Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

so i'm planning on acquiring one of these soon.

Other than the throttling it seems to be a great machine.
seems like if i work at it a bit, temps can be manageable. I think I'll be able to make it work.

 

yea i just posted a review on amazon about my experiences w/ this machine. i bought it knowing it had 2 issues (throttling and battery wear)

so far battery wear really doesn't seem to be a problem, even though i apparently have the panasonic battery.

and throttle isn't even something i bother to think about. throttlestop does it automatically. i set it so that when it's running on battery, throttlestop doesn't turn on. so i let acer's bios handle throttling when i'm on battery and not gaming. when i'm on AC, throttlestop starts.

i even bought one of these:
Laptop Cooling Cooler Ball Leg Pad Blue Notebook New P - eBay (item 270714803253 end time Aug-30-11 02:52:37 PDT)

in case i needed them help with cooling. cooling fans are way to bulky. i had them for my old xps m1330. never had any issues with overheating unless i was in a really really hot room.

so far these laptop feet are still in their packaging. i haven't had to use it yet.

 

Hello all, I ordered a 3830tg yesterday off amazon knowing the throttling issues and the subsequent thermal paste reapplication partial solution. I read through approximately 85% of this entire thread (I had lots of time) this past weekend and found no links to the wonderfully detailed 3830tg teardown done by this guy over at his blog:

Gadgets and Hacks: Acer 3830TG-6431 Teardown

This teardown details more than the imgur link on the OP's post regarding removing the heatsink.

I myself will post again with detailed pictures when I've done the reapplication of thermal paste.

 

I don't mean to take this out of subject but I'm testing out the bluetooth with 3830TG and I don't seem to get it working I got the laptop from amazon.com are you guys using bluetooth?
Update
nevermind it was disable by the Fn key... I'm sorry to take up this space...

 

Ran crysis 2 with the gpu while plugged in and got between 20 and 30 fps most of the time with spikes up to 50 and as low as 12 however the game never felt laggy (tested with singleplayer and fraps with all settings on high + native resolution + vsync disabled). Temps stayed around 70C for quite awhile then got up to about 80C and the CPU was throttling to 1.2Ghz.

 

Do you plan to put it through the stress testing again? Please post your results if so!

 

oh really? I' was also looking for updates from this fella regarding the thermal paste approach, let us know how it goes. I don't know how much more the heatsink can take, it was already blowing hot air and the laptop body felt hot ( testing both gpu + cpu. ).

 

I added the artic silver 5 yesterday .. the paste that was already there was terrible .. but my i3 is still throttling, even though it takes a *lot* longer before the temperature is reached. The notebook is also a lot more quiet then before (fan stays on less longer while doing normal stuff on the notebook)

But the only game i tested was Rift, and it's very heavy, heavier then for instance battlefield bad company 2 so i will do some more tests later with some other games.

 

ok so i was just about to pick up this lappy but then came across the msi x460...on amazon, which is priced 100 dollars higher without the xbox, same specs etc( they also have the i3 with 540m for 750) but yea with msi you tihnk they solved the problem? i would suspect them going dual cooling or w.e since most of their graphics cards are pretty chilled. any input is great thx. (MSI )
Amazon.com: MSI X460DX-006US 14-Inch Laptop - Black: Electronics

 

hey people, okay so i just ordered the Seagate Momentus XT for my acer 3830TG expecting it in like a week (international shipping to Nigeria) so now im expecting all my WEI scores to be greater than 6.5 (upgraded my ram to 8Gig Corsair 1333MHz and NVIDIA 280.5 Drivers) except my Aero score (Aero still stays on 5.7, reason for my base score)

Question is, is it possible to tweak my graphics card via software or something to change my Aero score to something a whole lot more respectable

 

Seagate Momentus XT still has 5.9 WEI. You need SSD to go past 6.0

 

Ah!!!! dats not right!! i read somewhere that it gave some people a WEI of 7.2!! Argh!! well till i get it then....so far my performance is boosted, i would have to live with my WEIs then dont have money for SSDs just yet

 

Show Us Your WEI (2) - Page 13 - Windows 7 Forums

they claim 7.3

imma cross ma fingers!! Hehehe

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6417550-post328.html

 

In May Notebookcheck wrote about the throttling issue in one of their reviews:

It's August, and still no BIOS update Hope they're still working on it

 

my batterybar says i have a 4000 mah battery.

acer's website lists 6000 mah

AS3830TG-6431 | Product Model

wat up with that?

 

^You mean by the model name says 4000mAh ?

 

Yea next to panasonic

 

That is normal.
As long you have the 66Wh capacity, no need to worry..

 

I recently contacted acer support about my battery (Panasonic) telling them about the excessive wear and they said they would send me a new battery. I though wait isn't the battery a non-user-serviceable part, so I figured they made a mistake or something. 5 days later I get a package from them which contained a new Sanyo battery. There was no indication I needed to send my old battery back either... unfortunately they won't send me a replacement bluetooth module lol.

 

So did you swap the batteries? I'm getting my second 3830 on friday (I hope), and I'm pretty sure it'll be the panasonic battery unfortunately.

Going to see if the abscent of nvidia and the extra heat that it creates will solve the wear problem.

 

I have a few things I am waiting on before I switch out the battery (trying to minimize the number of times I open the case up). I'll post results after I change it.

Interesting note: The ratings on the batteries are different.
Panasonic: 10.8V 5.8Ah 62.64Wh (calculated) 66Wh (listed)
Sanyo: 11.1V 5.7Ah 63.27Wh (calculated) 66Wh (listed)

I find it interesting that there is a voltage difference between the cells (granted not a large one).
The Acer numbers appear to be AS11A3E (Sanyo) and AS11A5E (Panasonic).

On the Sanyo the max operating temp is listed as 40C <= this might have something to do with the wear level increasing after high temps (I assume the Panasonic has a similar rating, did not check).

 

Please report back when you've installed the new battery

Heat could be the culprit here. Maybe the extra heat from the nvidia card, which is so close to the battery, is affecting the wear level?
I'll check for myself, the one I'm getting is without nvidia. I'll post results

 

so people that have done it, how did you go about removing the mesh?

Just cutting it out with a xacto knife or something?

 

ooo i'll keep that in mind if i ever need to swap mine out so i don't need to worry about sending my laptop in.

so far mines still at 0.0% wear. started at 4%, then to 5%, then dropped steadily to 0.0% over the last 3 weeks

 

Sanyo or Panasonic?

 

Panasonic according to batterybar

 

Hey, you're an OCNer

OT: Pretty sure that would void the warranty when you send in the laptop If you want to lower the temps, get a cooler master U2 and replace those tiny fans with some slim 12mm scythe slipstreams (I didn't want to spend too much so I just use the standard 25mm ones, tho I have to prop up the front of the cooler to fit those fans )

I've also found that you can't turn on the AS3830TG with the bottom panel removed (must have some trigger something but don't have time to mess with it much yet)

 

1. yes i am from ocn... NBR is my secret hidey hole where nobody can flame me for gaming on a laptop heheheh

2. warranty pfffffft. I'll probably end up doing both, laptop cooler, and cutting the mesh.

 

i found a HDD caddy for 4820tg laptops. how can i noe, dat the caddy wud fit into 4830TG's drive bay?and also, how can i take out the dvdrw? RARELY use it! it has something to do w thickness but not sure how thick is da drive bay.is 4830tg 12.7mm or 9.5mm?


this is wat i found so far :

- universal drive caddy 12.7mm - 12.7mm SATA 2nd HDD caddy for ACER BENQ HP DELL ASUS | eBay - kinda skeptical becoz it says IDE...not sure whether can get the original SATA2 speed or it operates at IDE speed.

- 9.5mm - 2nd HDD / SSD caddy, Acer TimelineX 5820t (5820) [OBHD9-SATA-SATA-B] - $42.00 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks - loooks gr8.

 

Interesting that you have 0% wear with the Panasonic battery.
Do you play heavy games with high temps on both cpu & gpu?

 

you can just remove the mesh by pulling it off (put your fingernails under it), it's only glued to the bottom panel
i did both now, removed mesh and added the artic silver5
it's a lot cooler now, but playing games for a long time on full load will still throttle.. i think it's intel's fault the cpu get's too hot to be put into such a small casing, the cooler needs to be bigger.

It could be possible to add some 'cooler plaque' to the bottom panel and connect it to the internal cooler... so the heat is more spread.


some pics of the coolpaste from acer:

 

Maybe Acer's engineers could figure out a way to design a dual fan/heat sink to handle the heat.

Bronsky

 

What mesh is this you guys are talking about? Will removing it help with temps?

 

I do indeed. At least a couple of hrs of sc2 a day. My CPU maxes at around 92C and gpu at 86C give or take. I dont use any kind of laptop fan and I haven't opened the case up.

For the longest time I thought I had the sanyo cuz my wear kept going down. It's been at 0% for the last week or so

 

Anybody update Nvidia drivers to 280.26 yet? What's different?

 

You might read the patchnotes Link to the updated driver can be found in my signature.

 

I did! But I don't exactly understand what it means haha

 

Anyone try an external SATA to USB 3 enclosure yet? I had a Sabrent EC-7f83 that I hooked up to my 5830T. Worked great as a USB 2 device, but it just clicked for a minute and then was not recognized under Windows 7

 

So I received my 3830T. The first difference I noticed is the P button. on the 3830TG the P button would automatically switch on when unplugging the AC. Now it doesn't but serves as a programmable shortcut button.

It must be due to the lack of nvidia in the T models. So I guess the only function of the P button on the TG models is to deactivate/activate the nvidia when on battery, and nothing else.

All the power saving is done in the background with the epower management program (both the T & TG models)

 

That's just crazy talk pal.

 

Here we go again, wear level started at 0% when using the machine for the first time. 4 hours later it's at 2%...

Guess I'm going to have the same problem as before

 

that is so weird....

like i said earlier i play at least a few hrs of sc2 a day.

i'm at 0.0% of 65,405 mwh right now.

did you try a battery cycle?

when i first got mine the wear was already at 4%. I drained teh battery all the way down to 5% hibernation lvl, and recharged. wear went up to 5.5%. then over the course of the next week it dropped down to 2%. now it's at 0%.

i use my laptop on battery for a few hours every morning, and leave it plugged in the rest of the day

 

I'll go through a couple of cycles and see what happens. You also have a Panasonic, so I'm a little hopeful...

My last 3830 had 29% after 2 weeks

 

The switch is right in the middle (side to side) toward the front, between the ram and the wireless card. You just have to flip it into the "on" position. On mine it actually says on/off next to it, just make sure you put it back to off before trying to put the bottom back on.

 

@cybertim

Hey man, nice work! Do you have any before and after temps of the AS5 repaste? thanks for the pictures, I got no idea how to remove the heatsink

 

@cybertim


How about your cpu and gpu temperature (and the room temperature) after added the as5?

I use mx-2 instead of as5, my room temperature is 25C, cpu idle 48C, gpu idle 40C, I run aida64 stability test for 20mins to load the cpu, the cpu would reach 78C.

 

Oh guess what I just did, repasted my cpu it drops my idle temps by 1C to 39C 41C. I used AS5 so after curing time it will probably gets better. I will try to test it to give you a max load temp an hour or so from now btw, my room temp is around 25C

UPDATE: my max temps after repaste with AS5 are: cpu-79, gpu 83??? (this is weird but I might have to do a repaste again )

 

Day 1 and wear is now at 4%...

Heat is not the reason for the high wear, cause I haven't done anything serious with the machine yet. I just don't want to send it to Acer so they can replace my battery. It's a principle, I shouldn't send a new machine in for a repair!

I'll go through more cycles and see if it just continues

 

Found new trick to enable two-finger horizontal scrolling:

Open regedit (Registry Editor)
Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPCpl\Controls\2Scrolling\2Two-Finger Scrolling\2Horizontal" then delete the "Visibility" on the right, after that the "Enable horizontal scrolling" will show up below the "Enable vertical scrolling" under the "Two-finger scrolling" menu.

Just send it for a repair for free. The new battery on my 3830TG rocks! still 0,3% wear since that day (oops I forgot, may be around one month ago)