Cheap vs expensive laptop?

[Fast Eddie]

My 2 year old acer is dying. It's constantly overheating and becoming practically unusable. Even with a fan under it it can be border line.

As such I'm in the market for a new one, the problem is I don't know if I'd be better off buying an expensive one like the XPS or a cheaper option

[Patrick]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

My 2 year old acer is dying. It's constantly overheating and becoming practically unusable. Even with a fan under it it can be border line.

As such I'm in the market for a new one, the problem is I don't know if I'd be better off buying an expensive one like the XPS or a cheaper option

Before buying a new one I think I would have it checked out, it could simply be an accumulation of dust on the cooling fan, or a new fan needed.

Patrick

[Ian]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

I agree with Patrick. I routinely vacuum out the slots around the cooling fans under and to the side of the laptop. I even blow through the vents backwards as that's the best way to shift dust and fibres caught up in the heat sinks. Having dismantled laptops several times, the amount of gunk in the heat sinks can be surprising!

I use the rmClock CPU utility on my laptop and cleaning can reduce the CPU temp from 70-80C down to 50C, and the fan goes really quiet.

2 years for a laptop means it's still in its prime. Mine is almost exactly 3 years old and I have no plans to replace it.

Ian

[Fast Eddie]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

I've already taken the back off, and cleaned the fan as well as given it a squirt with compressed air to try and clean it.

I read somewhere that maybe the thermal paste used on these doesn;t last very long as it's directly over the CPU which is hottest, fan blowing out relatively cool air.

Anyhow I think it maybe down to the graphics card (i think its a shared one), as when i was using it last night for no photo rleated stuff i.e. Thunderbird, Firefox and iTunes only it behaved itself.

I'll try taking it part again and getting in the sides not just underneath, however both my girlfriend and i have the same model and have had numerous problems:
blue screen of death when bought (so got a replacement) - Mine
not shutting down unless forced - hers
not shutting down properly so always having the recovery screen - mine
Overheating - Mine on windows 7, hers on Vista before installing W7 pro

I'm sure there's more but can't remember them at the moment.

Anyhow it all means I won't be sorry if i have to replace it and it won't be another acer.

Out of interest how much are your laptops? I'm wondering if this is a symptom of buying cheap?

[Ian]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

Julia had a 17 inch Acer - probably about 5 years ago, replacing a HP Compaq which was basically not powerful enough.

I have to say that the Acer case was poorly engineered and eventually the plastic casing of the screen cracked and eventually broke around both hinges.

My laptop is a 12.1 inch HP tx2130ea laptop with a tablet-style touch screen. It's Wacom pen compatible as well as resistive touch capable. Later ones have a capacitive screen instead of resistive. My one is no longer made but its successor, the tm2 - which has itself been around for over a year now - is very nice; an alloy frame, and much more power thrifty than mine.

Julia now has a 17 inch HP Compaq and apart from some vagaries of the 64-bit version of Windows 7, it's still looking good over a year since we bought it. The HPs are certainly better engineered than Acers.

Ian

PS Yes, the video graphics chip may be the problem - although I can throttle back the AMD CPU in my laptop, there is no such control over the nVidia graphics chip.

[yoshi]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

HI,
I, too, doubt the effectiveness of the internal air flow --- either due to the dust or to the inappropriate internal aif flow design.

Have you already measured the temperature of the CPU and rpm of the fan? Both for normal time and at the time of the overheat.

1) If you need a free software for it, this is one of them. (For measuring temperatures of CPU, PSU and HDD as well as for CPU fan speed)

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

2) HDD's also overheat and for more detailed diagnosis of them (both internal and external), also a free software is available.
(this gives you not only temperatures of HDD's but also health status judgement, power on hours, how many time you powered on/off HDD'S, etc. - lots of tecchy information which I donot understand.)

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/

This is a Japanese site but simply change the language to English after installation.

3) this is NOT related to this issue but one more free software that gives you lots of info about CPU...

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Choose appropriate version depending on which Windows version you use, 64-bit or 32-bit.

I personally use all of them for years and they have not created any problems while using my PCs.




Another approach;

External note pc fans. Much cheeper solutions. Samples are shown here; This is Japanese Amazon site - I have difficulty in finding a similar one in US Amazon site.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=%E3%83%8E%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E3%83%91%E3%82%BD%E3%82%B3%E3%83%B3+%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%83%B3&tag=googhydr-22&index=aps&field-adult-product=0&hvadid=8566617061&ref=pd_sl_2h82fqfbgr_b

You can use this even for your new notebook. It worked for my old notebook before. When your notebook does not have fatal defects, which I think is less likely as two years of usage is just very short, imo, then this simple equipment probably helps.


yoshi

[Fast Eddie]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

Thanks for all that Yoshi, I installed speedfan and it's currently reading:
HD0: 48C
Temp1: 54C
Temp2: 47C
CPU 50C

I can't remember what it was when it last overheated. I think 88C

It's meant to allow control of the fan(s) but they just read 0RPM even though I know it's going!

I'll give some of your suggestions a go and see what they say.

Ed

[yoshi]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

Yeah, the temperatures of both the HDD and the CPU look higher than normal.

Another topic.
When you plan to buy a new one, I would recommend to have a notebook that has USB3.0. It will help in future.

yoshi

[Fast Eddie]

Re: Cheap vs expensive laptop?

that's not even the highest it got to! the first link you gave me says max of 75C (72C for CPU and 51C for HDD)

I couldn't see any other vents to clean other than the one's I've already done.

Most of the important stuff (i.e. photos) is backed up on the NAS so I can use it until it dies then replace.