Acer Aspire 8930G issue

Hey guys,

So i got this laptop a week now, and i'm starting having issues gaming on it.

Everytime i play for 5min the power adapter shuts off and somtimes the screen goes black,

When i restart the laptop the battery is completely drained.

Do i have to buy a new battery or new power adapter? cause i can only afford one thing atm.

 

Anyone know?

 

Make a picture of the adapter's label and post it here.

 

Ok will do, thanks for the reply!

 

Alright here it is.



I noticed it's only 65W, online there are 90W and 150W's for the laptop, could the charger be to weak for gaming?

EDIT: I've searched for some reviews, alot have said that it overheats quickly, could this be my issue too?

 

At the very least you need 90W PSU! I think those systems were shipped with 120W adapters, the display alone could consume upwards of 10W at max brightness and then we have CPU (35W) and GPU (45W) and the rest of the system as well.

 

Ok, so getting a new power adapter will fix my issue?

 

If it's clean and with freshly applied thermal paste, then yes. If not, probably this would be your next issue - thermal throttling

 

I did that already 2 days ago, cpu and gpu aren't that hot while gaming.

GPU gets 70-80c when gaming.

But you didn't answered my question, if i get a 90w power adapter it won't shut off again?
65W is too low, like you said, that might be the reason why it keeps shutting off when gaming.

 

Well as I said 90W is not exactly the best solution and most likely than not you'll be pushing it to the limits. If you get a quality one, it would handle the load since they usually can go a bit higher than rated, but forget about playing a game and charging the battery for example. The best option is to get 120W adapter. You can do the math from what I wrote above. Usually, while charging, laptops consume around 80W, subtract 25-30W for idling system and you get 50-55W for charging the battery. Add that to the above (CPU+GPU+display+system itself (HDD+RAM+chip-set)) and you'll see how much is optimal for your system. Hope this helps, good luck!

To help you with calculations, it's above 120W to be on the safe side. Also if you are still thinking about that 3700M, you better get a 150W or 180W one. It's the more the better, but 120W should suffice.

 

I don't have the money to get a 120W, the one's i can find locally are 90W and 150W.
Only the 90W is in my price range atm, yes i'm that poor unfortunately.

What if i removed the battery? cause i never use it anyway, it's purely for playing WoW and LOTRO.

I'll stick with the 9700M GT for now, i think i'll only upgrade the CPU and stay with it till i can buy a new laptop.

If what you said is true, then i should be fine if i leave the battery out of the system and game without it?

 

Removing the battery will not help. As a matter of fact the only reason your laptop works under load with 65W PSU is because it was supplementing power that PSU wasn't providing with battery power (that's why the battery would go flat).
If you have your battery charged and in the laptop it's not using any power so removing it will not help in any way.

BTW I agree with truturbo that a wrong PSU is your problem.

 

^ What he said.

You can check the after-market USNA 120 (the one I'm using), if it's still not in your price range, then 90W it is. You should be able to play without issues, but you'll be pushing it hard.

 

But that USNA 120 uses 20v, while the one's for this laptop use 19v, or doesn't that matter much?

And well it's close to 90 euro's, while the 150W i can get for 50.

It's Cooler Master, so it's probably of high quality, but i don't want to pay that much.
I'll try the 90W, when i get it tomorrow i'll report back if the problem is gone or not.

EDIT: Ok, i ordered the adapter, but after ordering it something caught my attention, the connector size is 5.5mm * 2,5mm, some have 5.5mm * 1,7mm, does that matter?

EDIT2: Well i was lucky, i emailed their customer support and got a response within 2 hours, they changed my order so i get a 1.7mm now.

 

Ok now i can game without PSU shutting down, so that problem is gone.

But now when gaming, if the gpu reaches 87c the gpu usage goes down to 10-30%.

I cleaned the heatsinks 2 times and repaste, i don't know what else i could do.

What was nvidia thinking making these cards when it can't even handle 99% load?

Are there any better fans i can get for this laptop? or any modding i could do that will help?

 

Download ThrottleStop, Turn it on and see how it behaves. Be advised that the temps may (most likely will) go above 90 which is not good for the hardware (GPU in this case).

There are, but would require rework of the heat-sink in order to be fitted/mounted.

 

Isn't ThrottleStop only for CPU's?

And a update, the CPU arrived today, it was brand new after all, but the laptop wouldn't boot so i'm selling it to buy a cooling pad.

Will the Notepal U3 Plus be good enough?

EDIT: Throttlestop doesn't seem to work, GPU usage is still going downwards after 80c+.

EDIT2: Ok, i took my time to undervolt everything, CPU is running at 1.1375v instead of 1.1500v and i flashed the GPU undervolted at 0.89v.
Played some games at full load, no bsod so far, even OC'd the GPU a bit, 575>625 on the core and 800>825 on the memory.

OC'd the card ran too hot, it was reaching 87c already, but didn't saw much performance boost from 575 so put it back to stock.

 

What exactly did You do with Throttlestop? Throttling might not be caused by gpu. Try to lock chipset modulation to 100% and see if it's throttling well.
About quad support. There is only one revision of motherboard supporting quads, it's MB.ASZ0B.004. The other one MBASZ0B001 is only for duals. I don't think that Acer sold 8930g version with quad motherboard and dual processor. Basically if You have laptop with q9000 then it's OK but if You have dual core then motherboard is designed only for them. I'm not 100% sure about that, I might be wrong, but everything point to that. What's the easiest way to recognise which revision You have. Check VRM mosfets next to the cpu socket. If You have something like this:
, then it's dual core version.
On the other hand if it looks like this:
it's quad supporting motherboard.

8930g have quite a lot ventilation holes in bottom cover, so Notepal U3 Plus could be beneficial in lowering temps and I think it's big enough for for 18.4" laptops. But If You want go this way then I would advise You to buy some aluminium or copper RAM, memory heatsinks and sticking them to the gpu heatsink, because it's a lot of free space there:

and it would be shame to wasted it by leaving bare like it is now.

But being honest laptop with such big radiator for gpu shouldn't overheat at all:
.
Not fat enough heatpipe it's probably cause of that. If I would be doing that I would probably add second heatpipe to the existing to overcome overheating, but it's much more work with modding that.