Aspire 3623 overheats

I really like my cheap and simple but nice and very useful Aspire 3623. Didn't have any problems with it for more than a year until recently. Its cooling system gets worse and worse. It now sets fan to rather high even in completely idle mode, with CPU speed set to lowest with ePowerMgr.
When it does anything more CPU consuming, like playing DVD or divx movie, after 15-30 minutes it starts throttling down and occasionally turns off.

My guess is I need to clean the fan from dust and may be reattach fan/radiator with new thermal paste (although I'm not sure it's applicable for notebooks)?

So, I tried to disassemble the unit, unscrewed all the visible screws, but couldn't remove ether top or bottom cover. May be I just had to apply a little bit more pressure, but I was afraid to do so without knowing exactly what can and what can't be done.

Are there any instructions on disassembling/cleaning it? Is it do-able or I should better take it to the service?


Another question - I couldn't find any CPU temperature monitoring utilities that would work with my Acer. I tried many of them. Some of them do show harddrive temp, but no one showed correct CPU temp. Can anyone recommend something that would work?

 

i have the same problem with you, my laps were TM2300. have you try to open the screws beside the battery that cover the fan? on my laps there are 2 screws to open the outer cover and 2 more screws to open the inner cover that lead to the processor and the fan. look at the processor (on my laps were under the heatsink) and there are 3 triangulated screws. open it carefully according to the number on the screws,, pull the fan connector near the fan, this connector maybe used to powering up the fan,, and then pull the fan with the heatsink carefully. (note that maybe we have different experience since we have different type of laptop). clean the cooling fin on the side of the fan,,and open the fan cover. i have at least 5 screws to open. and wipe any dust on it,, dont forget to apply new thermal paste on the 'black box' area on the top of processor,, aplly it gently so the paste wont touch the 'green' area of the processor..oh ya, maybe you better wipe the old paste first,,, then after you have clean up the fan, attach it on the reverse, but becareful when you attach the heatsink, dont give an over pressure bcoz it can damage your processor,,, good luck, i hope this can help you.. oh ya, about the temperature monitoring, i use PC Wizard 2005,,,

 

This has been talked about a lot here. YOu don't need to take anything apart. See these threads...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1954369#post1954369

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=104684

 

Unfortunately, unlike many other models, my Acer doesn't have separate fan cover. There are covers for memory/wireless and another one for HDD, that's all. So I guess to get to the fan I need somehow manage to remove back (bottom) cover completely.

It is not a BIOS issue. It used to work fine then gradually fan performance became worse.
I did try to use both vacuum cleaner and compressed air to cleen it through existing cover slits, this didn't help at all.

 

Hello Mosaix,

There's a brazilian guy who have reported his experience on disassembling/cleaning:

http://andregon.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/limpando-notebook-acer-aspire-3623/


See also the photos at here:
http://picasaweb.google.com.br/andregon/LimpandoNotebook

I've made the same, and it worked fine!

It's possible to monitor the temperature of the acpi buses (I made it). I'll let you know the software I used.

You may ask me anything you cannot understand.

Good luck!