Nitro 5 fans behaving erratically

AsahiBushi

Hello everyone,

I wanted to try asking here before I definitely sell this piece of ***** laptop on the cheap. I got a Nitro 5 with the i5 8300H processor and GTX1050TI graphics, it had been working well for six months until recently when I cleaned the fans. Since then it has become absolutely unbearable, it raises fan speeds just because even at very low processor loads and temperatures. It never shuts the ***** things off and it increases the speed to 3.5/4k RPM at random even if I just have Firefox with some 10 tabs and a couple of Word docs open. Only time it works as it should is when I'm on battery, but as soon as soon as I plug it in, it increases the fan speeds just because. As of me writing this post, this stupid POS is at 20% load, it spiked magically to 73 degrees after being stable at 47 degrees on battery and the fans are spinning at 4.7k RPM, both of them even if no app is using the GPU. Everytime I check and uncheck the CoolBoost option it quiets down the fans for a second just to increase the speed AGAIN.

This is absolutely unacceptable, the ***** laptop is barely six months old and it's already behaving erratically. It never gets to shut down because it's not actually overheating, it just stupidly thinks it is overheating. Never buying a crappy Acer product again, but at least I want to try and fix this POS before I unload it on someone else. Customer service is not an option because the local customer service office said they'd take ONE MONTH to give me a reply, yeah, awesome, what I'm I supposed to do without a laptop for 1 month, tell my boss I quit?

Any help is GREATLY appreciated, please, I've tried everything, even tried replacing the thermal pasting and NOTHING has worked.

andylb

So everything was working fine until you went in there to clean the fans then it started behaving badly correct? Personally I never take off the back cover unless I absolutely have to, there are too many things that can be accidentally damaged like the temperature sensor, were you wearing a grounding strap? I clean the fans with a mini high powered vacuum used through the vents but too late for that now. It’s a shame because the damage was probably caused when you cleaned the fans so the problem won’t be covered by the Warranty. 

On a practical note, go to Settings/Power and Sleep/Advanced Power Settings/Change Plan Settings/Change Advanced Power Settings expand System Cooling Policy (see snip below) and reduce the settings when plugged in, you could also reduce the CPU power when plugged in (The box in red). Don forget to change them back to High Performance if you game 

Please click YES if I have answered your question 

egydiocoelho

@AsahiBushi Check this information:

Have you checked if version 1.28 of the bios fits the fan thermal table?

AsahiBushi

Forgot to mention, it's a Nitro 5 515-53. Would seriously appreciate any input or help solving this issue, I can't afford another laptop at this moment and I need it for work. What worries me the most is that, if it's being troublesome already at six months, it will definitely never hold a candle to my old HP that lasted three years working fine.

andylb

So everything was working fine until you went in there to clean the fans then it started behaving badly correct? Personally I never take off the back cover unless I absolutely have to, there are too many things that can be accidentally damaged like the temperature sensor, were you wearing a grounding strap? I clean the fans with a mini high powered vacuum used through the vents but too late for that now. It’s a shame because the damage was probably caused when you cleaned the fans so the problem won’t be covered by the Warranty. 

On a practical note, go to Settings/Power and Sleep/Advanced Power Settings/Change Plan Settings/Change Advanced Power Settings expand System Cooling Policy (see snip below) and reduce the settings when plugged in, you could also reduce the CPU power when plugged in (The box in red). Don forget to change them back to High Performance if you game 

Please click YES if I have answered your question 

AsahiBushi

andylb said:

So everything was working fine until you went in there to clean the fans then it started behaving badly correct? Personally I never take off the back cover unless I absolutely have to, there are too many things that can be accidentally damaged like the temperature sensor, were you wearing a grounding strap? I clean the fans with a mini high powered vacuum used through the vents but too late for that now. It’s a shame because the damage was probably caused when you cleaned the fans so the problem won’t be covered by the Warranty. 

On a practical note, go to Settings/Power and Sleep/Advanced Power Settings/Change Plan Settings/Change Advanced Power Settings expand System Cooling Policy (see snip below) and reduce the settings when plugged in, you could also reduce the CPU power when plugged in (The box in red). Don forget to change them back to High Performance if you game 

Please click YES if I have answered your question 

Thanks for your reply. The cleaning was done by a tech service I've been taking my laptops for years without issue, so I assume they took the adequate precautions. I'll try what you suggested and post again, see what happens. Oddly enough, I left the laptop plugged in, put it on hibernate and went for lunch after I posted this question, when I came back it was working perfectly as it should: 6% load, shows 53 degrees on Nitrosense and fans at 2.4k (plugged in and at high-performance). That's the way I wished it worked every time but, alas, the ***** thing seems to have a mind of its own!

andylb

Sorry didn’t realize you had taken it to a tech service, I would have taken it back to them and had them fix it. I have heard that purposely sleeping a laptop then waking it up can sometimes work like a miracle a bit like the battery reset thing. Glad that it is working out and you are a bit happier

AsahiBushi

andylb said:

Sorry didn’t realize you had taken it to a tech service, I would have taken it back to them and had them fix it. I have heard that purposely sleeping a laptop then waking it up can sometimes work like a miracle a bit like the battery reset thing. Glad that it is working out and you are a bit happier

I did take it back but they told me it was surely a manufacturers defect because there's nothing they can do about it. To be honest, I trust them more than I trust a customer support service that takes one month to diagnose a simple laptop. Just after my last post I shut down the laptop and turned it back on again: still the same story. As soon as it boots it detects 90 degrees and increases fan speeds to 4.5k while plugged in. I tried changing the cooling policy to passive and reducing the minimum processor speed from 100% on high performance while plugged in to around 30%: still the same. Only time this laptop behaves properly is when I'm running on battery power, as soon as I unplug it the fans quiet down and it works like a charm.

Any other suggestion? I'm desperate. Someone suggested me to restore the system, but that would mean having to re-download a lot of apps. Checked for the latest Windows updates, Nvidia updates: nothing works.

andylb

Let me try and get a couple of my colleagues involved
@brummyfan2 @egydiocoelho
@JackE

egydiocoelho

I already had a similar problem with some windows updates. What happens when you reinstall windows by pressing alt + f10 before the Acer logo?

dinesh9893

egydiocoelho said:

I already had a similar problem with some windows updates. What happens when you reinstall windows by pressing alt + f10 before the Acer logo?

I had the same issue but in my case overheating issue started suddenly 10 days ago with no reason like 10 days ago no over heating issue at all whether gaming or using youtube but suddenly one day I see my cpu fans running furiously and when I check in Nitrosense they running at 5800 rpm because my cpu temp is over 90s and not going down just because of I was watching a youtube video, so I closed the browser an restart it and even restart the laptop but no help and from that moment till now my cpu temp goes 90s just to open a youtube or play a video on vlc. and if I try small games like pubg mobile on Emulator temp reaches 90s and stay at 90s with so much lag in low level game. I don't know what happen but from that day till now I tried so many thing with no help.
I have 8 month old Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-52) 
i5 8300H
Nvidia GTX 1050
500Gb SSD (upgraded) 1TB HDD
24 Gb RAM (upgraded)
using cooling pad all the time and always using on AC power.

leifia2

Is it posible too turn of the fan when it goes bananas (Nitro 5) it starts and blows Wild even when i read a paper online

batmalin

leifia2 said:

Is it posible too turn of the fan when it goes bananas (Nitro 5) it starts and blows Wild even when i read a paper online

Yes it is possible to even adjust your own fan curve in BIOS, adjust voltages and many more, but unfortunatelly Acer has locked the advanced options in tne BIOS...

AsahiBushi

egydiocoelho said:

I already had a similar problem with some windows updates. What happens when you reinstall windows by pressing alt + f10 before the Acer logo?

Haven't tried to be honest, I don't want to re-download all the apps I have and I would need to buy back a couple of them. Did it work for you? Was it solved simply by the Windows re-install?

dinesh9893 said:

egydiocoelho said:

I already had a similar problem with some windows updates. What happens when you reinstall windows by pressing alt + f10 before the Acer logo?

I had the same issue but in my case overheating issue started suddenly 10 days ago with no reason like 10 days ago no over heating issue at all whether gaming or using youtube but suddenly one day I see my cpu fans running furiously and when I check in Nitrosense they running at 5800 rpm because my cpu temp is over 90s and not going down just because of I was watching a youtube video, so I closed the browser an restart it and even restart the laptop but no help and from that moment till now my cpu temp goes 90s just to open a youtube or play a video on vlc. and if I try small games like pubg mobile on Emulator temp reaches 90s and stay at 90s with so much lag in low level game. I don't know what happen but from that day till now I tried so many thing with no help.
I have 8 month old Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-52) 
i5 8300H
Nvidia GTX 1050
500Gb SSD (upgraded) 1TB HDD
24 Gb RAM (upgraded)
using cooling pad all the time and always using on AC power.

It happened exactly like that for me, VERY annoying and frustrating. I tried what someone suggested in another thread and reduced CPU usage in the Windows power options settings and left max CPU usage at 75% for balanced mode. When working on balanced mode, the CPU stays cool and the fans rarely go faster than 2,800 RPM. Sadly, when I play Forza Horizon 4 on high-performance mode, temps still shoot up even with the fans at a max speed on Nitrosense. I'm reaching even 100 degrees which is completely unacceptable.

I'm stuck with this laptop for the time being because there's no way I can take it to customer service in a quarantine and can't buy a new one because my local currency went to hell. I'll try undervolting it with Intel's XTU, see what happens and report back, but one thing is for certain: NEVER BUYING AN ACER PRODUCT AGAIN!

AsahiBushi

Ok, tried undervolting with Intel's XTU. Now the laptop's CPU fan is completely ruined, great.

Tried between 150 and 180 degrees and it shut down at 180 so I played it safe and left it at 150. Barely noticed any difference, but apparently it stopped throttling due to power limiting. Played some Forza Horizon 4 for a good while and it worked well, temperatures stayed mostly the same but it got rid of an occasional stutter. Went for something to eat and quit playing Forza to let the laptop cool down. Nitrosense again on balance and fans on auto. As soon as I wanted to play again, clicked high-performance and fans on max: immediately a horrible grinding noise began to sound and only became worse, Nitrosense showed the CPU fan considerably slower than the GPU fan and in a moment it stopped completely. Turned of the laptop ASAP, booted it back up and again, same thing. I'm being able to write this post because, at the moment, fans are at 2k RPM (Balanced/Auto) and I cannot believe that right in the middle of a quarantine I'm almost out of a computer that I bought less than a year ago. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE, NEVER BUY A NITRO 5, IT'S A TERRIBLE PRODUCT!!!

So, now I'm stuck with this POS through the quarantine. Awesome. And Acer's official customer service representative in my country takes A F****** MONTH to evaluate a warranty claim. Just in the worst possible moment, this laptop has failed me. I simply cannot express how angry, frustrated and scammed I feel with this terrible computer.

egydiocoelho

These problems occurred shortly after cleaning the fans. Can you record a video of the problem and post it on youtube? About the temperature of 150 and 180 degrees, you measured ºf, correct?

AsahiBushi

egydiocoelho said:

These problems occurred shortly after cleaning the fans. Can you record a video of the problem and post it on youtube? About the temperature of 150 and 180 degrees, you measured ºf, correct?

Thanks for your reply! Yes, it happened at the same time although the fans were not the problem and began working properly once I followed some advice from here and adjusted the processor speeds for Balance/High-Performance mode. I should've been more specific but 150 and 180 or, more specifically, -0.150 and -0.180 were the undervolting values I used in Intel's XTU to try and lower temperatures which didn't happen although performance while playing had a slight improvement. I'd rather not try and replicate the problem, though I appreciate your interest. I still hear the fan at 2k rpm like it's touching something and I assume that the noise will only become worse at 6k rpm with Nitrosense on Max, so I would prefer not to cause it to fail completely.

Do you know if the laptop inside has any seals or something that void the warranty? I'll bite and try to call the customer service on Tuesday when the quarantine is momentarily lifted, but I'm unsure if they'd refuse to honor the warranty for a simple clean-up. As far as I saw, the laptop had no special seals or anything similar, but I just want to make sure. Hopefully, in 1 month, they'll give me a new laptop.

egydiocoelho

Ideally, you should ask the Acer service center in Colombia. However, if there are no warranty seals, it indicates that users can open the notebook. However, you cannot change the thermal paste.

Acer-Karp_Retired

We are sorry you are having this issue. The Acer Community is a peer to peer platform where enthusiast users help other user with their issues. If your issue persist we suggest you contact the direct support channel for Acer to send your unit to repair.

Please find your region in the link bellow for further assistance.

https://www.acer.com/worldwide/

Regards,

Acer-Karp.

Meekzen911

I'm having the exact same problem except my temps are completely fine, just randomly speeds up the fans for no reason and then stays there for a good 10 mins and then dies down again. If I want to play Minecraft for example I can't open anything else otherwise the fans shoot up again. was working fine but all of a sudden the fans have started behaving erratically. would help a lot of someone could help me with this issue. Thanks. 

Yamen2771

in Nitrosense, set the power plan to balance or power saver if you have it on high performance, if that doesn't work you can try the other solution which is to reduce the maximum processor state

AsahiBushi

Ok, it seems I finally resolved the issue. First of all, thanks everyone for your patience and support. Second, DO NOT BUY AN ACER PRODUCT IF YOU LIVE IN COLOMBIA. Third, even though I marked an answer, it's not a definitive solution, but it helped me keep the computer going until lockdown was relaxed and I could take it back to a proper tech service.

TL;DR version: repaste, use XTU, don't buy Acer if you're in Colombia.

The solution was a matter of repasting the laptop. With that and some XTU tinkering I now average 65 degrees while playing Forza Horizon 4 or Battletech when, before, I was always above 95 degrees. Even after playing around an hour or so temperatures don't go beyond 75 degrees. Best of all: unlike the local Acer Customer Service, my tech didn't take 15 business days to give me a diagnosis. Funny thing is I was talking to some friends about the issue and they've told me horror stories about the local Acer CS. I also saw a couple of comments on Acer Colombia's Facebook page saying CS "took 15 days and did nothing but factory reset my laptop". So that's why I insist: DO NOT BUY AN ACER NITRO, OR ANY ACER PRODUCT, IF YOU LIVE IN COLOMBIA.

Adjusting the power settings, as suggested by @Andylb didn't solve the issue, but it definitely helped while I was able to get it serviced. Now, when using the laptop on Balance mode, at 75% processor speed, the fans even shut down, something that had not happened in months! The fans are still a bit noisy and out of sync, but we didn't replace them because there's a parts shortage due to the pandemic and because I needed my laptop ASAP for work reasons.

My suggestion to anyone having this issue would be to repaste your laptop first, even if it's less than a year old. I know, sounds ridiculous, but apparently some Nitro 5s can't even last a whole year before needing new thermal paste. The laptop has great performance and is great bang for your buck, but quality is DEFINITELY lacking.

I would appreciate if you guys could help me even further with some information. First, what is the part number for the Nitro 5 fans and what's a suggested retailer? Second, I recall seeing a chart on these forums detailing the RPMs at which the fans spin at certain temperature, but can't find it anymore, does anyone happen to have it?

Thanks again everyone and here's hoping this laptop is finally fixed for good!

egydiocoelho

@AsahiBushi Check this information:

Have you checked if version 1.28 of the bios fits the fan thermal table?