Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

this is very true. one of the worse laptop screens ever. even worse than my 11.6inch aspire one.

 

Aluminum is expensive and Acer is Cheap. Your rig looks incredible. Hopefully, you'll get amazing results. Are you prepared for all the requests to mod everyone's 3830TG?

I've been real happy with my 3820TG display. I've had 2 AUO displays. They are bright and the viewing angles are not terrible. I am able to do some basic video editing on this unit but for anything serious, I plug it into my 24" LG.

 

Bang up job sir, you executed nearly exactly what I had envisioned when I posted about adding ramsinks to the stock cooling. I'm very curious as to how your temps end up. What paste did you use?

My ramsinks from Gelid are on their way. I don't think I'm going to add them right away as I still want to upgrade to a 100C limit CPU.

 

The Arctic Cooling kit includes a small tube of adhesive paste.

 

I would want to see how your temps are with this mod.

 

How are people's fan speeds? Mine is always 100% max speed, from boot to idle to playing games, despite idle CPU temps around 45C. Whether it's 45 or 80+C the fans are always full blast. When I first got the laptop I was surprised how quiet it was. What's up with that?

 

Can you recall what hardware/software changes you made before the fan started to ramp up to 100% all the time?

I'm running the latest bios, latest drivers, and stock paste (it throttles) and my fan is basically silent as I type this message.

 

Nice to see 3830 mods on the forum. Any continuation?

 

Did you use that on the ramsinks? What about on the CPU? I'm planning on just using adhesive thermal tape for the ramsinks and then IC Diamond on the CPU.

I was also thinking you could probably add more ramsinks to the heatpipes if your temps don't improve as much as you need. I was planning on nearly covering the entire heatpipes with sinks.

 

Oh, I had a tube that says Noctua NT-H1 that I used to re-paste. I think I'm going to add two more similar sinks to the heatpipes but anything else wouldn't be under a vent so I think I'll stop there.

 

@zinkk: Mind to post some temp. benches ?

 

The only bench I can before/after is running 10min of Linx on the CPU. With the repaste I got 75-76max whereas I get 74 now. This is sitting flat on a wooden desk with 23C air temperature. I tried Kombustor+Prime95 with throttle stop at 1.9Ghz and it shutdown after 15 seconds at ~85C. I'm pretty sure I'm actually going to remove the sinks because this laptop has too little space available. I am worried that instead of resting on the plastic chassis of the notebook, the bottom cover is now putting all of its pressure into the heatsink assembly. The heatsink is screwed to the motherboard but all pressure placed on it is transferred directly into the CPU, GPU and PCH packages. I want to be able to carry my laptop in a backpack and also use it at a desk with a cooler for gaming. I figure it is note work the risk of failure from constant flexing in transit and a cooler should allow me to play games with or without heasinks. I'm not taking them off yet but probably tomorrow. Having the notebook stop shutting off at 85C would be nice though. If ES CPUs work I might pick up one of those.

 

Even if I keep it in BIOS it still runs max speed. Hardware changes are just changing the wifi card (it broke), and it's been taken apart for re-pasting/checking twice. No idea about software maybe I'll try making a new user account.

I don't know if the epower management is working correctly - I uninstall and reinstall but it doesn't bring up the icons when pushing the powersmart button.

 

Maybe the fan connector is only partially attached. Mine seems to be pretty quiet even as I run stress tests. I wouldn't have minded a faster fan at all.

 

No news from my machine yet. I sent it in two weeks ago because of the throttling and battery issues and it's in repair since a week now. I hope, they don't take too much time.

 

I'll tell them to check that- I mean it's nice that it will run at max speed but it sucks up my battery life and it is pretty damn loud.

 

Guys,

Does anyone have the 5830tg? Does it have the same throttling issues and if so how bad is it? Is it possible to avoid problems with throttlestop (just let the tempretatures rise to say 95/90 for CPU/GPU?

Thanks

 

Hi dude, on my i5 your last version does not work anymore, at least not for multiplier.

 

I pm'd him about this a few days back and I've been sending him logs trying to help him out since he doesn't have an i5 of his own to test. In a week or two might be an update, until then use the last version as I am.

 

this is very good notebook . but this not in my country !
we have 4755 , 5755 here , how is these ? are they good too , what is diffrent between 4755 and 4830 . are you think i wait until 4830 come in my country ? and buy that or buy 4755 ?

 

Post deleted. It's not a thread for selling items.

 

They took it apart and checked again- there is nothing wrong with the fan.

I guess I have to live with my roaring fan on my tiny laptop lol

 

try to reflash bios, might help ?

 

That's what I get for reading and trying to follow the Intel documentation. I'll go back to winging it like I used to do and hopefully get this fixed up later this week.

I'll put you and Eason on the official tester's list and hopefully send an updated version your way in a few days. I appreciate the feedback.

 

Had this idea too, reflashed 1.05, no change. Started in safe mode, fan still runs on max. I feel like it started after I installed nVidia system tools, but I don't think that should still affect it in safe mode.

 

-this is very good notebook . but this not in my country !
we have 4755 , 5755 here , how is these ? are they good too , what is diffrent between 4755 and 4830 . are you think i wait until 4830 come in my country ? and buy that or buy 4755 ?

 

HAHA ok found out what it was. The computer repair guy took it upon himself to wire the fan to stay on max speeds all the time to help cool the laptop. Knowing this, I think I will keep it as it rather than have him turn it back, since I play games a lot.

 

mmm, while gaming the fan will go full speed nevertheless.
so I really don't think that keeping it from being silent the rest of the time will change anything to temps

 

When I play games, GPU-Z will show the GT540M is running at almost 100% but after a few minutes it would drops to 50%. Is there any way to stop this from happening? The gpu temp is around 80-85 degrees.

 

interesting find, I'll test this when I can...
I was also wondering if there's a way to undervolt gpu ?

edit: just DLded last version 0.5.5 but it keeps freezing on me :-/
any special version/settings ?

 

It's probably just busy building / loading objects and textures.

 

Are you sure? I recall that the fan only goes on high after 90C+ or so. Currently, at x22 the laptop's max temp is 86 after a few hours of DX:HR. Before, it would get up to 95-96.

 

I've got a problem with my USB3 port.
I got a Iomega eGo external 1TB HDD which has usb3
Nearly each time i plug it in on the computer it says that i should format it to use it.
If i reboot the computer or if i plug it on the usb2 port, everything is ok...
Has anyone encountered that problem before?
I already updated the renesas USB3.0 driver...

EDIT : just for information, the disk has two part :
- one is deteted as a DVD Drive (it contains the software for encryption but i don't use it),
- the other is the disk itself

The dvd drive is always detected, the problem concerns only the main partition with the data

 

No, I'm not sure, you are most certainly right.
However, I care so much about silence... I don't mind a few extra degrees at full load

 

Just a note on batterywear:

There isn't much discussion about battery wear anymore, but here's a "solution" to those who still have this problem.

My wear changes between 6 and 13%.
The way to bring it down is actually quite easy, don't know why it works, it's weird, but it does :S

Anyway, unplug when at 100%, and drain until 80-90% (no more than that!) and charge up to 100% again. Do this a couple of times, and the wear level will start to come down. If you have to use the laptop outside of the house a whole day, and you reach 10-20% then the wear level will go up again. But don't worry, just use the "trick", and you wear level will go down once again

I don't know why this is happening, but it seems that the battery likes to be charged often. So remember, don't drain too much!

 

If the above is the case it's not really a battery wear issue but an issue with a smart battery chip which for some reason has issues with proper calibration of the battery.
It would be much less of a pain it that was the case rather than the battery really losing capacity at an alarming rate.
More statements confirming n0elia's find would be welcome.

 

@nOelia: you should state which battery brand you own.


I don't think the battery actually gets any (drastic) wear at all.
It's just the controller that reports wrong data.

I'm starting to wonder if it might be part of the plan from acer:
"Acer claims that the latest Aspire Timeline notebooks’ PowerSmart long-life batteries have a four-year life cycle."

Maybe those batteries won't charge up to 100% on purpose (which would not be a bad thing), or softwares are not meant to measure battery capacity on those.

 

I doubt that's on purpose. Some companies (i.e. Lenovo) provide software that let's you stop charging the battery at certain level but that's your decision.
This seems to be a bug and an annoying one because if your wear level is considered to be 20% your battery is 80% loaded and your battery-run time limited.

 

Well I'm not sure either- maybe there's other mitigating factors. I'm going to make the guy at the shop take it apart and set it back to automatic, then run a stress test, if it's too hot I'll make him turn it back on haha.

 

True.
But still, those software could be wrong when reporting capacity, if acer effectively employed some new tech.
I doubt it, but who knows... few video benches could help in that regard.

That does not mean a manufacturer could not take its own decision to help with users battery.
Again, I doubt this would be acer's plan, but who knows

 

You seem to like that guy
At least he'll be a real expert on timelinex dismantling now, could run some contests xD

 

Panasonic.

It should be clear by now that the battery wear problem only affects the Panasonic batteries.

 

Nop, I'm also on a french forum where one member has issues with his sanyo.
I think a member from here had some too.... and since your wear level is not "that" high yet, I thought it'd be better to explicitly state it

Plus, not all readers (including future ones) are supposed to know about it !!

 

I've had wear level at 27% after two weeks, you don't think that's high?

 

Dude..... you're on a forum with many members...
I don't follow your case, and don't know your history.

Last time you stated this:

 

Does anyone know if the 3830tg with i3 2310+540m can handle diablo 3 well??

 

I am also having a usb 3 issue. See here 1989

 

27% REAL wear level is very high.

27% reported wear when the actual wear is likely in the low single digits means your battery monitoring is off. Over time, it will either calibrate and get it right, or not. That's the real issue. Panicking over a possibly temporary battery wear level reporting issue is non productive.

 

Where do you see me panicking? I don't have that kind of wear right now. The 27% was with my first 3830TG before the summer.

27% is high if you don't know that the measured percentage is wrong...

 

Well you certainly have posted enough about it. If that 27% was real wear, i.e. it doesn't go away after a few calibration cycles then it's a big deal. If it was temporary and you had the whole machine replaced, then yeah, I'd say that's panicking. Acer has a 10% max first 6 months wear standard and will gladly replace the battery if it goes past 10%.

I'm thinking with the throttling and battery issues you'd have been better off with a tried and true design, like the 3820TG.