Sharing experience in making the Acer Swift 3 model SF314-56G the greatest laptop ever ;-)

ed4myra

I want to share my experience how to make this laptop great again! Hope you wanna join me. What are your experiences?

This is my first Acer laptop, and I am loving it. It is a relatively light weight laptop, quiet - hardly hear the fan, the screen brightness is to my surprise good.
There are a few things I am and still improving on this laptop to make it much better than it is. Things to improve, a better battery life and faster response times for daily light and medium office tasks. As benchmark i use PC mark 10 to see my progress.

1) first the bloatware

Any laptop of this price and from this vendor has its bloat- and adware and don't forget Windows 10 and vendors like Intel and NVIDIA. Why bother?
To  make it perform better and have better battery life. I managed to get rid of this bloatware, and constantly reviewing after installing new software, and don't forget the extra load of background services you will get rid of.

I would recommend you to read this post: https://malwaretips.com/threads/how-to-slim-windows-10-and-make-it-superfast.91924/.

But also a warning, realise first the meaning of each tweak before you do it, and find out how you can reverse it, like making a restore point. Besides this, review from time to time which system process takes up cpu and find out how you can bring it down. For example I stopped Windows and Store updates, and plan it every 3 months, except for defender or security updates.

2) hardware upgrade

A few times I got 100% cpu for system interrupts not short, but at least 10 secs. I suspect Optane cache. I also noticed system process uses more cpu with Optane enabled.
So my next step will be to replace the Optane drive with a Kingston A2000 500GB nvme ssd. This ssd has same price as more known Intel 660p but has better performance and more lifespan (TBW).

I am also considering in upgrading the RAM from 8GB to 20GB with 16GB Crucial DDR4-2666.
This dimm is most compatible with the built in Micron (owner of Crucial) 4GB DDR4-2666 soldered RAM. Although I am a light office user not needing more than 8GB, but from time to time I wanna run other OS like Android and Linux with their apps on virtual machines like Virtual Box or VMware. I notice that when I use Bluestacks (an Android virtual machine) it is a bit sluggish and eats a lot of battery life.

If I run benchmarks, the laptop gets hot (around 42C) but I hardly hear the fan blowing harder, even though the mx250 gpu is of type 25W tdp. The individual components (i5 and mx250) have potential, however I believe there is an Acer firmware power cap, which makes the i5 and mx250 perform in benchmarks below their potential, just to keep the fan quiet. Maybe a future project to look into this, the BIOS settings and if repasting the heatsink will help. For now a shorter term project: undervolting cpu and gpu.

3) undervolting cpu and gpu, for better battery life and cooler temperature

I don't play much games, if I do the casual games on Android. So gpu performance is not my goal, but a performant laptop on medium office tasks like excel and more importantly, having a better battery life. Battery life is around 7-8 hours. My goal is 10 hours for light office work. Most of the office work is done on the google & microsoft cloud.

First undervolting the Intel cpu and gpu. First I used Intel XTU, a previous version, that supports this intel i5. The interface is simple to use, however I moved to Throttlestop for the following reasons: in Throttlestop you have more options and more profiles (4) that Throttlestop uses to switch automatically if a limit is reached. 

What options have I used: FIVR - for undervolting max -100mV, for cpu, limit the power booster when using the battery profile, and the speed shift to vary the clock  between the 4 profiles (AC, gaming, internet, battery) between 0 - 255. High value on battery and low value on AC profile

If you wanna find out yourself, please consult this guide: https://www.notebookcheck.net/How-to-Lower-Temperatures-Stop-Throttling-and-Increase-Battery-Life-The-ThrottleStop-Guide-2017.213140.0.html and watch a few youtube video's on this topic.
For battery life here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/guide-improving-battery-life-on-windows-enabling-deeper-c-states.815602/. The first part of this story overlaps with getting rid of bloatware. It is easier to follow my suggested link at topic 1.

It is no rocket science, and don't panic if the laptop freezes or you get a bsod. But what I do not advice is to overclock or make the power caps higher, risk of damage by overheating. And also be careful with gpu stress tests like Furmark without watching the temperature go up. Have a temperature meter gun. Put extra safeguards in the power and temperature throttles. Let the laptop cool down, if the device feels hot, also not to decrease the lifespan of your battery.

Right now I am in the process of undervolting the mx250. A bigger challenge than Intel's cpu, because here the goal is to have a performant gpu for heavier tasks like rendering.
On battery the laptop most of the time will automatically switch to the Intel gpu. Be ready here for more often a bsod while searching for the sweet spot, because you push the envelope of the gpu.

I started with using MSI Afterburner. With undervolting a gpu, it is not one simple volt slider. The trick is to change the voltage/frequency curve by letting the gpu run on it's comfortable high frequency range at a lower voltage (let say 100mV lower, than it's default behavior).

Right now I am experimenting with various scenario's, the simpler to use right now is Asus GPU tweak II. Reason it has an option to make the curve a straight line by a press of a button, instead of individually moving the curve dots in the graph. Please watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOAxpsusICw starting at 5:00.

I have not found the sweet spot yet. Things still to vary: memory clock, fpu target and making the curve more asymptotic (see pic) instead of a simple straight horizontal line.



I will keep you updated here. And please share your similar experiences and little projects on this handy device!

Thank you for reading! 

camaromisi

Hello, i have a Acer Swift 3 SF314 56 566M ,can i upgrade this laptop whit a 16 gb ddr4 2666 slot ram ?
Thanks 
Have a nice day

billsey

Specs say you can use up to 8GB modules in that one slot, so trying a 16GB instead is not guarantied to work. Let us know if it does, or go with safe and put an 8GB in instead.