ago, LOL!

However.. now after this. gaming performance is up dramatically too. But I want to see if I can do anything more to speed it up. I'm considering to upgrade to 8 GB ram and maybe get a SSD harddrive. Btw, should I use 200 or 204 pin ram sticks? what speed works? 1066mhz fastest supported?

And as far as the GPU. I overclocked it a little to see how much I could improve performance but It gets hot as hell and reached 93 degree C. So I put it back to stock temperature and it still gets 95!! How high temperature can the GPU handle? is this normal working temp or is it advisable to dissasemble and clean out dust n stuff?!? It's about 70 degree C in idle.. I'm using MSI afterburner to check temps

Thanks in advance.

 

Ok I found answer to heat problem.. I need to dissassemble, clean cooling system and apply new thermal paste.

 

Couldn't wait for the stores to open to buy thermal paste so I decided to open it up and clean it out... And holy . There was a huge furball totally covering the vent!!

Now the temperature is at 65 degrees C overclocked to 900/1000!!!

Amazing.

 

I've come back to respond to my earlier post:

downloads had replied:

It looks like this was the case. Nothing I did could get the speeds faster than USB 2.0. Just wanted to let everyone know my final outcome.

Although I am now looking into the i7 quad core upgrade since I already have 8GB DDR3 1333 installed...

 

Hello,
Does sopmeone knows if there is any reason to put a SATA III SSD to my Acer Aspire 5740g (like Samsung 830 Pro or OCZ Vertex 4, both ~500mb/sek read speed) compared to cheaper SATA II SSD drives? I mean I read somewhere that 5740g offers only SATA II speeds up to 270 mb/sec... is that correct?

 

Yes it is correct. Not only is it SATA II but it's also HM/PM55 chipset that has issues with 4K read/writes.
I use Samsung's SSD830 256GB and read/write speed is 210/230MB/s- not nearly what it would be with SATA III but still some 4 times faster than the default drive.

 

how change program open with P button? now i have outlook 2010 but i dont remember how i change this

 

Start Launch Manager through Start Menu and there will be a possibility to add or remove an application to/from the list.
I wouldn't show if you clinked on a tray icon if I remember correctly.

If this doesn't work for some reason it can be also changed via a registry tweak.

 

works perfectly! thanks dex

 

i search 2 minimum 24" monitors for my acer 5740g. what is the best choise for low price monitor? I will use this for DTP (indesign) - onw for workflow another for pallets.

 

Thanks downloads. I think i will get the same as you have then but 128GB and I will put HDD in place of optical drive. Do you know if any caddy will do or do i need to look for a specific one?

 

Probably any caddy would do as long as it's meant for SATA notebooks.

 

So I bought new RAM but the damn thing won't boot either windows or linux with it.

I got 2x4 GB corsair value select 1066mhz, 204 pin, non buffered , non ECC.

I have tried them both individually but I get blue screen a couple of seconds after windows starts loading. I upgraded bios to 1.16 from 1.09 to see if that would make any diffrence but to on avail. In bios it seems to load the RAM correctly though.

Did I buy wrong kind of RAM? or could it be faulty?

 

Just to let you know, new Tomb Raider on i5-430m and ATI 5650 700/900 is perfectly playable on medium details. Runs between 30-40 fps, sometimes 50 in closed enviroments. I'm running catalyst 12.10.
Game is cool btw

 

@thurizaz

Check what happens if you use an old memory bank and a new one (I assume 4GB new + 2GB old).
Test it both ways. On rare occasions something is off wither with timings or voltage and the lead module (in slot one- whichever it is in 5740G) would be the main one and the other one would run with the same voltage and timings the lead one does.

If it works as a mix but doesn't work on its own- it's this weird glitch.

 

Tried it, doesn't make any diffrence. I will see if I can try the ram sticks in another laptop.

 

I tried the RAM in another notebook and there they work fine. At the same time I decided to try the RAM of that notebook in my 5740g which is 1600mhz and that worked fine as well. Must be some compatibility issue with the corsair RAM.

 

Why you don't try with newest bios for 5740G ?

 

Yea that could be it. The newest one is 1.28.


I’ve run through most of this forum and saw that our 5740G CPU can be oc’ed trough setFSB, but could not find anyone confirm it.
So my question is does anybody finally tried and was successful in it? Specially i5-430m? I saw on setFSB official site that 5740G is no more supported (THE ONLY ONE! …God knows why!? ) BUT the option is still valid in new version. I am willing to pay for activation key but need to be sure that it works I read somewhere that it can be oc’ed to ~3.3 Ghz.. that would squeeze some additional ~10 fps in Starcraft 2 for me (and it’s important:thumbsup
My 128GB Samsung 830 SSD finally arrived today and will install it on the weekend. I will also do full disassembly of my laptop and clean it of the dust (almost 3 years now). My temps seem normal but I got a feeling that the fan gets crazy speeds when playing games. I also bought thermal paste Arctic Cooling 5 and I’m going to apply it on CPU. Does this paste can also be applied on GPU?

 

Yes it can be applied on the GPU too.

As for SetFSB I've never tried it- so nothing on it from me.

 

i got exactly the same idea like you, with the difference that i did it really!

this is how u get best xfi sound at acer 5740g:

Laptop: Acer Aspire 5740G
Adapter: Mini PCIe -> PCIe Raiser Card
12V Supply: 37Wh LiPo Battery pack
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Titanium







its works fine! the soundcard only needs 12V supply, else it will stuck at windows boot screen, 5V is not necessary. with my 37Wh LiPo battery pack im also still quite mobile! the soundcard takes around 3W in usage, so battery will last quite long.

as u can see i also opened the end of the pcie x1 port, so i can also plug in pcie x4 x8 or x16 cards and run them at x1 speed, i also tried running a amd radeon 6970 desktop card on his way but i actually didnt get any signal out of the card, i think this was only driver problem and amd drivers was messing with internal 5650 driver. i also tested a pcie x1 firewire card, works fine too, so i think almost any desktop card with pcie x1 should work on this way.


so do i become internet hero now?

 

Not sure about “hero”, but you definitely gained the perk “inventor” from me Although I would never do that to my Laptop It looks like abomination now A proper Creative 2.1 is enough for me.
Gratz!

 

Hey guys.Recently my default HDD(which was replaced once while still in warranty) gave me few current pending sector count and a game folder with some game files got unreadable.I couldn't access it nor delete it so i got about 800MB of lost HDD space.It also was freezing my PC for like 30-60 sec when i was watching movies.Probably because windows was trying to access that corrupted folder for caching or something.I ran checkdisk and it found some problems and stuff(the current pending sector also dropped to 1).After that i deleted the files in that folder,but few of them were always reappearing on refresh.I downloaded the game files into a different folder and tried to copy the reappearing files from the new folder to the corrupted ones to overwrite them.This seem to have helped since i could finally delete them for good.I wrote this for anyone that get in the same situation and maybe this could help them.

Anyway,on to the point now.I decided that if i started getting pending sectors maybe the HDD is starting to die,which is about time i guess since i got it replaced few months after i bough the laptop almost 3 years ago.And with my intense gaming and frequent high temps around 80C im glad it lasted that long.So i bought a 750GB WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM HDD.The thing is that when i put my fingers or my palm on the surface around the touch pad i can feel vibrations which i didn't with my old 5400RPM blue HDD.Is that normal or maybe i need to check and tighten the screws on the HDD case better?

 

That is normal- 7200rpm driver vibrate more than 5400rpm ones.

 

Also, you can buy a SSD – no vibration at all I just installed my new 128GB Samsung 830 on Sunday and so far I’m loving it. Windows 7 boots in 18 seconds, Stacraft 2 levels are loading 2 or 3 times faster. Now I need to buy caddy to replace my optical drive with 320GB Hitachi that I had.
@Downloads, I’m thinking of upgrading CPU – do you know if it’s worth to change from i5-430m to i5-560m? If this +0.6 GHz could really help? I like to play some games (mainly SC2, now incoming Bioshock Infinite… . Or should I opt for i7-620m or even quad core? I know that Quads are getting hot like hell in laptops… thanks

 

Actually I did change Core i5 430M to Core i5 560M. There is quite a difference between the two (although GPU is a bottleneck in games anyway).
Core i5 560M and 580M are on par with Core i7 620M and 640M so i5 560M would make more sense in terms of money spent.

As for quad cores- I'm not a big fan of 45W CPUs and I wouldn't want one although they do help a lot in those apps that can use 4 cores properly.

 

No thank you.I'm not buying SSD anytime soon with current price per GB.Besides i bought the new drive by necessity not by choice.I needed the laptop when i was studying in a different town,but now i don't actually need mobility so I'm actually looking at moving to a Gaming Desktop when i have the chance and funds to do so.So I'm not interested in upgrading the laptop.

 

So it turned out that setFSB doesn’t support our 5740G clock generator – no CPU o/c for now. I hope Abo will resolve this in the future.
So I think I will upgrade my i5-430m to i5-560m now. With this I have a question…
As you already know I disassembled my 5740G recently to clean it, as I had a feeling the fan turns on more frequent then 2 years ago. At the same time I changed compound to Arctic Silver 5. I have just put a small dot on CPU and GPU and then squeeze it with heatsink. In HWMonitor, idle CPU shows ~45C and GPU ~55C. After playing Starcraft 2 for an hour, max CPU showed ~75C and GPU (oc’ed 700/900) also ~75C. But what’s weird is that when idle, the cpu temp jumps between few degrees up and down constantly 44-48C - it’s almost never stable.
I have a feeling that before changing compound it was more stable and lower (around 40). But this is only MAYBE (curse me for not writing down temps before dissmantling… . My room temp is around 23C and laptop standing still on the wooden table.
So what are your temps downloads and how did you apply thermal compound? Only on cpu or also on heatsink? Was it dot or line or you spread it on both?
Second question – after I reinstalled win 7 on SSD I have unknown device in device manager – PCI communication device. I have no idea what it is, as I have installed every driver: lan, wifi, card reader, touchpad, ati, cpu, sound… everything works… what else is in our laptop?
Many thanks

 

I have roughly the same temps as you. With similar room temperature I see the same idle temps you do and I never see it go down to 40*C.
Also-coincidently- I used the same thermal paste and applied it in the same manner. The correct manner to apply it is only on CPU and GPU and them press the heatsink down.
Your temps are OK so I wouldn't be bothered about it.

As for the PCI comm device- there was something that wouldn't install automatically but I can;t remember what was it? Anyone remembers- we've had that a few times in the thread but I could never remember what was the device- someone always cam to the rescue

 

Hah thanks, i guess I will have to go through this topic now To be honest that will be my first time (as i visited some pages trough google search on specific issues) so maybe I will also find some useful information Well, I have some free time in my work so...

edit: got it, its on page 169
btw: i installed launch manager to set up "P" key, but it doesn't show in start menu... why is that?

 

Hello to anyone in the forum I am a new member and a very satisfied owner of an acer 5740g : I want to share this experience with all of you. Well daerragh, if you got some doubt about an i7 840qm temperature just don't worry, I just put it on my notebook and let me tell you that it works like a charm without any problem, and you know what? with this processor the mainboard can handle even 16gb of ram (2x8 1333mhz Geil modules) I'm so happy about that even because when i tried to upgrade the ram at 16gb with its own cpu (i7 620 m ) what I got was a sad crashing loop on posting : that was very frustrating, so I accepted the challenge ,(I love challenges) I read on alienware forum that someone tried with success to put 16gb in their laptops but only with the i7 quad core because the dual core ones even the 620m could not be able to address all the 16gb I even tried to put one only 8gb module but same result crash on booting, and i was concerned about the fact that they put on their alienware not 2x8gb but 4x4gb because they had 4 available slots in their laptops , so I was worried even about a mainboard limitation for 8gb modules but when I installed the 840qm everything just worked fine ! : the bios (v 1.28) recognized both the new processor and the 16gb of ram without any sort of problem but i had to reactivate windows (by the way is a windows 7 64bit) because of an hardware variation but not other issues. As soon as i can i wil post some screenshot of cpuz and realtemp . my windows index points increased from 6,9 (620m) to7.2 (840qm) and from 6,9 (2x4gb 1066) to 7,4 (2x8gb 1333) for the memory I hope this will be a good news for you all.

 

Here are some screenshot I promised to post: for any question I will be happy to reply. By the way, I didn't use any special thermal compound, just simple siliconic paste but i had just cleaned off all the woolish compressed dirty from fan and above all from between the fan case that needs to be dismantled and the heatsink fins : to have a cool laptop this operation should be done at least once a year I know it's an annoying job but necessary

 

Temps in full load for 20-30 minutes ?

 

Ies, playing medal of honor warfighter for about 40 minuts : before taking off all the dust from heatsink fins and fan, on 620m the cpu could hit 100-102c and I was having several temperature warning sounds from real temp software but never again since I did the cleaning.

 

Hello... m having 5740g since 2.5 years. but now the battery has died and i have to use charger all the time. i wanna buy a replacement battery but m having some doubts. my battery is AS07A31 , 10.8V , 4400mah . however the battery m looking to buy is 11.1V ASO7A41 4400 MAH. i saw ones with 11.1v and 5400mah too.. it says itz compatible with acer 5740g . can someone help me out? should i buy this?

 

11.1V will work fine too.

As for 5400mAh- I doubt that's possible. The battery would have to have bigger dimensions so unless it's one of those batteries that stick out of the back and raise the notebook (I have one like this but 8800mAh) it's probably a hoax.

 

These are really nice temps boazzz. I have a one question though.
Has this change improved your framerate in gaming? I am wondering, because in our 5740G, the weak (yes, it is 3 years old...) GPU 5650m can be a bottleneck to CPU. I am also planning to change for faster CPU but first I need to be sure if it will improve on one particular game - I want to do that only to play Starcraft 2, which is very CPU demending. I checked at this site
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty GPU & CPU Performance > CPU and Multi-core Performance - TechSpot
that improving CPU, mainly with higher L3 cache, had great effect on SC2 framerate, but those tests were done on high-end GPU so it wasn't stopping CPU.
So I ran my test: I opened the Windows Task Manager and after playing SC2 for 30 minutes (intense battles) I checked CPU usage. It almost never reached 100%, so I guess this test proved that GPU is blocking my CPU. And I have i5-430m. But I would really want this to be confirmed by someone that switched for better CPU (like you boazzz ).
Now don't get me wrong, I can easily play SC2 on /mediumhigh details with framerates 30-50. but sometimes (when there's a lot going on, lots of units) it can drop to 15-20, which is unacceptable for me. I am just not willing to pay money for new CPU to find out that I didn't gain anything.
So what do you think?

 

Actually I made some other cpu stress with intel burn test on maximum stress (about 30 mins) and i reached 85-89c, still acceptable temp. About your framerate question maybe a quad core one could handle starcraft 2 better since this game has multi-core support but honestly I think that you wouldn't improve much the framerate above all for the ati 5650 performance limit : don't get me wrong , the 5650 is still a dignitous video card but surely not an high end one!

 

Yeah i think so too. Guess i will stick to my i5-430m. I know that SC2 uses only two cores, so quad core is useless here. Maybe I will consider upgrade but only if I find a very cheap one. Cheers

 

Hello everyone

I am a new member and owner of a Acer 5740G at August 2010.
My compliments for this helpfull and interesting thread to downloads and all the others,
I ve read it from the beginning with pleasure and interesse.

Strange that I never saw this thread before a few weeks ago, when I want to upgrade the cpu,
go from i3-330M to i7-640M, have 5470 gpu , hd 320Gb WD 7200 and 3Gb ram,
trippelboot W7Ulti32b ,Wxpsp2 and W98Dos, where i can start Biosflash and Ghost.

I never had problems, but with the cpu upgrade, just like downloads,
I forgot to update the bios from 1.22 to 1.28.
Strange, cpu 520to560 or 620to640 is only a matter of multiplicator ?

For the safe side I made my heatsink a bit larger but have no problem with temps,
46*C idle by 1450Mhz and max. 83*C under stresstest by 21*C roomtemp.
@ 3100Mhz Dualcore

After I screw the heatsink on, I loosening the cpu in the socket for 5 a 6 times so the cpu can align itself. (I think ?)

@boazzz Compliments for your upgrade, but beside de risk of heath,
you also have the risk to destroy your voltageregulators on your mobo,
if its designed for TDP35W

@phoenix222 Also very nice, can you test a USB3 card with transfer speed ?


Sorry for my english, keep up the good thing.

 

In the thread " tdp of a laptop" , Prostar Computer said: As long as the processor you are intending to purchase for upgrade is supported by your current board, that is all you need. What you need to worry about more when it comes to TDP is both what others have mentioned about the cooling solution, as well as the power draw from the brick. As long as your brick/AC adapter provides enough watts, you should have no problems.

The motherboard just provides an interface. It does not depict power draw/consumption nor cooling capabilities.

And I would say that my power brick is capable of 90w output that should be more than enough since it never got hot after the upgrade to the quad core even during high power comsumption activities i.e. last generation games or cpu stress tests .

 

Hi Daerrag, I was wondering about the way you found to adapt the quad cpu on the dual core heatsink: because i realized that the 840qm has a larger surface of contact with the heatsink than the dual core and I had to detach the black square frame from the heatsink because the 840 was n't small enough to be surrounded by it : same problem with the copper plate that wasn't big enough to cover all the top area of the cpu that in this way was partially contacting even the alluminium portion of heatsink ; you said you used coollant artic pro that is well known as very corrosive with alluminium and that it must be used only on copper heatsinks surface so how did you manage with it ? did you have the same problem I had or what ? cheers , Boazz

 

Hi.
Ok, I have run more tests with MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner OSD.
Playing SC2 and Bad Company 2 for an hour show that my i5-430M 2,57 GHz, is used in an average of 60%, while GPU is non-stop 100% load.
Final conclusion is – don’t waste money on upgrading your CPU unless you want to use some CPU extensive graphics software like Photoshop etc.
Not for gaming that is, the GPU will block you (even O/C to 700/900). Cheers

 

Bioshock Infinite inbuilt benchmark:

Average fps: 32fps

Details medium, 1366x768, Cats 13.1 GPU at 670/900

 

@boazzz
Yes, sorry, you have even more dan right, when I found the schematics of this lappy I saw that its
even made for clarkfield and arrandale cpu, when it detect clarkfield, it raise the cpu voltage from
1.05 to 1.1 volts.

@ To All
So, I saw something more interesting about the minicards, the support both pci-e and usb lanes, so it must be posibble to connect usb3 card on it !!!

If I look to a desktop ext. usb3, there is place to connect a 12v5v con. so i think we missed something.

I search for it, let you now !!

 

@retarp
Try it in the other minicardslot, free one have a resitor in the 5v supplyline so it is current limited,
please let me no if its work, I am also looking for USB3.

 

Hello Everyone !

I have question about backlited keyboard for our fantastic lappy Does anybody succesful upgraded ? Thanks for reply.

 

Hi , prod_one: ies, you can upgrade to a backlit keyboard : the acer aspire 5810t backlited one is exactly the same of the 5740 but it has backlit ; the only problem is that our mainboard does not have the connector for the backlit power source flat cable (the slim one) so you will have to get this power somewhere else on the mainboard . I got it from the usb board on the right hand side of the notebook , it will give 5 volts that 's the exact voltage it needs: of course you will need to dismantle the notebook to operate on the mainboard ; an usb port has four pins, the external two are positive and negative 5 volts , one problem is that usb ports are always active when the notebook is on so or you will have backlite always on or you wil have to put a device to turn it on and off whenever you want. I did so putting a mini switch taken from a broken walkman on the Kensington hole (I had to take off the metal plate in the inner side) and more as this kind of keyboard is a bit thicker than the original : you will have to lower the metal edge sourronding the keyboard in the zones connected to the clips of the notebook (14 in total). If you want to have a detailed procedure of this mod, you can have a look at "Acer TimelineX 3820 backlit keyboard mod", it's related to a different notebook but still very useful!!! cheers boazz

 

Thank you boazzz for fast reply It's look great ! When I will upgrade cpu to i7-640m i will try to make this mod for lappy

EDIT:

@boazzz - do you have maybe sticker on lappy surface ? It's really good looking...

 

Hi , prod_one , actually that picture it's not showing my laptop , it has been taken from the acer timelineX 3820 backlit mod forum just to demonstrate that it's possible to do the upgrade on acer aspire 5740g anyway I'm going to take a picture of mine to show you the result cheers , boazz