Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

Why you dont want i7 ?, thin layer on whole cpu was worse ?

 

Arctic Silver 5 have curing time up to 200 hours & several thermal cycles before you can get optimum results. Re-applying thermal paste won't do any good.

 

Just to be sure we're all on the same page about Arctic Silver 5 the curing time is up to 200 hours and requires several power on / off heating and cooling cycles. The final cured paste will be 2 to 5C cooler than when first applied. If your CPU is getting up to 96 and it should be much lower then waiting for it to cure will be futile, as you might have far too much or poor coverage.

Since you've introduced two variables, one changing the CPU and one applying thermal compound, you can't be sure which is the real problem. It may well be that at full load the CPU you've put in simply can't be cooled down much better by the cooling system in the 5740G. Given how cool most 5740Gs run, I'd be tempted to think that you've got a poor thermal interface.

There are two methods to apply thermal compound. One is to use a 1/8" to 3/16" single ball sized lump placed in the middle of the GPU and CPU and press the heatsink down while twisting a bit, and to never let back up as you compress it. This will result in a slightly thick but very even application that covers about 75% to 85% of the mating surfaces. For beginners or heat sinks / spreaders that are not perfectly flat, this method is preferred. The other method is to preapply the compound to ONE surface only, and to get it VERY VERY thin. Assuming that the two surfaces have been lapped properly flat, and only micron size roughness is present, this method is preferred. The layer should be SO THIN that you can read the printing on the top of the CPU through it.

If you're not sure how thin to make it, or how flat the mating surfaces are, the small pea size glob method is a less error prone method.

If you work in a laptop factory you apply it with a caulking gun then slap in the heat sink and move on to the next unit without testing it.

 

96degree is not real , why it is not higher ? why cpu not downclock or throttle down?

 

Core i5 1st gen don't clock down forcibly until 105C, 2nd gen core i5 forcibly clocks down at 100C. My i5 460M runs in the 90 to 95C range under full load in a 4820TG, a much hotter running machine than most 5740Gs.

 

BIOS programmer usually set "Passive Cooling Trip Point" lower than TjMax (105C for i5). This is the trip point where the processor speed is throttle down to prevent overheating. If I'm not mistaken the trip point on 5740G is set to 95C. And actually it's normal to see it reached 96C or 97C before the temp goes down. I stressed test my CPU for 15 minutes. I can go longer but the temps doesn't change much anymore. At the beginning the Core 4 (this core recorded highest temps than other core) can goes up to 96C/97C, then down to 90C - 94C, & then 88C - 90C for the rest of the stress test.

 

@ scud_svk - I don't want i7 because the fan never idle... maybe it's from my method of applying thermal compound, but when I put the 430m the fan start at 52-53 degree and stop on the 42-43 degree. So with the quad core the fan always run at min. rpm and keep it at ~50 degree. With the two core i7 COre number one stay at 42 degree and core number 2 never go down of 48 degree, so basically the fan never stop again. I don't play many games because I don't have a time to do it and I never felt my 430m weak, but I don't have a problem of giving a money for a fast processor and decide to try how will be with the i7... Truly the performance is very very big from 430m but obviously the hot weather here is not good for my 5740. The temperature in my room never go down of 35 degrees.

 

To clear some things out:

• "Passive Cooling Trip Point" in 5740G is set on 90C. For every CPU.
• Fan never kicks in on full speed when controlled by BIOS - by setting it manually using RW-Everything you can achieve more RPM (@kizwan: can this be corrected by modding BIOS a little? )
• From above posts and my own experience I assume that applying thermal compound using thin but not transluced layer is very error prone (air bubbles, unfilled micro scratches etc...). Today I will find out whether rice grain method is better or not (Soon I'll start disassembling my laptop on time Yesterday it took me 5 hours to replace the CPU ).
• Copper heatsink used in our laptop is not perfectly flat - one can see a lot of scratches on it's surface, even deep ones. Having that in mind one shouldn't apply transulcent layer of thermal compund
• But on the other hand - overclocked GPU temperature after using AS5 felt down by 1.5C - this can be proof that I've applied it correctly, at least on gpu...

Any hints before I start disassembly procces will be appreciated.

EDIT: I've decided to experiment with the compound on my old Compal HEL80 in order to gain some experience I've tried the rice grain method -> as you can see in the attachment the layer is uneven - it's thicker in places where you screw on last screws (in inverse order, 4 to 1, last means the "1"). Any ideas how to improve this technique? Or it's not that so important?


@ka4o_pi4a:
Fan never idles also in my case, both on i3-330m or i5-560m. It was idling when my computer was new IMO everything depends on apps running in background...

Sxooter:
Thank you very much for your anticipation in discussion. You have answered all my questions and helped me to understand the idea of using thermal compound .

 

Sir Ferdek, how easy was it opening up the 5740? I'm sort of interested in doing it except I wanted to wait 2 years before opening it, as opposed to now at only one year. Did the heatsink have a lot of dust in it? Major dust patches on the motherboard?

 

First time needs a lot of patience - there are a lot of latches you don't want to broke. Briefly speaking - follow the service manual and you wont do anything wrong. Heatsink is cleverly designed: distance between badges is big enough for the hair and dust to go through (in opposition to my old Compal which required cleaning every month or two). I haven't noticed any dust patches on motherboard, dust accomodates only in fan area (which is not a problem IMO).

 

Alright, that's cool.

One of the things that slightly irks me about the 5740 as opposed to other laptops that I've opened up is that the 5740 seems to have many parts that click and lock together, and it's stressful to "force" those pieces apart. You never know what's going to happen.

Good info.

 

I believe that the fan must idle from time to time - if I start the machine in save mode it run without stop again... Maybe I'll try to reapply the thermal compound again but using other way to spread it. I reassemble my 5740G 5 times up to now

 

Rice grain or 'dot' in the middle of the CPU - this is what I'm going to try now.

Masters of reassembly... This is what we are going to become.

There was a few moments I almost died when some of laches released the cover

 

Man, make a "dot" spread and give some results... you have to catch me maybe I'm the leader of disassembly

 

Layer worked best for me.. i still haven't seen my cpu or gpu go over 80'C while gaming.

 

What CPU are you using? What I've noticed after removing the heatsink is that using the layer makes small airbubbles :/

@ka4o_pi4a:
I've already used rice grain method at this time. Results? My laptop is still overheating on OC'ed GPU BUT after much much longer time period. I hope that the burn-in process of thermal compound will reduce this effect. However, it would be nice if kizwan was able to make the fan spin faster on high temps or push the passive trip point little further.

EDIT:
woah, at least now I'm sure that thermal compound is applied properly on GPU - while stressing oc'ed GPU ONLY it can't reach 68C

CPU only - 82C on automatic fan control, 74C on max speed (8C difference!!!)

CPU+GPU still gives me overheating on automatic control (after approx. 20 minutes of heavy stress-testing). IMHO it looks like I've exceeded thermal efficiency of cooling system. Anyone share my opinion?

 

cpu-83(45w) gpu-69(26w),cpu only, gpu only

 

MERCI! Muchos Gracias! Finally!
So it looks like my temperatures are freaking normal now. I just wonder why it's overheating then...

I'll wait for Downloads to install his CPU and see whether he also has problems with overheating.

 

Max TDP of your cpu is 35tdp with IGP, my is 45 without igp and difference is 1degree, i used mx-2

 

I don't understand what you are trying to tell me. I'm not using IGP as I have Radeon installed in my laptop...
BTW: are we both talking about i5 series CPU?

 

your cpu has lower tdp than my and difference is only 1degree( i know, you dont using igp 35w tdp of you cpu is including cpu and igp)

 

No you're not- you're talking about Core i5 while scud_svk is talking about his Core i7 720QM. Well it's either that or I got lost in the conversation

Anyhow- I'm still waiting for my CPU to arrive and to be honest I'm glad it didn't.
I have so much work (I'm working as we speak at midnight) that I wouldn't have time to install it. At least it's not tempting me
I expect it to arrive later in the week and by that time I will have already finished the project that keeps me busy.

@Sir Ferdek
Could you post a CPU-Z screenshot or something? I'm wondering if it's not an Engineering Sample or something.

 

What is differences between Engineering Sample and retail cpu ?
@Sir Ferdek
Did you disassemble clean your fan?

 

It's hard to tell not having access to Intel's labs but the point is that ES is not a finished CPU- it's sort of beta, for internal use only.
As an effect retail CPUs have all the improvements implemented while ES are the ones that needed some refining.
As a result some ES CPUs were getting hotter than retail ones- possibly needed some tweaks/changes in power management department.
Maybe that's the case with these i560s- but that's just a thought.

 

When I stress only the OC-ed (700-900) GPU and processor freq. locked at 1.1 GHz I get 77-78 degree of the video. When unlock the CPU freq. (3.32 GHz) the GPU temp goes up to 81 degree maximum. Obviously my spread method isn't good When I stress only the CPU it reach 78-80 degrees.

 

What spread method did you use?
I'm getting the same results!!! (Have in mind that you are overclocking your GPU really hard - 670MHz gives 68C, so 700 is likely to give more heat.) Are we both making the same mistakes when applying thermal compound? xD
BTW: How much time did it take you to reassembly your laptop? Yesterday I did it in 1:05h
To summarize my research:
Room temperature: 23C
CPU (i5-560m) only torture-test: 82C max
GPU (HD5650@670/990) only torture-test: 68C max (this is nice)
CPU+GPU (oc'ed) torture-test: GPU 82C max, CPU is overheating after long time period in automatic fan cotrol

@Downloads:
Here you go:
CPU-Z - Zgredeq's library

@scud_svk:
No, I didn't. I though it's clean enough (Lol please don't tell me to reassemble my laptop once again...)

EDIT
New screenshot:
http://screencast.com/t/vmJRbM8p
have fun
Overheating occured after 52 minutes of torturing... It slowly rose from 85 to 92.
I'm really frustrated now... Dunno what to do.

EDIT2
I've just though... Maybe the BIOS version I'm using is screwed up (v1.28 before the magic disappearance). Shouldn't the fan be working on FULL speed to prevent overheating (you can achieve it by controlling the fan manually)? I've already reported BIOS mod request to kizwan to fix that and I wonder if it was right.

EDIT3
Kizwan said it's possible but he doesn't support it

EDIT4
This is becoming like my blog but I just want to share everything with you
I disassembled it for the 3th time... It took me 55 minutes this time. Now I'm stress testing my laptop but first impression is that finally I've developed effective method - if I confirm that, I'll post how I did it.

EDIT5
CPU only and GPU only stress tests give very little lower temps but overheating problem while torture-testing both of them still occurs. This time I've used 1,5 size of the rice grain on CPU and 1 rice grain on GPU and IGP. There is no other way - have to wait for the thermal compound curing process to end (200 hours and a few thermal cycles). ATM the best solution is to use RW-Everything for manual fan cotrol to prevent overheating. However, when playing games max temperature of CPU is only 86C, as prime95 is designed to push the CPU to the limit.

 

Hi,

I need help from anyone using caddy in the DVD drive bay. Please post the screenshot of the RW-Everything (Bus 0 : Device 1F : Function 2), for example like this:-


I also need the same screenshot from notebook with BIOS higher than v1.16 & unable to use caddy in the DVD drive bay (not detected).

Thank you.

 

There are some differences

edit: bios:1.28, I can use it(i didnt read it all )

 

Hi scud_svk,

Thank you very much. So, to confirm again, you can use caddy with BIOS 1.28?

 

@ Sir Ferdek - When I apply the new thermal compound I use a plastic hand bag to spread it all around the chip and then put the cooler on it. But also have it in your mind that I have this result with i7-620m ES and a room temperature from 33 to 36 degrees. I have this temps only on stress test - if I play some games I get around 5 degree less for the CPU and 10 for the GPU.

 

I have in caddy wd640, that was originaly as main hdd in this nb,it works but, when it was as system disk, it works without parking heads and now I wait until it starts 1-2 seconds . Im using bios 1.28.

 

Now I'm gonna sit and wait for the break-in period to pass... What' else can I do? I've tried different approaches, reassembled my laptop 3 times up to now and have enough of this. Tommorow I'm leaving for holidays. See you on 6.08.2011

While reassembling my lappy I noticed that we have one unused miniPCI-E port. Is it possible to install small SSD drive in that little bay?

 

It's probably possible but useless. You'd want to boot from SSD rather than from HDD and there's no option to boot from mini-PCIe.

 

Seems like i won't get my i5-560m :S ..I received the money back from the seller. Sent him email, will see what is going on.

 

Mobile Catalyst 11.7 released- links in the second post.

 

my i5 430 m has started idling at 60 degrees since today morning.till yeaterday it was 38 degrees @ idle. task manager is showing 25% memory usage and the max memory usage by the processes is by firefox..wats up with that??

EDit: solved the issue. msmpeng.exe was causing it(windows defender)

 

Ok my install of the 560m processor and 6200 wireless card went good, well apart from I spread the thermal paste too thin using a plastic sandwich bag first time round.
There were odd spikes in temperature, in the region of 20c a time which meant a stress test (Blend in Prime95) quickly had the CPU hit 90c and GPU (HD5650, stock clocks, 550mhz and 750mhz I think) 80c in about 30 seconds, so I opened it again today and reapplied thermal paste with a plastic card this time and have had the CPU sitting at about 80c for 10-15 mins now, it had quickly hit 65c then gradually rose to 75c until it has settled at 80c (doesn't seem to be getting any higher than that), GPU is running at about 70c so about 10c below CPU, but I sort of expect that because the i330m matched the GPU temps previously so the faster processor is bound to be higher, though 10c higher I'm not sure.

Processor idles between 42-48c, has the odd spike to 55c but cools down quite quickly, so quickly that I think the temp sensor is incorrect to a certain margin because as soon as I just stopped the stress test the temp dropped 20c in less than 5 seconds, then to 60c after about a minute it is down to 50c and nearing idle temps, the GPU was much more gradual and is resting between 50-55c, but at least I know the fan is working well

EDIT: I can only assume when the thermal paste has (cured?), the temps will get a bit better as well, the CPU has actually just dropped to 40c, same idle temp as my previous i330m and same temp as the HDD, good

As for the network card it is working well, connected to 5Ghz band on Router at full speed, though at 2.4Ghz it's between 130-144Mbps, yeah there are wireless g clients on the network but my brothers laptop (effectively the Packard Bell version of this laptop, same Atheros Card) is connecting to 2.4Ghz at 300Mbps with the wireless g clients on, so not sure why that is occurring but I'm happier using 5Ghz so doesn't bother me greatly just an oddity I wondered if anyone had an idea why.

So overall other than the thermal paste hiccup seems to be a successful upgrade, only the RAM and a possible HDD to SSD upgrade in the future (when prices come down a bit more) to go, though the RAM will be updated sometime in the next week, I noticed some RAM (8GB 1066Mhz Corsair) I was watching this time last month has come down from £80 to £45, I assume because there is a lot more supply than demand

EDIT: Oh and I'll thank Downloads for answering my questions earlier in the thread, when I was looking to upgrade both the processor and network card last week.

 

Oh yeah and by the way when I had disassembled the laptop I noticed something in there that I didn't recognise definitely, though I have an idea.

Under the heatsink assembly there is the CPU and GPU (obviously...) but directly above the GPU and to the upper right of the CPU there is another part that looks similar to the CPU and GPU but has a sort of sticky green rubbery plastic covering the metallic silver part of it, I suspect it is the Northbridge? But just want a sort of confirmation or what it could be.

Cheers

 

It is chipset (same heatpipe as cpu, but it is first)

 

On the Acer web site, one can download the "Intel Turbo Boost Technology Driver", as well as the "Intel Turbo Boost Technology Monitor". The monitor is a gadget, as we know, and is also available at Intel's web site. However, I only seem to be able to find the driver on OEM sites, like HP, or as in our case, Acer.

Why doesn't the driver download exist on Intel's site? Is there a point to install the driver on the 5740 when the turbo boost is active without installation?

Edit: Nevermind, I did find it. However, my question remains as to the point of installing it, since it seems that turbo boost works with the driver installed or not.

 

Hello. I have acer aspire 5740G, and my battery level is always less than 100% when its charging. (96% now). Why?

I have a friend, with 5740DG (i3 proccessor) and his battery is always 100% when pluged in.

Is there any problem with my battery, or transformer?

 

Because the battery doesn't start to charge before it drops below 95If you unplug it and let it drop to 94% and then plug it in it will charge up to 100%. Then again it will have to drop below 95% to start charging again.It is made this way intentionally.

 

My Core i5 560M arrived and I had to do some precision work as well- two of the CPU pins were not in line. I had to update BIOS as 1.16 didn't recognize the CPU which is what I expected but simply forgot to update before the upgrade

I did an a prime95 test for some 20min to check if it looked OK and got similar results to my original test done back when I bought the notebook (you can see it in first post)
While max temp has risen by several *C - from 82*C to 85*C it's basically the same if you consider that the thermal paste had been applied an hour ago and my original test was performed in March not in the middle of July.



I'll do some minor testing to see if games and benchmarks appreciate my new CPU

EDIT: All scores: Catalyst 11.7 & freqs 670/900

3DMark 11- 1255 (hardly any improvement- but it's not a CPU dependent benchmark)

3DMark 06- 8663 (that one is clearly more CPU dependent)

Crysis benchmark- up from 30fps (score from my original test) to 32.2 fps



EDIT 2:

Even though release notes for one of the earlier BIOSes claimed support for AES-NI had been disabled, on BIOS 1.28 hardware acceleration works. TrueCrypt benchmark provided a score of 821MB/s which means I wouldn't even notice having my data partition encrypted. I have to do some more testing before I do it but it's tempting

 

Why I have aes acceleration disabled? (i7, 1.28 bios)
edit: omg i5 560m have aes instruction and i7 720qm not

 

Hi friends, some time ago I posted here about a HD problem with agressive power management, and it seemed that the problem was fixed, on ubuntu, using the hd parm entry to stop headers from parking a lot of times. Since then, even using only AC power, my laptop health continued to deteriorate.

This is becoming a pain in the a**... I'm thinking of changing my linux distro to another which doesn't have these conflicts with our hardware. Any advise?

HD Tune: WDC WD6400BEVT-22A0RT0 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 200 200 51 489 Ok
(03) Spin Up Time 187 156 21 1650 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 90 90 0 10895 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 200 200 140 0 Ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 253 0 0 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 98 98 0 1827 Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 51 0 Ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 100 100 0 0 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 99 99 0 1161 Ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 1 1 0 557 Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 200 200 0 54 Ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 128 128 0 217179 Ok
(C2) Temperature 105 82 0 42 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 253 0 0 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 200 200 0 0 Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 100 253 51 0 Ok

Power On Time : 1827
Health Status : Ok

Marked with underline are the Load Cycle Count value. Comparing to the last report that I posted here it has increased a lot!

A few minutes before this I was browsing a forum with a similiar thread on this problem:

So if anyone knows, it seems this entry on hd parm goes away after shutdown..? Is this true?

 

Linux is not really responsible for this. If it wasn't for the drive you wouldn't have any issued with neither Linux nor Windows. It just happens that with these WD drivers and certain Linux distros it gets more prominent/visible.
Maybe it would be better to purchase a new HDD and use this one as occasional backup drive?

 

Yes, I've been thinking about that. What do you think about this disk?

Hitachi 5K320-250
Model: HTS543225L9A300 5400RPM

Code:

http://en.kioskea.net/guide/1094023-hitachi-travelstar-5k320-250gb-sataii-5400-rpm

here's a link with specs

Do you think I can put this on my laptop?

I'll send it to warranty, claiming my disk is full of errors and they probably replace it, then I'll bust the warranty replacing the disk with this one, perhaps. Or adding a permanent hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda to startup, but I'll have to look into this because I don't know yet how to do it.

 

It's a bit small which means it's also probably rather small (same rpm and less data density).
That said I have a Hitachi HTS545050B9A300 it's 500GB 5400rpm and it doesn't really park its heads- almost 11K unloads in almost 7K hours of operation.

Also there's no point in claiming that your harddrive is full of errors when it isn't. That would be fraud

 

Anybody try 11.7 drivers ? FPS in games ?

 

no difference