Overheating Acer 5741 series

Looked at a random switching off issue on an Acer 5741 Laptop the other day. Clients main use of the computer is as a media center and was saying that is would randomly shut down when it had been on for a while. 

This was actually the second Acer machine I looked at as I had another client with a similar problem in an All in One (Z5610( which turned out to be a heat issue, so for this case that's where I headed first.

The laptop has an intel i3 inside and and Nvidia GT320 so I suspect one of these to be the culprit, I set out trying to replicate the issue and get the laptop to shutdown. So let the torture begin, I used Prime95 for CPU stressing and FurMark to test the video card. Both are free and push your components to the limit. I first ran each test independently and the CPU was close to max hovering around 70 degrees under stress, video card was at around 75 - 80 degrees. So for a laptop I thought these were fairly high.

I couldn't get the laptop to shut down on me though.

That is until I tried running both tests at the same time, within about 30 seconds the computer shut down, the heat caused by both components must have freaked the fan out and the CPU jumped to around 90 degrees before shutting down.

Problem found, now to find a fix, I ventured to google to find instruction on how to open the laptop, quickly I found an awesome Services Guide which step by step tells you how to disassemble the system and put it back together, with pictures, great news. Now the plan was to go in look at the heat contacts on the CPU and Video card and clean/re-apply thermal paste to the contacts. Close it back up and test.

Opening was easy and as soon as I got to see the CPU and Video card it was quite evident what the problem was.

CPU Before

CPU After

Seems as though Acer had been quite sloppy when applying this in the factory as that did not look right to me at all. So began cleaning both the CPU, Video card and the heat sinks.

Heat Sinks before

Heat Sinks after

Applied Artic Silver Thermal Paste and sealed the laptop back up. Booted the system and went straight back to the CPU stress testing, CPU is now hitting 45-55 degress instead of 70 under stress. Video card also has improved 55-65 under stress whereas before it was closer to 80. Now the big question will it still restart running together. The answer no, I ran the test with both components under stress for 30mins and the CPU didn't come within 20 degrees of where it was before the clean out.

So another computer saved from the scrap heap where Acer staff reported this was a software error.