Aspire 7720 Overheating problems PLEASE HELP!!!

hey,
Ive had my aspire 7720 for about a month now, and just recently i has started to overheat. i cant get 5 mins into a video without it overheating and turning off. I bought a cooling pad but it really hasnt made much difference.
any help would be apreciated greatly.
Cheers

 

1. Where are you using your laptop?
Use a laptop on a hard, flat table surface and make sure that nothing is blocking the vents. The vents provide enough airflow to cool the heatsink in the laptop so that it won't overheat. If you are just plopping your laptop on your bed to use, don't. You're blocking the vents.

2. Make sure vents are clear of dust.
This is a very common problem for people who use their computers, but never maintain them. The vents usually clog up with dust with use over time, and will need a good blast of compressed air to clear out the vents. This make sure that enough airflow reaches the components in order to cool the components.

3. It is also possible that the heatpads/thermal grease was not properly applied in the laptop. For this, you will either need to call Acer to ask to send in the machine to get them to reapply the thermal compound.

4. It is also possible you have a faulty component. In that case, a call to Acer is recommended.

Pretty much, if cleaning out your vents don't work, then you will need to call Acer to resolve this issue. There is pretty much nothing you can do unless you are willing to open up your laptop and poke around, which I am sure some aren't going to.

 

Cheers man, i will take it apart and clear out all the dust etc. if it overheats should i return it to comet or straight to acer?

 

You should return it to the company you purchased it from. If you purchased it directly from Acer, then you return it to Acer. If you purchased it directly from comet, then you return it to comet.

 

I just fixed this with my daughter's laptop Acer Aspire 7720. The prolem was with lint covering inner side (facing cooling fan outlet). To fix:

- open the big cover on the bottom for the memory slots - well it covers everything: processor(s), memory clots etc.

4 screws, the cover also held by snapping little plastic tabs, do not be afraid to open but be rather carefull, do not just yank it open, you will see the fan facing back of the laptop in the corner, it suppose to blow through the heat sink.

- remove the fan, 3 screws, the screws are very little so be careful, you will see the inner side of the sink more likely coverd with lint, dust etc.

- carefully remove using tweezers and blow using canned compress air dust remover.

- assemble back in reversed order.



without removing the fan it is not really clear what it is I almost accidentaly saw it...



do not be afraid to do so you just need small screw driver. magnetic screw driver helps to handle the screws but be carefull with it as some components may be sensitive to magnetic field...



this did the trick for me I hope it works for you. please spread the word as I saw many posts about it in forums...

 

The only way to reduce the temperature of a Acer 7720 is to increase the throughput of air across the heatsink and around the inside of the laptop. Without dismantling the laptop and replacing the fan the only way I have found of decreasing the temperature is to fit an external fan above the square air intake on the underside. I bought a small 2"/50mm low profile 12v fan and glued it using epoxy so that the fan will supplement the air flow from the existing fan. I glued some piggy-back screws (from old parallel printer ports) as spacers into the fan screw holes and screwed a plastic circular lid (from a box of thumb tacks/drawing pins) onto the top to prevent the fan from being obstructed/touched. I cut slots in the lid surround to allow air flow. This extra cooling has reduced the temperature of the GPU and CPU by 10 degrees centrigrade. I glued a similar spaced lid onto the right side of the laptop base so that the laptop is level. Supplementary cooling is essential to the Acer gemstone series of laptops, they run hot and they crash pretty soon after the core temperature hits 85 degrees centigrade. This Acer laptop design is flawed so this modification is an essential task if you are going to use this laptop seriously.

I power the fan through a 5v feed from a nearby USB port. Two of the fan's power leads (red and black) have been soldered to a spare USB cable which is left permanently plugged in. The USB port provide the +5v and the ground. I am writing this on the laptop now and it is 56 degrees centigrade. Previously 70-75 degrees was the norm, I am running Windows XP SP3 and doing nothing more than the usual word processing, web browsing &c.

The fan I chose (AVC 12v ball bearing fan) is absolutely silent, much quieter than the stock fan. This is important if the laptop is going to be usable. This modification is more efficient in reducing the temerature than the noisy active cooling pads with multiple fans and consumes less valuable battery power.

Yereverluvinunclebert

 

I think I found the solution to this one. The overheating is caused by the Nvidia driver. The driver is forcing video hardware acceleration all the time and the GPU is working its nuts off continuously, even when it is not doing much. There is no need for this at all. so, what to do to alleviate this?

Right click on the desktop, select properties.

Select the settings tab /advanced button/ troubleshoot tab

Set hardware acceleration to None

Click on enable write combining

The laptop will run much cooler, probably by as much as 30 degrees centigrade!

There are six settings for the hardware acceleration, try running it on each and see which setting is the most stable for you. On the highest setting I could expect a crash every other day.

The other issue which can have an adverse effect is the build up of dust. Even a little seems to have quite a great effect. Clean the dust from the fan and the ducts once a month. All you have to do is to unscrew five little screws on the laptop bottom (on the panel with all the grilles), remove the panel and use a small brush to remove any dust from the panel underside and all around the fan.

My 7720g is now running at 39 degrees centigrade rather than 88 degrees which used to be the norm.

Yereverluvinunclebert

 

This is a manufacturing problem, send it back as quick as you can.

 

Both the 8400 and 8600 graphics cards from Nvidia have a design fault in them that Nvidia is trying not to admit to. If the machine is new then return it and complain loud! If it is not new and therefore most likely out of warranty then you need to do what was outlined above. Nvidia certainly won't help and it will be a case of going back to your supplier. Nvidia are barely admitting the issue. I know that if I complained they would refer me to where I bought my laptop (Acer Direct) and in my case that purchase was over 18 months ago. The laptop was a 'second' imperfect unit in any case and you can be sure I have no rights because of that (caveat emptor).

So back to the overheating problem in hand and how to solve it...

 

@ Beededea

I have an acer 5520G with standard an 8600m GS. had an overheating problem also. Just about over a year ago nvidia released new versions of the 8600m GS. Some where used as 9500m GS or 8600m GT. And somewhere used as new 8600m GS, with no overheating problems. If they have a replacement card then you will likely have the new version installed.

 

Thank you for this advice, it completely solved my problem! My computer would overheat practically all the time, and I used and still use a laptop fan underneath it. I finally decided to try and fix it and found this thread. I took it apart, and there was what looked like a bit of foam completely covered in dust. I removed the foam and the dust, put it all back together, and it's been running cool as a cucumber all day now.

Definitely the solution is to clean out the fan and remove the piece of foam that is there as a filter or something.

 

Hi,

This "piece of foam" is most likely compressed dust from several years of usage

Michael

 

The acer 7720 overheating issues did finally cook my laptop, it died last night. I know why and how but that still doesn't make it any easier to accept. There should have been plenty of life in that old beast yet nut the 8400M cooked the motherboard once too often. I took pleasure in grinding the 8400M underfoot.

So, the question is a wider one, how do you stop Acers from overheating given that the cooling system is pretty similar in ALL Acers? My overheating GPU just made the problem worse. All the Gemstone series use the same cooling method as did my older Acer 1640/1642 laptops.

Acer uses long copper heat sinks to transfer heat away from the GPU. It has to move the heat over quite a distance from the middle to the rear of the case, so the whole left hand side of the laptop can easily get very warm. To remove this heat there is a radiator soldered to the copper heatsink that should dissipate the heat. The fan blows air across this heat radiator and outside to the rear of the case. As the air is being forced through the radiator it attracts a lot of dust and this quickly clogs up the fine splines of the radiator reducing efficiency enormously. You cannot clear this dust easily

There is only one thing you can do to cure this without taking the machine apart, a very high powered hoover to blow/suck the air out of the radiator. This must be done monthly!. The best way to do it is to follow the previous instructions prior to this post, unscrew the heat sink and two copper heatsink bars and remove the fan/radiator.

Brush the radiator fins down or blow the dust out. You cannot add a filter on these Gemstone laptops as the air intakes are sited all around the case edge. So dust will be attracted and you can do nothing about it.

So my advice, if you want your Acer laptop to survive? clean it out more often than I did. I neglected to do it over the Christmas period, went to my Nan's house, which is dusty and the damn thing clogged up. It ran Clamwin antivirus which is well-known for using CPU, started running the CPU at a high temperature. The overall temperature rose, with the GPU already running hot it took the core temperature over the edge and the motherboad overheated and died. Damn and blast.

 

Your 7720's death may be related to nVidia's cards of that series failing not the overheating instead.
This type of cooling system is used on almost all laptops and is pretty efficient- although as you said it's easier to maintain it by cleaning it once a month or so.
I just use canned air (dust blower) every once in a while.

Another matter that may have led to this unfortunate event is poor quality of thermal compound or the fact that thermal passed had been applied in a sloppy manner.
I would advise anyone to monitor temps once in a while- if they go higher than the last time maybe it's time to buy a good thermal paste and apply it.
There is no way notebook manufacturer will give nearly as much attention to this process as a concerned user- so your attention to detail and choosing the best thermal paste may easily buy you 10*C difference in temps under load.

 

Acer ICL50 & ICK50 heatsink fail:

(those 2 models are the chassis model, and include quite a few models that share the same cooling systems)
I can't find the stock GPU heatsink for my 5720g project, so I think I will be adding a fan and creating my own heatsink from an old pentium-m system and some ramsinks.
I'm taking photos as I go
I noticed that one problem with the fan in these systems is it seems to be upside down. Basically, the side that should be intaking more air is flat against the underside of the motherboard and keyboard (which does not have any holes).
So I think one thing that would help is flipping the fan upside down, unfortunately the mounting is different and you'd have to drill a hole in one part of the plastic fan shroud. I think there are better fans available for cheap however, I'll be looking for one...

 

Your replies are timely and useful as my saga is set to continue.

I have just bought a new 7720... Doh! ( I know this may seem daft but I have a good reason)

I realised that if I have to sit down and reinstall all my applications on Windows 7, configure each and every app that I use (I do CMS web designer/vintage electronics/legacy o/s support - so I have hundreds) then I might as well kiss goodbye to the next two weeks while I sit swapping CDs and trawling the net for installation zipfiles trying to get the new machine to act like the old.

I know that if I take my existing drives and slot them into another 7720G it is likely to boot without much of an issue. I use XP and my software / configuration is based around XP (for legacy support of some design apps.) so the new machine needs to be XP too. The fact that I can can just get the new laptop running without having to do all these installations is a real boon to me. I also found a few companies selling some NOS Acer 7720G.

So I bought one...The new machine is the same spec. it just has the NVidia 8600m gt which is a faster GPU and on some forums it appears that this GPU does not have the overheating problem. We shall see, I may be lucky.

Having said this I am going to get some quality thermal paste, will monitor this page for any mods you may do to get the fan working more efficiently and I will re-implement the external fan change I made to the old laptop to improve the cooling, I can do it easily by swapping over just one cover.

I will have a fan monitor running from the outset. I will clean it religiously every month, will throttle back the GPU when it is not required and try to keep it from overheating in the first place. I have an active cooling pad and it may well come into play again.

Thanks for responding so quickly.

If I told you of the problems I have had ordering from a well-known Acer supplier and the rudeness of their staff, the rude and unhelpful pre-sales people at Acer, it would put anyone off buying their products. I am still kicking myself for taking the plunge and buying another Acer but I do have a good excuse.

Yereverluvinunclebert

 

Hi everybody!

I also had this damn overheating problem with a 7720. It suddenly jumped in temperature after a few minutes, when operating on maximum speed (I always worked on that speed and had no problems before).
So now I had to work in medium speed all the time.

Although I also will check the dust UNDER the fan etc. as mentioned above and all the above may be true as well.
But for me the solution was to update the whole MS Framework software 3.5,2,1.1,1 etc. - then my overheat problem disappeared !!!

Because I found that one of my NET 2 components was not installed properly and was deactivated (I believe that since then I had this problem) and this Framework is needed for the Empowering Technology that works in the Travelmate to control the Powermanagement and the cooling, too.

So be sure to check your Windows installation of the NET environment and clean it / reinstall it if necessary (you'll find plenty of explanations how to do it properly - dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip etc.).

NET must work properly for Acer's Empowering Technology software that controls the power and cooling system of your Notebook !

best regards
john

 

Hmm, thats interesting. But nothing makes up for the crappy heatsink, that is except for more copper

Beededea, you should know, you can swap an HDD with windows installed on it into pretty much any laptop - its the chipset and SATA config that matters. In this case gm965.

I booted my 5720g to my brothers dell m1530 hard drive and watched a movie because I had just barely put it together