Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

just remove the thermal pad and put thermal paste instead.
I removed the pad and put thermal paste first thing after I bought the laptop, and that was 2 and a half years ago.

you could make an experiment, remove the pad and just put some paste and screw the sink in, then remove it and see for yourself that it makes perfect contact

 

Sorry for the confusion guys- I just couldn't believe that someone at Acer would be actually that stupid to use a thermal pad on HD5650-type of card and I couldn't find any photos with the heatpipe upside down to see for myself.

That is plainly ridiculous if GPU core is covered with a thermal pad but apparently it really is. Someone already replaced it ( here) and seemingly with good effects.

If you want to do this make sure that GPU makes full contact with a heatpipe and don't use a thick layer of thermal paste if it doesn't. Copper shim would be better for that.

 

Earlier posts in the thread (way back, too lazy to search now) suggest a copper shim was necessary to have the right contact and leveling. I'm rather hesitant to experiment with it and am looking to see if there's a general consensus.

How are your temperatures now (idle, load, gaming, etc.)?

 

on idle just browsing, skype, some youtube about 40C-45C, will play some FullHD movie tomorrow and see how hot it will get.

I always do gaming with a cooler and GPU Overclock so I can play with better graphics. so I haven't tested without a cooler.

Before I made the holes on the HDD cover, I would do Memory overclock: 1040Mhz and Coreclock: 650Mhz (715 is max, which I use now) I would get between 85C-90C on games like Deus Ex, Mass Effect, the Witcher 2. and now is 70C, that's why I'm saying if you have ATI 5650 and want to get the best out of it, go for it.
If you are confident in disassemling your laptop, because it's not an easy task, do it yourself; if not ,ask a friend to help you.
check videos on youtube how to change thermal paste etc.
and make the experiment I told you about to see that it makes perf contact and so you have peace of mind

 

Thx for the replies. Yea I'm comfortable with disassembling (did that a couple months ago to clean out dust, which reduced temperatures a great deal).

But I'm just nervous about screwing something up with the paste and having high temps or possibly causing damage.

 

If there is a thermal pad there, you shouldn't replace it with paste. Thermal pads are much thicker and using thick layer of paste is not a good idea especially that it will get dry and possibly crumble.
Using a copper shim would be ideal and could possibly reduce temperatures by a significant margin.

 

Exactly my thoughts, which is why I was dubious about removing the pad but not adding a shim. I'm having a hard time finding a consensus on the optimum size and thickness for a shim. Looks like most people settled on 0.8-1.0 mm. Area dimensions are another matter.

 

I had saved for half a year to buy this laptop do you think I was gonna risk damaging my laptop.

last time i changed the paste was 1 year and a half ago and last month when I changed it again it was still soft, and I didn't use excessive amount of paste, but ofc if you think u need a shim may be the best way to determine the area would be to open it up and measure the chip.

I think if you have a shim the top part would have to be completely covered with paste so it makes perfect contact with the and heatsink, so the shim is one with the sink and the heat transfer would be effective, because if it's not just think about it that way:

heat will go through the paste and hit the shim but it's not big enough so heat dissipation will not to be effective until it goes through another layer of paste and then hit the big heatsink.
measure the thickness of the thermal pad and then press with something, like the bottom of a glass, like the heatsink normally would and measure again you will see that you won't really need a shim.

anyway good luck and I hope you get your temps down

 

I'm using copper shim on mine, as the thermal pads I bought were useless, after foolishly throwing away the original one and using just thermal paste wasn't working, as there was small gap between heatsink and GPU and the notebook kept shutting down.

the way i have it is:

heatsink
thermal paste
copper shim
thermal paste
GPU

no issues whatsoever and temps dropped about 10 degrees compared to original pad.

oh and the shim I have:

Material: Copper
Dimensions: 20mm x 20mm x 0.8mm
Thermal Conductivity: 403W
Specific Heat Capacity: 0.38KJ

 

interesting, may be I'm lucky and my sink can get lower when screwed completely, i only have thermal paste and it's fine. anyway thanks for your feedback

 

I just opened up my 5742g this evening. The fan was almost completely blocked, had to disassemble it (removing screws etc.) to get the furballs out. Also removed all thermal pads (except for the gpu-memory), cleaned everything and did a repaste using Arctic Silver 5.

Before: around 60°C in idle, with throttling set to 1800mhz around 95-100°C while gaming.

After: 40-50°C in idle, 85-95°C without any throttling running at 2500-2700mhz. Really amazing how fast the machine works now!

 

*sigh* I loved this laptop, but last night it died. I think it's a mobo issue. Checked the RAM, HDD, power supply...

Did Acer make an upgraded/new version of this laptop I could buy new?

 

this laptop is 2 generations old (soon 3)

direct replacement was 4830TG

 

The 4830TG was intended to replace the 4820TG but the addition of a NVIDIA Fermi GPU unbalanced the performance of the notebook. The 4820TG was rather unique, much like the 3820TG, its sister notebook.

 

And to this day I don't think there has been an equivalent type of laptop with such a nice balance of price, performance, GPU, etc. Many have come close, but with Intel's improved iGPU the units with dedicated graphics have diminished. Sad.

 

does it turn on at all?

 

My 4820tg is not able to connect to my tv TOSHIBA 50L2200U using the HDMI cable..lappy is just not getting detected..any help guys?

 

what drivers do u use? try using the latest official drivers

 

are you on Intel or AMD GPU? Once the laptop is on battery it automatically reverts to Intel in order to save power.

Try to manually switch it to AMD (or leave it on mains power) and try then again.

 

I sometimes wonder what will happen if my laptop/windows get corrupt to the point of reinstallation.I don't know how to install windows and the drivers associated with this laptop.

 

we shall help you then

 

I have a 4820TG with 5650 gpu and Windows 7 64 bit. The last time I updated graphics drivers was about seven months ago. A lot had changed after that and I'm kinda confused now.
When I try to download using AMD's latest catalyst mobility downloader it doesn't download the driver and showing the error "Your version of graphics adapter is not supported". So, what's last version of driver that I can install? Also a few pages back people mentioned leshcat's drivers, does it work with my 5650 Gpu? Is installing it too risky for my GPU? Also I found that a version 9 of Acer AMD driver can be downloaded from Acer's site under 4820T downloads and it's for Win 8. Is it safe to install version 9 Acer AMD driver for win 8 on my laptop which has win 7 64 bit?

Will some body here please guide me, how to update my graphics drivers to latest version(5650 gpu,Win 7 64 bit). Appreciate any help, thanks.

 

I would wait for the updated acer v5 or v7 series, GT7XXm or hd8750, 1920x1080 resolution ips, start at $499 and should be out by the end of next month.

 

Please some one help me on this..

 

dont update I have to say if it works dont try to break it it's an old laptop now, u wont get miracles out of the latest drivers

 

Thanks for the reply friend. It's just that I want to play an upcoming game,which may require the latest drivers to work properly. Also flash plugin's acting crazy for sometime now. I can see that u have the same model as me. Which driver version you have last installed.

 

update your flash player.
I played Tomb Raider 2013 just fine with these drivers )

 

Hello everyone, I was lurking on that thread to find everything about my lovely 4820 but now I need some help.

I had to reinstall W7 and everything after my SSD locked my 4820TG in hibernation mode (I have now painfully learned SSD and Hibernation does not get along well).

Ever since that reinstallation, I can't use switchable graphics, I always have to be on discrete in the bios otherwise, when i boot my laptop I end up on a blackscreen, the sound works, my SSD led shows it's loading fine, so it seems to work well except for the screen.

After digging playing with drivers I figured out probably ATI newest driver would cause this, and a recent page in that thread proved me right.
Since it was not working, I decided to disable my Intel HD graphics in device management.

But as I figured out the driver issue, I wanted to use it again, but I could not reactivate it, I tried to reinstall it manually but W7 does not seem to fully detect it( it says the location is unknown, which makes me believe it can't see it anymore).

Now firstly I don't know if it is because I am still in discrete mode,
Secondly when I activate Switchable I end up with the same black screen
Thirdly , even when I try to use acer's driver from their support website, it does not work, it still gives me a black screen. I have read here and there I had to remove the CMOS battery, but I could not find a USER's Guide on Acer website.

Any help to figuring how to be able to reuse my switchable graphics would be utterly awesome

 

Have you tried going back to no Video driver and then installing the first switchable driver on the Acer site for the 4820TG? If you can't get your unit out of "dedicated" mode, you might just install the original driver in dedicated mode, then switch to switchable mode and see if it automatically finds the Intel driver. If that works, you can upgrade the drivers at will. Make sure you have the correct bios too.

 

please some one help me dismantle this laptop. My 4820tg is overheating for the last two days and I want to clean the fan. But I don't order in which to take apart the parts of this laptop. I succeeded till removing the HDD, but can't further proceed from there. I'm not good at these things, so any help is appreciated,

 

Service manual is in the first post.

 

The link in the first post doesn't seem to work anymore (at least for me)
Here is an alternative one.

 

Thank you, downloads.

 

Hi
I have mentioned it here some time ago, I have a problem with a display, on Intel graphics it becomes sometimes almost eyes-hurting bright (even on low brightness setting), colors tend to blur with each other and some parts become unreadable (especially text, for example under the icons). If anyone had this problem would know what I'm talking about. Now a question, is it an anomaly which may be a reason to claim a warranty repair? And how many people had this problem? I sent my computer in summer 2011, then they changed motherboard and it was all, no complaints from Acer that there is everything ok. Didn't help, tested many drivers, also all of the stock ones. Since March, they do not want to accept and repair it. Computer was sent to repair center and there was stated there is nothing wrong - no repair. The Picture and video attached was also sent to them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ytcnjf0484velbn/MONITOR.jpg (left-changed, right-normal, brightness setting on the right is set to maximum)
[video]https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydlriqjv5jv6zkz/2013-04-28%2016.54.24.mp4[/video]

 

I really need help from the experts here. My laptop was working fine till 1st June. Then I went away from home for two days and the laptop was off for that two days. Now, I just tried to start it after 2 days and it's not turning on. Nothing's happening when I press the power button.My battery indicator LED is the only thing on and battery is fully charged. Please some experts here help me diagnose this problem.

 

Hi guys. Just had to send mine back due to faulty lan port.

Just got it back and the port is still very picky where the cable is positioned. It'll drop signal if there is the slightest movement.

Is this normal?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

I am sad to say that my laptop has to go back to Acer UK (infoteam) who will be issuing me a refund.

There are no more motherboards available to exchange the one I have.

It is a very sad day, the machine served me well.

Oh well, haswell laptops around the corner, £700+/- to burn.

 

What are the latest graphics drivers now? I have ones that were released in 2010

 

8.84.7.4
218.3 mb
2011/08/25

 

Lersrack labs (sp) custom drivers work well. I was using 13.4 previously. Only issue was i had to flip to the intel card to adjust the brightness.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to switch out the keyboard for a nonfloating chiclet style keyboard? If so where do I buy the part?

 

Well looks like I have no choice but to replace the thermal pad on the GPU with copper shim + thermal compound. My temps have gone up, and even after cleaning out dust again it didn't make much of a difference. If I stick to using the Intel graphics my temps are 10-15 deg lower on the CPU doing the exact same processes.

I'm hoping to squeeze 1.5 more years out of this thing. Hopefully the shim+compound will lower temps and allow me to OC the GPU without fear of overheating. I'll probably get a cooling pad as well.

 

If I remember correctly, someone in this or the 3820TG thread simply bent the legs holding the GPU heatsink up a little to allow it to sit right on the GPU and got rid of the shim and the pad completely.

 

I also saw those posts while reviewing the thread yesterday, but that method concerns me a bit. Hmm...

I'll probably get a few shims (20x20x0.8 and 20x20x1.0) and test them out along with either Arctic Silver or IC Diamond (any strong recommendation one way or another for the compound?).

I'm guessing that in the past few months my pad has gotten pretty worn out. It's 2.5 years old, after all. I recall someone in this thread tried replacing the thermal pad with another. Can't remember how it turned out for them, and I'm guessing using a pad is not recommended anyway.

I've found an extensive 4820TG discussion on another forum. I'm going to search there and see if there's any additional info about replacing the pad.

https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=ST&f=187&t=1888568&st=0#entry42537974

---

Another random thought - I read somewhere that Catalyst 12.9 drivers and newer no longer have an issue with installing on systems with Intel drivers. Is that true? Has anyone tried just installing the newer AMD drivers directly, or do you guys still stick with leshcat?

 

You can buy the right thermal pad. It's discussed in this thread. The 3820TG does not have this issue. There is no pad and no gap. I would go with a copper shim if I had the option. The extra copper will help cooling. It depends on what's easier ti find.

Hy guys good seein' you both.

 

Does anyone know where I can buy some good fast sticks of ram for my Acer 4820TG? 8gb or more would be preferable.

 

Hello !

I only recently found about this great forum topic which taught me a lot about my laptop !

I bought a 4820TG 18 mouths ago with these two memory sticks in it :

2048 MB PC3-10600 SDRAM Kingston DDR3 SO-DIMM ACR256X64D3S1333C9


I have recently purchased two of these memory sticks for my 4820TG :

http://www.rueducommerce.fr/Composa...N-DDR3-PC3-10666-4Go-1333-MHz-CAS-9-SR-X8.htm

KINGSTON Laptop Memory KINGSTON DDR3 PC3-10666 - 4Go 1333 MHz - CAS 9 - SR X8
SO-DIMM DDR3 PC3-10666 - 4 Go 1333 MHz - CAS 9 - SR X8

What it says on the memory stick itself is :
KVR13S9S8/4 4GB PC3 - 10600 CL9 204-Pin SODIMM


I really thought this would work just fine in the 4820TG but this is what happens when I put one or two of the new sticks in any of the slots of the 4820TG:

- Inside the bios it seems to recognize the memory stick. it says :
Total Memory: 4096 MB (with one stick)
Total Memory: 8192 MB (with two sticks)

- When booting windows 7, I have the first windows 7 loading displaying well, then it reboot automatically (basically crashes)

- It does the same in safe mode.

- When using the restart system tools, it start loading then Blue Screen of Death with either error IRLQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or BAD_POOL_HEADER

- When booting on a CD memtest86:

I first tried with the old memory sticks and it works just fine doing lots of tests

With the new sticks, the first memtest86 screen is displayed with some strange errors and it crashes.

I understand that these two new memory sticks are either both not working or not compatible with the 4820TG.

Does anyone know why these sticks would not be compatible with the 4820TG ? I don't know if I should ask for a replacement or refund for it.

Thank you very much for your help !

 

Could the 4820tg handle 2x8GB sticks?

 

Well, I installed 2x4GB sticks into my 4820tg and it still feels snappy as ever. I don't think I am ever going to get rid of this thing.

 

I'm eyeing for Lenovo T440s to replace my 4820TG. I don't game on it anymore, as I've built myself a GTX660Ti system, so Haswell iGPU will be plenty and now I'd value that IPS screen and durability probably more than anything else.