New Acer Aspire V Nitro series

Hi all owners V15 Nitro Black Edition

I want buy one nitro - primary for photoshop dreamweaver visualstudio vmware and games (d3ros, sc2, btf4 and after rockstar release gta5 so for this game too)

And now I need help which is best model for me?
I mean in Performance vs Price and for my money and for use in today and in future.

Now I have in range three models (ascend from lowest to highest price):

Acer VN7-591G-51CY
http://www.czc.cz/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-black-edition-vn7-591g-51cy-cerna/159454/produkt
- only 2core i5 4210H with same tdp as 4core i7 4710HQ
- only half ram 2x4GB
- no ssd128gb in m.2
- old a/b/g wifi
- only 2GB GDDR5 GeForce GTX 860M maxwell
++ price 983,68 $

Acer VN7-591G-788L
http://www.czc.cz/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-vn7-591g-788l-cerna/163536/produkt
- only half ram 2x4GB
- no ssd 128gb in m.2
+ 4core i7 4710HQ
+ ac wifi
+ 4GB GDDR5 GeForce GTX 860M maxwell
+ price 1147,69 $

Acer VN7-591G-76L9
http://www.czc.cz/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-black-edition-vn7-591g-76l9-cerna/159455/produkt
- old a/g/n wifi
- only 2GB GDDR5 GeForce GTX 860M maxwell
- price 1229,70 $
+ 4core i7 4710HQ
+ 2x8GB
+ ssd 128gb in m.2

IN MY EYES INTO THIS TIME WIN MIDDLE MODEL, BECAUSE USER HAVE INTO FUTURE CHANCE UPGRADE RAM TO 16GB AND ADD OWN M.2 SSD. HAVE IT 4CORES I7 AS THREE MODEL. AND AS NICE BONUS IS IT NEWER REVISION WITH 4GB GDDR5 AND NEWER AC WIFI.
ONLY ONE THING WHAT I NOT KNOW IN THIS MODEL IS - HAVE IT M2 SOCKET? IS IT TRUE? BECAUSE ON INTERNET IS NOT TEARDOWN FOR THIS MODEL :\

THREE MODEL HAVE FROM START SSD IT IS TRUE BUT ONLY 128GB :\ AND I FEAR THAT IT WILL BE LOW FOR WINDOWS PLUS APPS AND GAMES (SO HERE I FEAR THAT IN FUTURE I STILL MUST BUY HIGHER CAPACITY SSD AND CHANGE SO WHY GIVE MORE FOR NB WITH PREINSTALLED SMALL SSD WHAT I GIVE IN FUTURE OUT). AND HAVE IT ONLY 2GB GDDR5 WHERE ISNT CHANCE FOR UPGRADE. AND OLDER B/G/N WIFI.

FIRST MODEL IS SAME AS SECOND WITH TWO DIFFERENTS AND IT ONLY 2CORE CPU AND 2GB GDDR5. BUT AS GOOD + IS VERY LOW PRICE

.. and now guys what is better from these 3? Now I mean on 75% second but if I in someone miss so I welcome tips. Because for me is this select very hard, thx.

 

Well, finally my amazon order containing my new Intel wifi card arrived to my country. I'm going to do all things at once:
- Repaste
- Replace wifi card
- Connect webcam cable. It seems that solves the problem of no webcam found.

Going to take photos of everything and post here in a few hours.

Wish me luck, haha.

 

well, I would consider the second option as the best one, too. forget about the 4 GB VRAM - the GTX860M will be too slow to make use of it (high AA-modes or high resolutions). but it woont hurt either.

the AC-WiFi is surely nice. but the biggest point is the i7, which should help with the work plus I personally expect games to get more demanding towards multicore in the not so far future (think of the new consoles PS4 and XBO -> many cores -> portation of games to PC -> more multo-core-games).

 

Here is my experience on replacing wi-fi card, repasting and fixing webcam problem.

This was the things i got from Amazon:

Arctic Silver thermal paste and Intel AC7260.

First of all, i needed another laptop for following step by step the disassembly process. Even i was look at a 15" process, it was almost the same.


Used a replaceable head screwdriver, for the different sizes of the screws.


After removing all screws, i like to place them just the way they were on the laptop. Funny story: I always ended up with missing (or even leftover) screws in my hand after finishing service xD.. So i started to do this.


This was so scary for me. I tought i was breaking some of the plastic palm rest, i almost quit.


It's very important to remove this bezel, because under this there are 2 more screws that hold the palmrest/keyboard. I almost broke the piece because haven't seen those screws.


The first thing i encounter, the infamous Atheros. As soon as i saw it, i cursed at it xD


Here, with the Intel card waiting to take its place.


The webcam connector seems cracked. It came like that from Acer. So, i don't think theres a fix for this. Nevertheless i did reconnect it, just to see if something happens.


Removing the MB was a really hard task. There are so many sleek cable connectors. I was used to thick connectors. Everytime i disconnected something i tought i broke it .. I was really scared to continue to repasting. I could've just quit there, i already replaced the Wifi card... but well, i was already there so..



The screws by groups, so i don't miss them and misplace them.

I went ahead and carefully disconnected every tiny cable until i could finally take apart the mobo and flip it.
It's really annoying how Acer made this so hard to get to. Guess it had to be done to get the sleek awesome design.


The 2x8gb modules, and the SSD.


The heatsinks have 5 screws, number ordered.


After all of the process i was afraid of tearing some other cable apart, so i just left the 2 cables that the heatsink has to the mobo on. I didn't wanted to break anything else. So i worked like this:


Yeah, not professional, but it worked.


The original thermal paste that came from acer, a mess, really.


Used all of these to clean the cheap thermal paste.


I'm used to doing the "rice grain" technique, but i think i kinda messed it up a little on the GPU.


Re assembled all again, and hoping that none of the skinny cables were broken

Hopefully it turned on again, with every device working.

 

Now, the results of this hard work:

First of all, the main issue: Wifi.

Before, with the atheros card, i was getting this RSSI Values:


And that was on "Balanced" mode on power management, that we know it gives better wifi reception due to some interference from the CPU running on full load.
Now, with the intel card, im getting this:


And it was on "High performance" power plan.
AWESOME IMPROVEMENT.
I got into a BF4 64 players match, and got no more than 30ms.
Speedtest result:


Before, i didn't even get 10MB.
Wifi upgrade: Successful

Thermals:
In the BF4 match, i usually get 92-96 °C on the CPU.
With the repasting i was able to never hit the 90's. Always stayed from 78-88 °C on very high populated teamfights (1080 all on high).


Repasting: Successful.

Webcam:
Unfortunately, the webcam appears to be broken. It just won't show on device manager. I think that broken little port has some missing contact or something. Too bad. My mom is going to be really disappointed about the video calls, but well, i'll do them on my cellphone. There's no even a webcam driver section on acer website, so...


Another strange thing, this device showed up on Device manager, and i was happy thinking it was the webcam. Don't really know what to do from now, because it does says something "video" on one string, so if you guys know anything about this, i would appreciate some help.


Well, now i'm even more happy with the laptop. It's a shame you have to do this replacements, spend more money on parts and stuff, but for me it's no problem. Got the system i needed for a good price, tho.

Thank you @downloads for the guidance on the right wireless card to get, and @smokarsu84 for the webcam orientation.

 

Hi, currently waiting for my VN7-591G-787J to arrive. It comes with the 1tb hybrid shdd and no ssd. I also ordered a Transcend m.2 128gb sata3 ssd. I'm planning to use the m.2 for os and use the hdd for data and other huge installs.

Tried to find clear instructions on this thread on how to do it but can't seem to find any. Best info I got here was to use Paragon 14 software to do it and most instructions on google was about cloning new sata ssd through an external usb and replacing the new ssd with the old hdd.

I'm a bit confused about the following, mainly about bios:

1. Do I need to change boot mode from uefi to legacy?
2. Do I need to change boot order?
3. Do I turn off secure boot?
4. After successful transfer, do I just reformat the 1tb hdd to use it as data drive? What format do I use if ever? NTFS? GPT?
5. The post I read here says Paragon 14 takes care of making the new ssd bootable and also alligns the new ssd correctly so I hope I'm covered on those issues.

Any tips from someone who went thru the same process? Or can anyone with the default ssd + hdd setup check their bios?

Thanks for any help/info!

 

I'm also looking to upgrade my model to an SSD (I have an SSD-less VN7-591G). Any tips are greatly appreciated. I'm planning to buy a Transcend SSD, however, they come in different form factors:

MTS400, MTS600 and MTS800 have different dimensions shown as below:
MTS800: 80mm x 22mm x 3.5mm
MTS600: 60mm x 22mm x 3.5mm
MTS400: 42mm x 22mm x 3.5mm

Will all of those fit?

And lastly, does anyone know if the ODD or anything else might be obstructing the installation for models that came without any M.2 SSD from Acer?

 

The MTS800 is exactly the ssd I ordered. I'm 99% sure its correct from all that I have read - m.2 sata3 (not pcie) 22x80 ssd. I'll report back once both items arrive and once I actually install them.

 

I'm also notice that there is no emitted air from left gap when I put my finger near it! mine is VN7-791G.

 

17' inch version users with ssd's, do you also have pretty high ssd disc temperatures? Mine are about 60-66c on different loads, 57c if its left on idle for a long time + i'm lucky. My ssd model is crucial m550 and i think they tend to run hot, but i think the placement in this particular model sucks as well. I don't actually worry too much, just curious what temps you have with other brand ssd's?

 

This webpage is not available

 

Both rweverything website and the screenshot attachment are available.

 

I have a 512mb M550 in the "15. It runs between 40 and 50c mostly. Might reach 50-55 under really long, heavy write/read sessions. Doesn't really help you with the "17 version, but it's something to compare to.

Mac

 

From where you obtained the driver?

Have I to disassemble every thing like you to add the M.2 sata drive since of mine came with only 1TB hdd? and please tell me is it 2280?

 

Yes, to get to the SSD you have to flip the motherboard.
About the number, i don't really know. You can take a look at the detailed photo of my SSD, or ask someone else here in the thread that knows.

 

To the V17 owners out there, do 4k videos on youtube stutter?

Isnt Chrome supposed to make use of the 860m? I thought the HD4600 supported 4k content.

I understand the native resolution is 1080p but the 4710HQ should be more than capable of handling 4k content.

I am not a gamer. But since I got the laptop, I have never seen the GPU turn on in any scenario even under heavy load. And even when I set the Optimus global settings to use the 860m, 4k youtube videos still stuttered and GPU usage was around 20%

But does Optimus atleast support VMware player or VirtualBox? Or will I be running Virtual Machines on Intel graphics?

I am on factory Nvidia drivers.

I apologize if these questions have been answered in the past, its my first time using Optimus and Google was more confusing than helpful.

 

I haven't tought of that.
Here's a video from my cellphone of the laptop playing a 4K video. You can't tell that much because of the cellphone video resolution, but it does shutter.

 

I dont get why the 4k content stutters. It doesnt stutter on the 15" retina Macbook pro

I think this is more of an issue with Chrome, with HTML5 and Flash

 

Try making chrome to use nvidia card when watching videos then set back to intel card after watching that might probably help

 

[DRIVERS for win8.1]
Good day everyone, my laptop will arrive in a couple of hours, can't wait to have my hands on it!
Do you recommend to install the drivers provided by acer here http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers or should I let windows do everything with windows update?
As for the nvidia drivers, is it possible to install the newest or do I have to install acer's ones?

 

You can use the nvidia driver provided on nvidia website. As for other drivers you can update all the other drivers and application by using acer care center application.

 

@Dinkleburg @0meg4

This has to be a browser issue. I just tested 4K YouTube video (@60fps) on a Windows 8.1 quad-core Atom device with FHD screen and not only was it perfectly smooth but it also never exceeded 35% CPU usage. That was in IE 11.

Just for comparison Intel HD4600 core that you have scores 1100-1200 in 3DMark 11 720p GPU Performance test. Intel HD graphics in mine scores...178 points

So it has to be a browser issue.

 

Hi guys,

I am a new "proud" owner of v15, i5/860m...and of course the atheros adapter. The ntb came two days ago and since than, its just a battle with the wifi. Its the same problem like many of you have, where the old acer 5920G has "full" signal, this one has two very unstable bars, and in the moment i start prime95 it goes off. I tried everything i have found, i even opened the case and put homemade "aluminium shield" around the adapter, well, nothing has worked so far.
I think that i have read whole story at this thread, and some others too, maybe i have missed something. So just to sum it up:
1. (some) notebooks with V15 V17 with atheros ar5bwb222 do have problems with some kind of cpu interference, causing low and unstable signal, but there are posts, that its problem of antennas?
2. some people were able to help themselves with replacing the adapter, mostly with intel 7260NGW or Killer N1525, but!!! there are also people with no improvement after that?
3. acer is willing to replace the adapter in warranty, but only atheros to atheros. But!!! a have also read that there are people satisfied with that repair (maybe other firmware on the adapter?).

My problem is easy, old notebook is dead, I need this one at work. I have no problem with signal, using my external usb adapter awus alfa. So after doing all the crap with drivers, router settings etc. I have two choices, send the notebook for up to one month to acer, or buy a new adapter. Is there anyone with with a positive/negative experience with new adapter/acer service? And if so, do you have v15 or v17? It seems to me, that its not the same.
Thank you,
frustrated one

Edit: one more thing, maybe there could be a single thread only about the wifi?

 

Yes you are right, the browser is to blame. But forcing the browser to use the 860m has no effect, 4k videos still stutter.
Like you said, the HD4600 should be more than capable of handling 4k video.

 

@Dinkleburg @downloads
I tried on IE. Didn't stutter.
Weird, huh?

 

@Simiae
There's nothing wrong with starting a separate thread on Wi-Fi if you want.

As for your other questions - there are no definitive answers. First of all we know that Atheros card is low-end. Users who upgraded to Intel 7260 like @0meg4 have experienced improved reception and as a result throughput.
That is not the and of the problem though as both 15" and 17" Nitro device have their antennas placed in a way that can only be called moronic. These notebooks will never have the sort of reception that other notebooks with antennas on top of the scree have.
Therefore is is entirely possible that the Atheros would work OK if antennas were located elsewhere (poor card but good antenna reception) and that with antennas placed where they are a good card would fare better (good card + poor antenna reception). If you combine both though - poor card and suboptimal antenna placement, you end up with no reception or poor reception.

As for your prime95 experience - earlier in the thread I presented a theory on why such a thing could possibly happen. That could be interference but as I mentioned this does not really affect the card as much as it does antennas meaning if antennas were routed differently that might have not been an issue in the first place.

As you see this post contains quite a bit of "might", "could have" and so on - unfortunately these things are not mutually exclusive - it may be one or some or all of them or just a combination. That can only be tested if you had several cards, antenna cables, a dismantled notebook etc.

What I'd do of I were you is I'd buy an Intel 7260 myself and replace the Atheros. That is a good idea either way (although a fair warning - Intel 7260 is not exactly the best card in the world @2.4GHz band - see networking forum for details)

 

I just got mine from the newegg ebay deal yesterday and got a m.2 SSD, but where can I get a screw to secure it down? I went through my mass pile of screws I've collected over the years and all were too big. The SSD didn't come with a screw and after reading through this thread yesterday I couldn't find anyone with the same question. Any ideas?

 

"Loan" one of those securing the mobo. I think they might be the correct kind.

Mac

 

Guys, what do you use or recommend for cleaning the case? It's not that fingerprint magnet, but it does get dirty sometimes.

 

So finally my vn7 with 5200u and 850m arrrived, what can I say:

Coming from an old dell inspiron 6400 the leap is huge!
Brightness seems not dim at all, I will try tomorrow in the open light anyway i have to say that the screen is impressive and viewing angles are really good.
With regards to the wifi issues I have the atheros module, howeveer wifi signal seems stable and almost two times faster than my previous laptop.
Gaming:
So far I have tried Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite; both played at 1920x1080 with ultra settings without any problem

I wasn't able to update the ndvidia drivers, is there a way to do that?

 

Can you provide the hardware id of the nvidia graphics card? Just to make sure if it doesnt need to add the hardware id to the new driver

 

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1391&SUBSYS_09631025

Thanks!

 

Ayone having issues with Launch Manager/Quick Acess? I'm running Win 8.1 and find that all the FN + key-combos quit working after 1-3 days of running. Reboot restores function. Stopping/killing/restarting the services do not restore functionality.

Mac

 

Man Jesus christ what u expect nowadays
Every HW gonna be soldered onto MB soon...


Sent from my iPhone 5 White-Purple

Shame that acer don't know what RAID 0 is..
Like msi laptops has 4x ssds possible quad raid 0


Sent from my iPhone 5 White-Purple

 

I bought the Transcend MTS800 SSD and I had exactly the same problem. No spare screw inside the laptop and the SSD did not come with one either. After 2 hours of taking apart different devices, I found a screw/bolt from a generic calculator which finally fit. Good luck!

 

I ended up buying the Acer V15 Nitro, VN7-591G-787J which is the model available here in Canada. It came with 1TB SSHD, no SSD, 16G RAM, i7-4710HQ and 2GB GTX-860M. Main reason I went with this unit was because of its capability to have both SSD (thru M.2) and HDD. I needed SSD for the OS and a large HDD for all my data files.

I ordered the Transcend M.2 SATA3 22x80 128GB SSD (Model MTS800) to go with it. It fitted fine but the SSD did not come with a screw and the Acer did not have a spare screw inside. After a couple of hours prying stuff open, looking for tiny screws that would fit, I finally found one in a generic calculator lol.

Basically my steps were:

1. Remove 12 screws from bottom of laptop.
2. Pry open the keyboard / palm rest. Be careful as there are 3 cables that are connected underneath.
3. I did not disconnect the 3 cables anymore since I can access the M.2 slot just by slightly moving the keyboard/palm rest. (This is where I had the problem with finding a screw/bolt to fix the SSD to the mobo).
4. Put everything back.
5. Hard disk copy the SSHD to the new SSD using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15. This would preserve the recovery partitions which I wanted to keep. It resized the partitions proportionally as well to fit the 128GB SSD.
6. Changed boot order in BIOS to boot from SSD.
7. Wiped the 1TB SSHD to use as data drive.

• Do not wipe the 1TB SSD until you're absolutely sure it works fine booting from the new SSD.
• I checked the alignment of the SSD and if TRIM was enabled and all was well!

Overall, I'm pretty much satisfied with the purchase.

Pros:

1. Very Nice / Loud Speakers coming from an Acer Timeline-X 5820TG which had terrible speakers.
2. Screen is great (coming from a non-hd laptop). Not sure how this compares with other laptops with full hd screen though.
3. Overall build quality is ok.
4. Looks elegant. Specially the front cover.
5. Speed and Performance is great so far.

Cons:

1. Keyboard is average. Its actually not bad except for the ENTER button. You have to hit it at a certain position.
2. Trackpad is below average. It sometimes skips during usage.
3. Fingerprint magnet!!
4. Battery is below average for me. Around 2 hours - backing up and copying stuff from my old laptop.

Let me know if you guys have any questions I can help with.

 

http://www.4shared.com/file/uzehjfwcba/nvaci.html
You need a modded inf to install the new driver copy this file to the driver folder. make sure the driver version is 347.25 and before installing the driver turn off driver signature enforcement.

 

It worked, thank you very much!

 

I think that's possible, maybe we have someone here who has knowledge how to do it? Afaik, to back to auto mode, you only need to reboot pc, but then it will be very nice to have some quick way to set manual values each time.

 

My makeshift solution is having saved two files with RW Everything. One with the max fan setting and one with the "auto" setting. Loading the different files is quicker than typing manually or rebooting. Could be more elegant than this, but it works.

Mac

 

Guys, perhaps someone knows what to do with my webcam issue?
Is there anything I can do with this faulty connector?

 

Did you tried at least disconnect and then connect it again? Honestly i can't tell nothing from this angle, it's obvious that connector has some kind of damage, but you need to look at contacts itself. Because that damaged black plastic piece is just a body of the connector, it doesn't make any contact with anything itself, contacts are inside. I wouldn't be too surprised if it will work with no issues while looking ugly like that, but in your case it's not. Well at worst case scenario you will need resolder a contact or two. But it's also worth to check continuity in wires with multimeter. Now, if you don't really understand what i'm talking about, it's best to just take to someone who has an idea. But if you do and possibly have an multimeter, measuring continuity is probably best way to find out what's wrong, well, of course if it's not obvious after visual inspection.

 

Yes, i did disconnect and connect it again just to check if it was an adjustment problem. No luck.

I do understand the logic behind your explanation, but don't have either the knowledge or tools to do such a fix.
Will have to take it to a technician friend of mine.

 

Has anyone been able to install an SSD for their Nitro? I've had my V17 for 3 months now and I want to install an SSD, and I'm trying to decide between the Transcend M.2 SATA III 6Gb/s 80mm, or replacing the ODD with a Samsung Evo 850 + HDD Caddy.

I heard the M.2 port in the 17" version is supposed to be quite a bit harder to access than in the 15". Is it worth the trouble, or should I just replace the cd-drive with a regular SSD?

Any tips/experiences would be greatly appreciated, thanks y'all!

 

It is worth it. You won't get the same speeds from a caddy.
There has been a lot of posts about that subject on the thread. Use the search and take a look.

 

Cool, thanks. Would I be able to copy my OS files over without any software since my HDD will still be staying?

Also, is there anyway to search this thread specifically? Thank you

 

Sure you can, on the thread it has been discussed with some software (sorry for no being more helpful but I own the ssd version).

On the top there's a search button/box.

 

On my 15" Nitro I had some throttling and FPS issues in Dragon Age: Inquisition - but I got around that by going into Power Options in the Windows Control Panel, and setting the "Maximum Processor State" to 99% instead of 100% in the advanced setting for the active power plan.

That seems to prevent the CPU from going into turbo frequency mode and keeps the temperatures down without throttling the CPU lower than 2500 mhz.

 

So how do you hard reboot without tearing apart to pull the battery? My unit is stuck on an update but holding power down and seemingly shutting it down does no good...power it back up and it still is hanging on update.

 

Hi, guys I want replace Atheros Wi-Fi it's totall crap. My Huawei U9508 has much stronger signal and even much better speed. I found some new BIOS on Acer site with Intel 7265 what I want, but it's 1.08 and my BIOS is 1.10 so i can't update it. Would it help if I update BIOS or there is no difference and good driver will work with no problem? Also can anybody send me some really good internal Wi-Fi antenna? I don't think that built one are good, but maybe better Wi-Fi card can really improve that.