Problem: Acer Nitro 5 AN515-52 Overheating (90-95°C)

[GoronsRule]

Hello everyone, hope you are doing well. I've surfed through this site quite a bit for the past year because of its excellent programs and threads that help thousands of people.

I'm here because I've exhausted all of the possible solutions I could think of to cool my Acer laptop. The problems are as follows:

1. Intensive gaming such as Elden Ring, heavy emulation like the Switch, etc., all lead to temperatures that hover around 90-95 WHILE UNDERVOLTED. I tried a trick I've been using that is limiting the FPS to 30 and "duplicating it" with LSFG from Lossless Scaling and it worked for a while when it comes to performance (even if it's fake FPS), but I still had high temperatures nonetheless.

2. Prochot Offset is locked by Acer from what I've seen (there is a yellow lock above it, although the options aren't grayed out), so I can't manually lock the temperatures so that it doesn't overheat.

3. As I've said, I already undervolted and underclocked both my CPU and GPU following some YouTube guides and the nice preset Red Sand (Hero Preset) from the Acer forums, and from what I've read so far, it works nicely. It's not a miracle thing, since the author of the preset said that the fps would be more or less the same but the temperatures would decrease 5 or 20 degrees depending on the games at that time.

4. I've used this 6 year old laptop for 4 years (got it in 2020) heavily (changed OS from Windows to Linux and back to Windows, I'm on Windows 11 which I kinda regret), so I don't know how much life it has left, and may be why it overheats. I upgraded it with 16 GBs of RAM (24 GBs now in total) and a 1TB SSD if that helps. I've sent it for maintenance and thermal paste change, but nothing worked. I even have a cooling pad that lifts it a little bit so it has a better way to cool itself, but it also doesn't do much.

So yeah, these are the issues with my laptop and I require some help. Uncle Webb, if you are reading this, I require your infinite wisdom when it comes to this stuff, and I thank everyone beforehand for reading this and helping me afterwards if possible.

I don't have any benchmark programs at the moment, only some games and HWInfo if that helps. I'll provide logs if needed but I don't know how to do it efficiently, so I'll wait for instructions as well. Have a good day.

 

[eidairaman1]

Hello everyone, hope you are doing well. I've surfed through this site quite a bit for the past year because of its excellent programs and threads that help thousands of people.

I'm here because I've exhausted all of the possible solutions I could think of to cool my Acer laptop. The problems are as follows:

1. Intensive gaming such as Elden Ring, heavy emulation like the Switch, etc., all lead to temperatures that hover around 90-95 WHILE UNDERVOLTED. I tried a trick I've been using that is limiting the FPS to 30 and "duplicating it" with LSFG from Lossless Scaling and it worked for a while when it comes to performance (even if it's fake FPS), but I still had high temperatures nonetheless.

2. Prochot Offset is locked by Acer from what I've seen (there is a yellow lock above it, although the options aren't grayed out), so I can't manually lock the temperatures so that it doesn't overheat.

3. As I've said, I already undervolted and underclocked both my CPU and GPU following some YouTube guides and the nice preset Red Sand (Hero Preset) from the Acer forums, and from what I've read so far, it works nicely. It's not a miracle thing, since the author of the preset said that the fps would be more or less the same but the temperatures would decrease 5 or 20 degrees depending on the games at that time.

4. I've used this 6 year old laptop for 4 years (got it in 2020) heavily (changed OS from Windows to Linux and back to Windows, I'm on Windows 11 which I kinda regret), so I don't know how much life it has left, and may be why it overheats. I upgraded it with 16 GBs of RAM (24 GBs now in total) and a 1TB SSD if that helps. I've sent it for maintenance and thermal paste change, but nothing worked. I even have a cooling pad that lifts it a little bit so it has a better way to cool itself, but it also doesn't do much.

So yeah, these are the issues with my laptop and I require some help. Uncle Webb, if you are reading this, I require your infinite wisdom when it comes to this stuff, and I thank everyone beforehand for reading this and helping me afterwards if possible.

I don't have any benchmark programs at the moment, only some games and HWInfo if that helps. I'll provide logs if needed but I don't know how to do it efficiently, so I'll wait for instructions as well. Have a good day.

From a hardware standpoint, did you ever replace the thermal paste or thermal pads? All of the mobile oems use cheap crappy stuff. Have you blew any vents and fans out over the years of owning this notebook?

Also you may want to consider these cooling pads...

Truth be told, as thin as these things are, definitely a notebook and not a laptop...

@unclewebb

 

[GoronsRule]

From a HardWare standpoint, you ever replace the thermal paste or thermal pads, oems use crappy stuff. Blew any vents and fans out?.

Also you may want to consider these cooling pads...

Thanks for the response.

I have a rather okay cooling pad that I got as a gift. It has like 5 fans although I think it doesn't cool that much judging from the air it releases.

Thankfully, the lackluster thermal paste was changed like 1 or 2 months ago plus cleaning all the dust it had accumulated through the years. It honestly didn't change much, it still performs and heats the same from what I've tested so far.

 

[eidairaman1]

Thanks for the response.

I have a rather okay cooling pad that I got as a gift. It has like 5 fans although I think it doesn't cool that much judging from the air it releases.

Thankfully, the lackluster thermal paste was changed like 1 or 2 months ago plus cleaning all the dust it had accumulated through the years. It honestly didn't change much, it still performs and heats the same from what I've tested so far.

The way oems sardine can in the parts in the chassis nowadays with no space to breath they definitely thermalsoak and throttle. I believe the fans aren't powerful enough with as thin they are and use like 1U heatpipesinks. 1U fans are as noisy and annoying as a blue star is hot by the way.

The coolers I suggested are like forced induction on a Super Charged or Turbo Charged Automobile.

And the way fans are you need good cooled air, otherwise blowing warm air on parts just makes it worse.

 

[unclewebb]

I require your infinite wisdom

Acer likes to set low ball thermal limits for many of their laptops so they will start to thermal throttle sooner than they should. Acer also likes to lock the PROCHOT Offset setting as you found out so there is not much you can do about this part of the problem.

You are probably already doing all you can with ThrottleStop. Post some screenshots of the main window, the FIVR and TPL windows so I can at least see your settings.

I've sent it for maintenance and thermal paste change, but nothing worked.

Replacing the thermal paste is critical. I would not let anyone do this to my laptop. Order some Honeywell PTM 7950 and buy a few screwdrivers. Watch some YouTube repair videos for your laptop model. I am sure you can do a better job compared to someone that doesn't care nearly as much about your laptop. Some of the generic / bulk / cheap thermal paste used by some repair shops is junk when applied direct die to a mobile CPU.

 

[eidairaman1]

Acer likes to set low ball thermal limits for many of their laptops so they will start to thermal throttle sooner than they should. Acer also likes to lock the PROCHOT Offset setting as you found out so there is not much you can do about this part of the problem.

You are probably already doing all you can with ThrottleStop. Post some screenshots of the main window, the FIVR and TPL windows so I can at least see your settings.


Replacing the thermal paste is critical. I would not let anyone do this to my laptop. Order some Honeywell PTM 7950 and buy a few screwdrivers. Watch some YouTube repair videos for your laptop model. I am sure you can do a better job compared to someone that doesn't care nearly as much about your laptop. Some of the generic / bulk / cheap thermal paste used by some repair shops is junk when applied direct die to a mobile CPU.

It's like the P6 Architecture (Pentium Pro, Pentium 3, Core Duo) and Skt A Days, back then AS5/AS Ceramique was the stuff to use.