Overheating and disassembly issues on Aspire 8943G

Hi all.

I have a high-end model of the Aspire 8943G, the one with the HD5850, 18" display, bluray, etc. It's perfect for my desktop replacement gaming needs with good hardware and the large display, but boy oh boy does it have heating and ventilation issues.

Even though I have been used to CPU / GPU temperatures reaching 90-95 degrees under strain, performance has not suffered because of it. Lately however, temperatures rise to that level even when playing games that are in no way demanding - I recorded 92-93 degrees playing the original Deus Ex - and playing modern games is completely out of the question with the machine going into veritable meltdown mode, reaching over 110 degrees and bringing performance to its knees before forcibly shutting down. As I am writing this post, CPU and GPU core temperatures report at 80 degrees, which is ridiculous.

I've had issues like this on notebooks before, and they often come down to 1) dust or 2) loose screws on fan or heatbridge. Neither of which I can properly investigate on this model due to what appears to be a needlessly complicated way of accessing the heatbridge and related components.

As far as I can tell, this cannot be done by opening the machine from the back, although you should start there by removing the harddrives. Then you have to open up the whole front, including taking off and disconnecting the keyboard, as well as cables running from the keyboard and monitor to the motherboard, before disassembling the chassis from the keyboard and monitor alltogether.

Then you seem to have to disconnect all cables running to the top side of the motherboard before removing the motherboard to even get to the fan . The fan, by the way, does not appear overly dust clogged by what I could see through the grating that mostly obscured it from the top.

Needless to say, I stopped before the disconnect all cables part and put what I had taken apart together, with a sigh of relief that it all worked afterwards. But now I can't get to the bottom of my severe overheating issue.

Don't quite know what to do. Cleaning the vents had no effect, I'm probably going to order a cooler for this unit anyway, but at the current temperatures it's working up it won't make much of a difference. I have to figure out why the heating issue has pretty much suddenly skyrocketed.

 

You should have applied a high quality thermal paste while you've had it all dismantled. It looks lie the old compound is fried.

 

I didn't dismantle it far enough to get to the GPU, as I mentioned that would require me to basically start pulling electronics out as far as I could see. I could just see parts of the fan through an opening.

I don't really want to do this kind of dismantling myself, and I don't think sending it in to ACER would fix the issue as I doubt they'll replace the thermal paste if that is required.

 

I have the Acer Aspire 8943G and I'm having the exact same problem as you. In game, my CPU and GPU reaches 95 degrees, but the game does not lag or anything.. But I have to exit the game immediatly, cause I don't want to take the risk of it crashing..

I don't know what to do, this is eating me alive! I'm waiting for retail release of Diablo 3, but as for now I can't even play the open beta more than 5-10 minutes before reaching 90+ degrees.. Its just 1 year old, and there doesnt seem to be any dust inside...

Did you get your problem solved? Or am I screwed with this laptop?

 

Wow, it's pretty hard to get to the heatsink on this laptop... But yeah, replacing the thermal paste with something good like Arctic MX4 should fix your issues.

It's not that hard to disassemble everything if you're careful - here's the manual: [link removed] . I'd say you get someone to do it, since at those temps, you'll damage something sooner or later...

EDIT: I apologize about posting the link. The manual can easily be found on Google ("Aspire 8943g service guide") if you need it...

 

Thank you very much. I'll look in to it.. I too think that replacing the thermal paste should help the CPU from overheating.. I'm sure the original one is dry and useless.. But the GPU is kinda hot too, don't know what to do about that one.

One more thing that's very weird is that I cant find any fan speeds in Speedfan etc. But in Aida64 (old Everest) it shows "Gpu Fan: 30%". Constantly, without altering up and down.. All my settings are at "Max Performance" so it can't be any power saving thing.. Makes we wonder if Aida64 just shows something random since it can't locate any fanspeed.. But that just seems weird..

Cause IF my gpu fan works only at 30%, that would explain a lot.. But there's no way in hell to alter it.. Tried almost everything

 

The fan wont use the table on the GPU bios, it will have its own in the system bios that will spin up if the GPU or CPU get over certain levels.

 

Replace the paste on both the CPU and GPU - they're on separate heatpipes, and it's highly possible that Acer even used a thermal pad instead of paste on the GPU (which is way worse)...

 

Just read the manual on how to dismantle the entire notebook, but one thing seems to bother me. Though it's pretty hard to dismantle and reach the cpu heatsink, it can be done atleast.. But how on earth do I find the gpu? There is dual gpu on this model. One Intelgfx for "low performance" and the ATI HD5850 for "high performance".. But I can't find any of the gpu's in the entire service guide.. Strange.. And even it there were, there is no gpu fans anywhere to be found.. I think the only solution is to throw this laptop in a lake and hope it drowns to death.

 

CPU and GPU have separate heat-pipes going to the same radiator (that also covers chipset on the way).
Picture on page 97 of service manual shows GPU and CPU.
Intel graphics is integrated in the CPU in Core ix series (with the exception of Core i7 720QM)

 

ugh, lost a post trying to save people who have this laptop alot of trouble by putting all relevant info in 1 place, guess ill have to condense it and do it again

1. the WD harddrive it comes with sucks, from idle spinup issues to power consumption issues, swap in a SSD (the spinup issue causes stuttering in games but can be fixed, the power consumption issue will sometimes cause the whole laptop to NOT POST because it cant spin up the drive, will become more noticable as your battery wears out, why? i dont know, thats just how it is. sidenote: the drive isnt going bad or anything when it does this, it performed flawlessly when moved to a desktop for testing.)

2. the bundleware sucks, do a fresh install from a microsoft disc on your SSD (the disc your looking for if you got yours with 7 home premium is X17-58997, google it) acer provides all the drivers for the hardware on the system on their site, despite the fact that they dont (and never did) stock the harddrive cage and cover for the 2nd harddrive and to install one you have to work with what you got and mod it.

3. to fix the overheating, replace the thermal paste with high quality stuff, polish the contact surfaces if you know how/feel comfortable, and OPEN UP THE FAN INTAKE, easily the biggest issue on this laptop, besides the fact that you WILL need to dissassemble it to AT LEAST clean it as the radiator design gets clogged easily and fast, pictures for the opening up to follow




bad design of the freaking decade award to whoever decided it was unnecessary to open that intake up further... this is the single most effective cooling mod i made to my machine, went from the W key getting hot enough to burn my fingers to that key being barely noticeably warmer than keys on the right side of the keyboard...

 

I need details and help! I am having the same problems spot on! Ok the W key burning my fingers has been a pain in my finger tips for 2 years... So I'm excited to open this sucker up and fix it, but before I do I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking at... in the post its not very specific... i see a picture of what looks like you poked holes to increase air intake and then you put some type of tape as insulation so the left side of the keyboard doesnt get hot is that right??? What do I use??? I know WHERE I'm looking at but I don't know exactly WHAT I'm looking at...

 

Or no am I wrong... you cut the tap out where there was already holes.... but the bottom pick looks like they where manually poked... so the laptop had a larger intake but they covered it up and on the case there was no holes so you poked them??? can someone please confirm that this is right? sorry for double post

 

Ok I got my temp to drop from 65c to 50c when its idle after creating more holes to add the air flow to the fan, but when in game for more than 30 minutes it peaks at 95c...

Before I screwed everything back in it wouldnt climb above 80c... so maybe I need more bigger holes as mine are not as large as the ones in the pic??

 

Before mine would be running at 98 -> 102 C in games and be really laggy (since it turns down performance to keep it below 100)
but then I took it all apart and removed the plastic cover under the CPU-GPU Fan and put on new Noctua NT-H1 cooling paste. (the old stuff was dried up and also they'd put too much on it all)
but now It keeps around 70 to 80 under heavy gaming so much difference
so a big thanks to "mobius_trip" and all
now I can use it for gaming again and not worry about burning my fingers

and turn up my graphics a lot and keep a good framerate