$399.97 - Acer Aspire AS5560G-7809 (AMD A6-3420M, 4GB, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, AMD Radeon HD 7670M, 15.6" Display, Windows 7 HP 64-bit)

Seems like a great combination of power and price, but I'm concerned with how well the cooling system can keep up with the heat?

Acer Aspire AS5560G-7809 NX.RURAA.001 Notebook PC - AMD Quad-Core A6-3420M 1.5GHz, 4GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, AMD Radeon HD 7670M, 15.6 Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Black at TigerDirect.com

 

Basically the same laptop as the Asus K53TA or the Lenovo Z575 currently a couple of threads down. Neither of those has any problem with heat, even overclocked to 2.4GHz or more. I would guess it would have pretty much the same thermals as the notebook in your signature due the the bigger chassis cancelling out the difference in heat generated from the graphics

 

The 7670M in this Acer is a re-branded 6650M, which the Asus K53Ta and Lenovo Z575 have.

I wonder if this Acer has a bottom access panel? The Asus K53Ta doesn't, but the Lenovo Z575 does.

 

I don't know man, I have some doubts about the Acer but I personally asked Talin about his/her Lenovo Z575 and there isn't any throttle or overheating issues there even with the single exhaust vent. The reason why I'm skeptical about the Acer is because of my previous experience with a Gateway NV55C, that shares the EXACT same case as this Acer, which did infact overheat and shutdown because of it. That Gateway was using an Intel Pentium P6100 alone, no discrete gpu! I corrected the overheating by opening the case, cleaning out the dust and crap inside and finally reapplying new thermal paste. The heatsink and pipe in my opinion were cheaply designed in that particular model but I don't know for sure what this Acer's heatsink and pipe look like or whether it would experience a similar thing.


Since you brought up my Thinkpad Edge I'll also say that I think Lenovo does a great job with their cooling systems on the Thinkpad line of notebooks (even on the Edge line). My E425 has 2 exhaust vents, one on the left side and at the rear of the notebook.

Call me anal but I think the dual vent setup has an advantage over a single vent setup, more heat is exhausted:


The Acer's single vent:


Here's what the bottom of my E425 looks like. The main intake is not on the bottom like the Acer. I'm not 100% sure but I think my laptop also takes in air from the keyboard side. I wouldn't like to leave the Acer on my bed if the main intake was underneath:


Here you can see the Acer's main air intake underneath and the access panel. Personally, I never liked this kind of setup:


And lastly I've disassembled my E425 and have seen what the cooling system looks like. It is composed of mostly all copper, including the fan shroud, the pipes and the plates at the end of the CPU/GPU.

I don't have a picture of my E425's exact heatsink/fan setup but it looks very similar to these:


And this:


Now, I don't know what the heatsink/fan of the Acer looks like but I hope its definitely NOT like this:


But more like this, at the very least:


Honestly, Lenovo did a great job with the E425's cooling system. I just wished Lenovo would've offered a stronger/faster discrete GPU. I'd be interested to see what the Z575's heatsink looks like. Hopefully this better explains my concern with this Acer. I'd like to know how it would handle overclocking too. The price is great for the performance but it would suck if its cooling system couldn't keep up with all that performance it packs. I use a cooler either way.

1. I didn't know the 7670M was just a rebranded 6650M. AMD marketing got me there! Checking Notebookcheck.com reveals that the only difference is the name and the possibility that the 7670M may come with GDDR5 memory (of which I'm not sure this Acer comes with). That's silly. Clock frequencies, stream processors, memory bus width and features are the same.

2. It has an access panel, its just very small in comparison to the Lenovo Z575, only providing access to the HDD, wireless card, and RAM.

 

I forgot to mention but some of the guys with HP DV6Z AMD notebooks have dual vents but even they end up modding their cases and heatsink to help dissipate more heat.

 

The Asus k53ta has generally the same chassis that that Acer has and i didn't have any issues with heat even with an OC up to 2.2-2.4GHz. I can't comment on the acutal heatsink Acer uses because i've never had one of those laptops apart

 

can this screen be upgraded to a 1080p panel?

 

Possibly, but you'd have to find a compatible display cable. You'd need dual channel display cable for 1080p. You could find a similar Acer laptop that has a 1080P screen, and that model display cable.

 

if you check their megathread, the K53ta brigade do all sorts of mods, including cooling mods. cooling has so many variables that there is never a 'final' answer to any of it.. everything you do, everyplace you go, how you hold the thing - everything affects temp. then there is the huge variance in the quality of the application of the heatsink/cooler etc... the same exact model will vary by 5c or more doing nothing exciting.
this is a great price on this unit, however... I don't know how you get dedicated vid of this caliber at 400bucks.

Other Thoughts: Just wondering this: IS there even such a thing as a dedicated-graphics notebook that does NOT get "too hot" under high loads? To my knowledge, I haven't heard of such.

 

It's a single vent. The two "vents" are just intake/outtake, which every notebook has.

 

As for the dv6, take a look at this photo. It shows two exhaust vents/heatsinks (a bigger one and a smaller one), almost exactly like my e425:

 

Hello all,
I am considering picking up one of these and as I am horribly out of date on mobile hardware I was wondering...
Has anyone tried this one with Guild Wars 2? Is it capable of a playable framerate? and if so roughly what settings?

 

Guild Wars 2 isn't too demanding. You should have no problem running it at the native resolution of this Acer.