New Acer Aspire V Nitro series

I'm going to buy the VN7-791-79XE (NX.MQSEG.026, I'm from europe) and reading this forum now I'm sure that this laptop is SSD upgradable through athe m.2 slot. Reading this post, can you confirm that the m.2 ssd can become the bootable disk (c:\) with the original bultin windows 8.1?
Tnx in adavance.

 

Just sent Acer a support ticket about the bad touchpad. Because let's face it, it is not functioning right. I don't expect much out of it, but we will see.

 

do you mean this? or the other one that shows the laptop with black background?

 

The first one, thanks!

 

Did that too. Got an answer like : "No setting panel is planed. No settings are avalaible. Gestures are described in the manual".

 

The problem is that the HDD goes to sleep since its not being used and then the game needs to access the HDD so you have to wait for the HDD to wake up. Blame terrible games that have poor HDD utilization. Simple fix is to keep hwmonitor open in the background which will keep your HDD from going to sleep mid game.

 

So i just wanted to post a few things about the ACER Black Nitro. First of all i bought 3 of them as gifts. All 3 were terrible when it came to temperatures i mean i was getting 98 degrees celcius on my cpu and fairly high GPU readings as well. Also the wireless card, Atheros AR5BW222 QCNFA222, is really really bad. My old computer i bought in 2007 had better range then that thing. But when i fixed these things i think for the buck it makes the black nitro better than its competitors in this class of gaming laptops.

So i fixed these by replacing the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU and replacing the wireless chip.

1. The thermal paste when i opened the computers, on all 3 computer, looks to be arctic silver. But they must of put the biggest amount of thermal paste i ever seen on it. I mean it was just all over the place. I cleaned it up using rubbing alcohol and then applied a new arctic silver thermal paste and my temperature dropped 25 degrees Celsius. I used the spread method on 1 of the computers and the line and bead on the other and found the spread was the best one to use. For those of you who are going to be like the spread method sucks well you would probably be right if you were talking about a desktop computer with a huge heatsink on top which can evenly distribute the paste with little to no air bubbles. For a laptop i tested all three and found the spread method worked best.

2. I replaced the wireless card with a Intel 7260NGW AC. And man it is so much better than the Atheros AR5BW222 QCNFA222. It only cost around 35 dollars and it is well worth it. Make sure you buy Intel 7260NGW AC and NOT the 7260HMW. Reason being is one fits mini pcie and the other fits NGFF. NGFF is what you need for the black nitro. Also make sure that it is the new one AC with speeds up to 867mbps. You can tell if it is NGFF by the fact that it will only require 1 screw in the very middle.

The trackpad sucks but you should be using a mouse anyways for gaming. I use a Logitech G700 wireless rechargeable and it is awesome.

Just wanted to give my few cents.

Be careful when you open the computer there are a lot of cables that aren't pull out but rather you flip the tab up and the cable comes out. Take it really really slow and you should be able to get through this fairly easily

 

Posted a quick review, you can find it in my signature.

 

Guys, my webcam is not showing on device manager, and no software is able of using it. It is if like is not even installed.
Anyone has experienced this?

 

Hi guys, I'm going to get this laptop soon, I have a couple of questions, does it have AMI UEFI setting inside the bios system? Has anyone running hackintosh on this laptop? Any compatibility issues?

Thanks.

 

had this on mine, few post back wrote a solution but here we go again :
Mine had some bad connection on MB , had to disconnect CAM cable and then connect it again and Voila

 

Is there any seal on heat sinks ? Thinking bout replacing thermal paste too.


Sorry about double post

 

There's no seal on the heatsink just screws. I immediately replace the thermal paste on mine when i bought this laptop because the cpu temps reach 98'c when playing games which result in few frame drops especially in some cpu intensive games.

 

One question regarding the m.2 ssd. I know the ones that ship with our laptop are SATA with limited speeds of about 600MB/s read, I opened my laptop and saw that the socket is able to fit any other m.2 ssd (pcie with two separate pin areas and not three). Does our socket contain pci-e connections to our motherboard and will it be able to support newer m.2 with over 1GB/sec write speeds for upgrades in the future? It's slightly contradictory on the Internet, some say both are not compatible.

 

And what is the maximum temperature now?

 

Lowered by 10'c only because my laptop model is using the i7 processor so now its around 43-50'c on normal web browsing and 32'c during idle. During heavy load like gaming the graphic card is around 70-80'c cause its overclocked and cpu is at 96'c.

 

I did tought I read someone who fixed it! But couldn't find it with the search. Did you do some tutorial or something? (I'm searching that post again).
I have experience on repairing laptops myself, but no clue on the internal connections of this one.

 

Are you overclocking with latest drivers? I had to switch back to previous one. Many people complaining nvidia blocked overclocking on 347.09.

 

i revert back to 344.75 hopefully the next driver allows overclocking

 

No tutorial because it was only one plug

image below:



hope it will do the job for you as well

 

Thank you so much.
I'm going to try it when I get home.

 

Do you guys notice some differences between this two models?

VN7-591G-77A9

VN7-591G-790C

(50 Euros of difference)

Thank you

 

Maybe wireless card, 77A9 apparently has an ac wifi capable chip after a quick search.

Or maybe it's just related to the keyboard it ships with such as English qwerty or Spanish version with Ñ character.

 

Some sites states that 790C is HD ready screen , but I'm not 100 % sure , did quick search only

 

Want to share my results after re-pasting and spreading the thermal paste with a flat surface, noticed better thermals than my previous re-paste with line for the cpu and rounded blob for the gpu. Ran prime95 maximum heat mode and Furmark at max resolution, both at the same time for half an hour, laptop rested flat on a wooden surface. Room temperature should be around 15-20ºC.

 

I think that is an amazing score!

 

Does anybody find how to turn on coolboost? (turbo mode app?(pop-up window))
Sry for my broken eng.

 

http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...PIRE VN7-791G&OS=ALL&LC=es&BC=ACER&SC=EMEA_11

you need the program from the link if you happened to have deleted it. Quick access app from acer webpage.

 

Yea thats not it. Does anyone know where the coolboost app is i have been trying to find it. I think it is a lie. Like in Portal where they tell you the cake is a lie.

 

Almost the same temperatures with coolboost on or off (1-2 C). IF.

Something missing here, i think......

 

which model is your nitro? cause when i try to search it is only available for 17 inch model

 

I have it on my 17" version. It does help.

 

Got a reply from Acer about the terrible touchpad.

They advised me to send it in for repair.

Yeah right...

As if they don't know about this crappy touchpad.

I will reply them with every post/ review I can find about the functioning of this touchpad.

 

acer just uploaded a new driver for atheros wireless + bt. version: 11.0.0.373 (before 11.0.0.373 it was 10.0.0.288)

I was surprised and happy that acer actually did sth. because I have troubles with WiFi.

I was wrong. With 11.0.0.373 my aspire vn7-791g doesn't recognize my atheros card

Can someone test the new driver, too? It's available at the acer website - driver section.

Maybe I have proceeded wrong.

gl and greetings, joedo.

 

@Joedo

Acer might have overreached themselves with this driver indeed. It's apparently Qualcomm Atheros 61x4 Wireless LAN&Bluetooth Installer which is a different series than what you guys have - or at least the name seems to indicate this.

This is the most recent driver that should work fine with your Atheros cards 10.0.0.302 (click Télécharger to download)

 

Any good with your camera ?

 

Got really tired from work yesterday. I'll dot it tomorrow on my day off.

Hey @downloads, I can see you really know about wireless adapters. Would you mind giving me a hand with my replacement unit?

 

What seems to be the problem? I looked back at your previous posts and didn't catch nay issues with Wi-Fi that you've reported. Are you looking to replace the card?

 

I've had it for 3 days now and didn't have a problem until last night and today. Windows shows only 2-3 bars where my cellphone and other laptops in the house have 5 bars. Also did some gaming and the ping started to be really high sometimes.
It's weird tho, since I managed to download games from steam and some torrents (150gb total).

Maybe I'm being biased by this thread and those so many problems with atheros.

I'm going to keep using it to see if the problem is real or if it is just me overthinking.

So, if it actually is the card, I have the option of buying a Intel 7260 (not sure which model exactly tho) on Amazon (1 month until it gets to my country) or buying one CTJ7G Killer N1202 here in Argentina.

What are your thoughts on this?
Am I being to paranoic?
Thank you in advance.

 

Installed that driver without any issues, but device manager showed me the same driver version as before - 10.0.0.298.

Thanks. Unfortunately, this driver changes nothing in the Wi-Fi behavior. Same weak signal, -20 dB in the comparison with my old laptop.

 

@ 0meg4

I don't remember Killer N1202 being M.2 format. So unless I missed it, it would mean it's mini PCI-Express - which won't fit.
Apart from Intel 7260 (which I have), you can also buy Killer N1525 (which is M.2).

As I mentioned before antennas are placed in the wrong place in these notebooks. If I realized this sooner I would have looked at this Wi-Fi issue in a different light but I haven't seen a notebook with such a sub-optimal antenna placement for years. This might explain why your notebook shows less bars than your other devices. The problem is that it's possible that both the card and antennas are at fault.

Anyway - use this (free) app. First of all it much more precise than some bars in the tray. It also shows where neighboring networks are and might help you with adjusting the wireless channel if needed.

You may also give new drivers a try (while I doubt it helps it's easy to roll back if it makes things worse).

 

Yes. I'm trying to stay calm and really test this to see if it is a router related problem or its really my wireless card.
I'm going to try that app.

I also found the Intel wifi 5100 wireless card being sold on my country. Would it work? It is identical (in shape) to the 7260.

 

What about new vbios to past +135mhz lock?

 

This sounds more like an antenna placement issue than anything else.

No Intel 5100 wouldn't fit but apart from that it's also a bad card so even if it did you couldn't call it an upgrade. What router do you have?

 

Well. It seems I'm going to buy it on USA and wait for the courier to get it here.

It's a Motorola cheap router that isp's provide here (yeah, third world things).

So, on Amazon, what's the recommended card to get?

 

Honestly- there is no card to recommend. Intel 7260 works -sort of - it's not a good card as far as 2.4GHz band is concerned and most people use this very band. It works fine on 5GHz but that's not enough to call it a good card. Admittedly it's far better not compared to what it used to be on 2.4GHz band.

Killer 1525 is a new card and it's hard to tell of it's stable - with only a handful of people owning one, it's hard to tell if one person with problems means nothing or is it a sign of serious issues. I assume you would rather avoid spending money on yet another card that doesn't work properly so buying a Killer 1525 at this point is not a good idea.

If you have no other option - Intel 7265 (new revision of 7260 which is not discontinued) but I'm not calling it a recommendation since it's not really a good card.

 

That's enough for me to call it a recommendation, haha.
I'm going to do some heavy wireless use and tests this weekend and posting it here. If is there really a problem, I'll get that 7265 then.

I get what you mean on not being as good as it should, but it is an improvement for the awful atheros, so it's worth the shot.

Since I'm going to open the laptop, I will be repasting and trying to fix the webcam that doesn't show up on device manager, and some user above said is just a matter of plugging the cable.

Any thoughts on thermal paste?

 

Hey @downloads , seeing you're more of a tech expert than most of us, can you try to answer my question on my quoted post. Thanks a lot!!

 

I read your question before but unfortunately I can't give you a definitive answer either. Sorry

 

Should I get the 7265 ac or just the regular bgn?
I don't think I own an ac router.
It is too much difference from one to other?