Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG, 4830TG and 3830TG

[Nando]

The new Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG, 4830TG and 3830TG are distinguished by the wide range of ultra-thin notebooks on the market in several respects: ultra-slim design, graphics and computing power, high-quality audio and connectivity . The appearance of the new Aspire series TimelineX is enhanced by the merger of two colors: cobalt blue aluminum (the cover) and silver profile, clean lines and soft. The palm rest, which includes the touchpad, the same color as the back cover, giving a balanced and minimalist style, while the keyboard is placed on a chiclet silver.

The models of the new Aspire series TimelineX are available in three formats: Aspire 3830T with display from 34 cm (13.3 “), Aspire 4830T screen from 35.5 cm (14.0″) and Aspire 5830T with panel 39, 5 cm (15.6 “). All TimelineX Aspire series notebooks are equipped with Acer CineCrystal display with LED backlight, 16:9 aspect ratio and 1366 x 768 pixels HD. These displays provide crisp images with visual effects and breathtaking high-definition experience the thrill of the best movies wherever you are and are equipped with Intel Core i7, i3 and i5 dedicated Nvidia GeForce graphics GT540M (2 GB DDR3). To meet the needs of video and photo enthusiasts, the Aspire TimelineX Series is equipped with hard drives with capacities up to 750GB. Alternatively, the TimelineX new models can be equipped with an SSD.

Here you can see a comparison of Acer's new TimelineX Models 13 inch (3830T) / 14 inch (4830T) and 15 inch (5830T)

Acer TimelineX 3830T

Acer TimelineX 4830T

Acer TimelineX 5830T

[Brian]

I'm usually not a fan of Acer notebooks but I have to admit this one looks pretty nice. It would make for a nice notebook to carry around with you to work--certainly much more portable than my AW M18x! Thanks Nando.

[StamatisX]

Yeah nando nice post man!

btw doesn't the keyboard look like those on macs?

[Nando]

Well...I think the Mac keyboard is better ... I've noticed that this laptop is very weak, apparently the plastic is not very solid

[mw86]

I have to say it does have a professional look to it. I'd carry on on the go! Nice find Nando!

[Nando]

Well this is not good

I read a lot people talking about throttling issue...that's a shame

[mw86]

Maybe they'll release a fast bios fix, Throttlestop's maker Kevin posted HP's bios update fix for their Envy 3D line throttle issue. Thanks Kevin!

[unclewebb]

Notebook Check did a review on the Acer 3830TG

Review Acer Aspire 3830TG Subnotebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

They mentioned the throttling issues in various Acer models and mentioned ThrottleStop 3.00 from Tech | Inferno but never did any proper testing to see how or if ThrottleStop could help out with this problem.

Likewise, the Tool ThrottleStop 3.00 from Tech|Inferno is a piecemeal solution that attempts to keep the temperature in check by lowering the maximum clock rate. We're looking forward to a full-fledged solution from the Taiwanese manufacturer, Acer.

Translation: We couldn't find our asshole with both hands and our review was mostly done so we didn't bother to put any effort into figuring out what ThrottleStop was all about. We're lazy so we'll wait for Acer to figure something out.

ThrottleStop has turned many throttling Acer laptops into something that was a lot more usable and didn't run like a slug. If you end up with one of these, give ThrottleStop a shot and it might be able to continue the tradition of fixing things when the manufacturer decides to ship a half ass product that doesn't live up to the specifications.

[unreal25]

Wow, I knew the build quality isn't their strong side but this looks pretty poor. I got an impression Acer laptops aren't that popular in the US. In Europe I guess the price difference between this crap and a decent laptop can be much higher so maybe that's why it sells better.

[unclewebb]

Some more testing is showing that Acer is using CPU throttling to cool their new Sandy Bridge laptops down because they cheaped out on the cooling solution. So far, Acer, HP and Asus are all pulling shit like this with some of their new Sandy Bridge laptops.

While gaming, the Core i5-2410M in the 3830TG first turned off Turbo Boost and dropped from 2700 MHz down to the default 2300 MHz. That's crap but 30 seconds later it's a real kick in the balls when it drops down to 1200 MHz and stays there. Frame rates go in the toilet after that. No use waiting for a bios update because this is just bad design. They are depending on consumers to be stupid and to put up with a new Sandy Bridge laptop that runs at less than half of its Intel designed speed while gaming.

Finally a chance to use the smiley that shows exactly how Acer is treating their customers.

Edited June 15, 2011 by unclewebb

[svl7]

This really sucks, definitely a poor design by Acer. I don't have a lot of experience with their systems, but I was working with a 8943g a couple of times (first gen i7, on-board 5850m gddr3) and it run seriously hot while gaming or doing something similar, not only the thermal diodes, but also the surface of the system.

According to these stories it seems to be a common issue with their laptops. Simply unbelievable... and I thought it shouldn't be a too big of problem to keep a SB chip cool enough to run without throttling.

[Nando]

too bad for Acer...the laptop design is very poor, the throttling issue is a direct kick in the balls to customers

[unclewebb]

When I first started working on ThrottleStop, I spent months abusing Dell in the forums as I discovered one throttling Dell laptop model after another. They got so pissed off with me informing their customers about some of the shit they were shipping that they banned me from their forums to shut me up. I was honored!

Do you know what? All the bitching finally paid off. Dell got their shit together and with the laptops they've designed during the last year, you rarely hear about any throttling issues. It's not impossible to build a high performance laptop that can run at its rated speed. I thought other manufacturers would learn from the lessons that the user community taught Dell but they obviously haven't. There are too many new Sandy Bridge laptops running way too close to the thermal throttling point at 100C or being prematurely throttled to prevent hitting this limit.

I was helping one user with a Sandy Bridge Mac Book Pro that he was trying to run Windows 7 on. He was struggling to run his CPU at 50% load. The cooling solution was so bad that this load alone was enough to trigger heat related thermal throttling. He wasn't doing any severe stress testing. He was just trying to play a simple game but that was causing more heat than his laptop was designed to dissipate.

It's a sad world. The typical consumer has no idea why the performance they paid for can't be used because of bad design. They take this and never complain so laptop manufacturers are more than happy to turn out more of the same. Put shit in a fancy box and make it look nice and they know consumers will lap it up.

[unreal25]

A-men.

You're reading my mind!

[unclewebb]

fractalus on NBR did some testing and found that using the ThrottleStop Alarm feature on his 3830TG works great. He was able to set up ThrottleStop so when the CPU core temps get up to 90C, ThrottleStop switches profiles and turns off the turbo boost feature so he can keep gaming at 2300 MHz just fine. The core temperature peaked at 94C which is still within the Intel specification so it wasn't hitting the 100C Intel thermal throttling point. At about 85C, the Acer bios is designed to drop the CPU all the way down to the minimum speed of 1200 MHz which is definitely noticeable when trying to game. 2300 MHz vs 1200 MHz is almost a 100% gain in CPU speed for fractalus.

The 3830TG has a poor cooling solution but at least with the help of ThrottleStop, it's a usable laptop now without dropping down to Pentium III speeds.

[Nando]

it's a usable laptop now without dropping down to Pentium III speeds.

fuck yeah!

[jeffreybaks]

Personally I think people are not taking precautionary measures like there suppose to. This is one of my favorite laptops and I took a long time deciding what laptop to get between the older acer 3820tg and the laptop I have the Lenovo Ideapad Y460. I know the older acer model has two fans cooling, but after alot of inspection on the 3830tg the insides cooling the nvidia GT 540m, the fan, looked very well designed to me.

Most of these new laptops that are in the mid range gaming category that are between 12-14.5 inches like HP Envy,Acer 3830tg, Ideapad Y470/460p,Sony SA/SB, alienware 14x/11x, Asus k42ja and many more have decent enough cooling systems but they need help. You have to use them in air conditioned rooms with fans blowing on them swirling the air around the room, also proping them up so the intake air vents that cool the insides can get enough air suck. When you do this a laptop that is getting up to 90-99 celsius this will bring it down to 77-85 most of the time which is well within the limits of more so the gpu but the processor as well.

Its just like my laptop the Ideapad Y460. If I would just let it sit in a hot room without helping the air along of course its going to reach 90 celsius. Iv only let it happen a few times onces on accident and once just cause for testing. You have to be a real dummy to let it get that hot to be honest if I may be so bold. Just like any electronics, in a datacenter, air has to be moved around and cooled other wise the electronics will fail sooner or not function at 100%. Same goes with our laptops.

[Jimbo]

That's a cop-out IMO. During summer here it's 40c+ and not everybody has A/C, or even fans. I'm not saying I expect it to run at 65c all the time, but if other products (like cars) are tested for multiple climates & conditions, then why not laptops?

[jeffreybaks]

It may be a cop-out but its reality at the moment. Either you take control of the situation and bring down the temps or you complain. What Im saying is though my laptop is similar to what there describing but with a few adjustments as I mentioned its a great gaming laptop and I can play anything out without problems.

Also saying why arnt laptops designed in different climates is a bit of a stretch. Sure there are more logical ways to do things in everything in life but most of it doesn't work out cause of cost and time and efford. Just like smart batteries are nearing the future that will give us alot more life out of are mobile devices im sure there will be advancements that make it easier for people to use there laptops the way they want them to be.

If you don't have ways of cooling the equipment you buy down then you shouldn't be buying it in the first place If I was to be to bold. Before you buy something you should have a good idea of what your getting into. I don't like to tell any one not to buy something but you wont see a person buying a hummer that lives in Beverly hills cause it gets a work out or a Ferrari or porsche in the rocky mountains cause the roads are so adapted to sports cars.

Anyone should be able to buy any laptop anywhere in the world and be happy with the way it works for them. If you don't have A/C then use the laptop more when the night is cooler instead of the heat of the day and put a fan on it and keep it propped up so the air intakes can suck air in it. You can get some cheap oscillating fans that would work perfect for keeping the air moving in the room your using it in and pushing air in the intake you have propped up is what helps me the most.

This argument is kinda moot though, Iv talked about this hundreds of times in hundreds of threads just like this one about the same type of laptops. These medium ranged graphics laptops that are not mxm and have one fan cooling both the gpu and the cpu. People wonder why they get hot when if they took a few steps all would be good. I don't think most realize even that only one fan cools these types of laptops is one of the main reasons, its not a gaming laptop that has separate fans for the mxm GPU and the CPU.

Throttlestop is great peace of software though and is used by many. Iv never had any problems with throttling though so I cant assume anything but heat has always been forfront for me ever since I bought my first alienware area51-m 776, it was first laptop with 128 megabytes of video memory on a discrete graphics processor. I still used it for AION when it released. It used to get so hot on the bottom that it would leave red welts on your hands for hours after touching it for a few seconds. I would guess it got up to at least 120s-140s and thats celsius but it never shut down cause of heat is the funny thing, well a few times.

Edited July 12, 2011 by jeffreybaks

[svl7]

I think a laptop should be able to run cool enough without additional cooling methods like notebook coolers.

Keeping the system free of dust will help a lot, and a lot can be done by tilting the system a bit to improve the air intake (assuming the air gets sucked in from the bottom).

40°C ambient it pretty hot of course and will definitely have an impact on the temps, even on systems with very good cooling like the Asus G73JW. Nevertheless it's (at least in my opinion) wrong, to simply solve insufficient cooling with CPU throttling.

Throttling can be a good tool to prevent the system from damage and also to lower the temps, but a system shouldn't throttle while executing real-life applications like games or image editing etc, at least not as long as the ambient temps are at normal levels (up to about 35-40°C).

Unfortunately some manufacturers, e.g. Acer, decide to rather use throttling as a method to make the system running cooler instead of improving the cooling system, which isn't acceptable.

[jeffreybaks]

yea I never had goton into the throttle mess but there were alot of posts about it all the time with the alienware m17x I think it was, the first revision. I think manufactures at this point expect customers to know how to keep there systems cool regardless of the software that controls it. You know manufactures have a funny way of dealing with difficult situations. It took like 10000 page threads and thousands of people complaining to dell to get them to even acknowledge that there m11x laptop had a faulty hinge design that had a failure rate of 99%.

There are many other cases, people still sell m1730's XPS dell systems when there GPU's inside are destined to fry cause of bad solder ball used in there chips yet people still buy them for thousands of dollars without the least bit concern. Bad flexing keyboards, bad design, alot of nvidia stuff is double and tripple what ati costs. Yup laptop biz has leaps and bounds to go.

At least you can rest assured that with all the bad models of laptop that have surfaced throughout the short life that is the laptop business that throttle preventer software is only software and not something with the hardware. I still love this laptop and want it eitherway.

Here is a new review of the 3830tg,

http://youtu.be/WIXpN-7gOdY?hd=1

Edited July 12, 2011 by jeffreybaks

[mavo82]

Just got my 3830TG back from ACSC and it seems they don't want to know about my throttling problems:

Quote:

"By design, the CPU is clocked down to 1.2Ghz when a certain graphics card temperature is exceeded. This is necessary for proper cooling of the system and does not indicate an error."

I properly packaged my notebook when sending it in and got it back in a bigger package, where the notebooks original package just bounced around. They also damaged the original package.

I'll contact my computer store, maybe they'll take it back. (as in fact, Acer is telling me they can't do anything about it)

[svl7]

This:

Quote

"By design, the CPU is clocked down to 1.2Ghz when a certain graphics card temperature is exceeded. This is necessary for proper cooling of the system and does not indicate an error."

simply sucks! It definitely indicates an error, a huuuuuge error, namely the cooling design. It's unbelievable that they really produce and sell such a product imo.

[mavo82]

simply sucks! It definitely indicates an error, a huuuuuge error, namely the cooling design. It's unbelievable that they really produce and sell such a product imo.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!" xD They didn't even test my notebook, took only my report and wrote a quick answer. 11 days waiting for nothing. Why did they want me to send it in?

[svl7]

No idea, sorry to hear this... you can use Throttlestop to avoid the throttling, but as long as the cooling isn't sufficient it won't really help you, since it will run too hot. Hope you can bring it back.