My Acer Nitro 5 would rather throttle than turn up the fans. Why?

Model: AN515-54-51M5

It gets really really hot while playing games, if I touch the top of the keyboard it's actually almost painfully hot, and the heat coming out from the side stings my mouse hand. I have coolboost enabled and everything, but I have to use the fan speed sliders if I want the fans to actually get to higher speeds at which the laptop doesn't thermal throttle. (I've already repasted everything, that's not the problem)

Why won't it just turn up the fans by itself? By adjusting fan speed manually I have to deal with loud fans even when I'm only watching YouTube videos, so I have to go back into the nitro menu and set fan speed back to auto every time I'm done playing games, which is pretty annoying.

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Ninjakitty844

GAMING6698 said:

@Ninjakitty844
Use hard-flat surface for better ventilation
When did you buy this laptop?
Btw, it is GPU or CPU because undervolt only affects CPU

I always have my laptop on a flat surface. I bought in the second half of 2019, can't remember exact month. It's definitely the CPU overheating. Even at 99 percent usage the GPU barely gets hot.

GAMING6698

@Ninjakitty844
1)You need clean your fans,air vents(important)
2)apply new thermal paste (default one is not good and need to replace after sometime)
I recommend you to buy and use grizzly kryonaut thermal paste

(Note→apply thermal paste correctly remove old compound before applying new one Most of the time people apply too much thermal paste. The point of the paste is not to sit like a layer of mayonnaise between the CPU and heatsink. The job of the paste is to fill in microscopic air gaps between the CPU and heatsink. The vast majority of the heat transfer is via metal-on-metal contact - it's about 100x more effective at transferring heat than the paste (which in turn is about 100x more effective than air). If the paste is thick enough to decrease the amount of metal-on-metal contact, it will actually make things worse than having no thermal paste at all.
Need to apply tiny amount)

Ninjakitty844

GAMING6698 said:

@Ninjakitty844
1)You need clean your fans,air vents(important)
2)apply new thermal paste (default one is not good and need to replace after sometime)
I recommend you to buy and use grizzly kryonaut thermal paste

(Note→apply thermal paste correctly remove old compound before applying new one Most of the time people apply too much thermal paste. The point of the paste is not to sit like a layer of mayonnaise between the CPU and heatsink. The job of the paste is to fill in microscopic air gaps between the CPU and heatsink. The vast majority of the heat transfer is via metal-on-metal contact - it's about 100x more effective at transferring heat than the paste (which in turn is about 100x more effective than air). If the paste is thick enough to decrease the amount of metal-on-metal contact, it will actually make things worse than having no thermal paste at all.
Need to apply tiny amount)

I've already cleaned the air vents and applied thermal grizzly kryonaut (yes I pasted it properly, as far as I know). There was no noticable before/after difference that I could tell by looking at temperatures in Nitrosense.

GAMING6698

@Ninjakitty844
Try to reset your window then update your gpu driver and check.

If problem still persists your laptop need to check by technician for that get in touch with acer costumer care in your region ↓
http://www.acer.com/worldwide/

Ninjakitty844

GAMING6698 said:

@Ninjakitty844
Try to reset your window then update your gpu driver and check.

If problem still persists your laptop need to check by technician for that get in touch with acer costumer care in your region ↓
http://www.acer.com/worldwide/

I'm not sure what you mean by resetting my Window. As in reinstalling Windows? There is a new update for my GPU (from 3 days ago), I'll install it now

Commodore_1995#

I think he referred to the command alt + f10. What happens when you press alt + f10 before the acer logo?

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

I think he referred to the command alt + f10. What happens when you press alt + f10 before the acer logo?

Doesn't that like reset your computer to factory settings...? I have a lot of files on here I need to keep.

Commodore_1995#

I think colleague @GAMING6698 was doing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzLJRAZldA&list=FLVBqwtBw09_Z9tXo1Injakw&index=5&t=14s

I prefer to backup the files to another storage unit.

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

I think colleague @GAMING6698 was doing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzLJRAZldA&list=FLVBqwtBw09_Z9tXo1Injakw&index=5&t=14s

I prefer to backup the files to another storage unit.

Aight so this is 100% a coincidence, but I got completely rekt by Windows updates today. It installed some very problematic updates even though I had updates paused, and I was no longer able to use any network, so I couldn't get internet on my laptop. But now everything's back to normal aside from a few casualties:

My laptop forgot which apps to open with which programs, so it uses "Groove" (bleugh) instead of Windows Media player for MP3 files
I lost some programs I uninstalled in the process of troubleshooting
I have a corrupted update installed that I can't get rid of because I get an error when I try to uninstall
Windows deleted every single restore point I ever had in favor of making one in the broken state my laptop was in
And for whatever reason the network I'm connected to now has a 2 at the end of its name

So for now I am steering clear of anything to do with resetting or restoring my computer.

Commodore_1995#

But are the fans still in trouble? About the network problem, have you tried to uninstall and delete the wireless network card driver in the device manager?

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

But are the fans still in trouble? About the network problem, have you tried to uninstall and delete the wireless network card driver in the device manager?

I fixed the network problem (I did reinstall the network card driver, but that isn't what fixed the problem). Most things are back to normal at this point. I still have a corrupted Windows update that can't be uninstalled though. My computer still gets hot but I do not want to reinstall Windows to fix it (I doubt that would fix it anyway)

Commodore_1995#

Can you try to restore windows to a date prior to the update? What happens when you change the processor to 99% here?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/xc/zk72gv5dz5lj.png

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

Can you try to restore windows to a date prior to the update? What happens when you change the processor to 99% here?

I cannot restore windows because it deleted all of the restore points I've ever made

I have tried setting my processor min and max to 99%, it makes no difference

Commodore_1995#

Have you checked if version 1.30 of the bios solves the problem?

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

Have you checked if version 1.30 of the bios solves the problem?

I've heard the new bios update has problems. The keyboard light will turn off even if the laptop is plugged in. I don't want that to happen.

Commodore_1995#

Could you tell me where you found this information?

Ninjakitty844

Actually my bad, it seems I already have whichever update turns off your keyboard even when plugged in. How do I check my bios version and where do I find new updates?

Commodore_1995#

You can check in the acer care center

Ninjakitty844

egydiocoelho said:

You can check in the acer care center

Acer Care Center is not on my laptop and there is no download for it anywhere on Acer's website.

Ninjakitty844

Ninjakitty844 said:

egydiocoelho said:

You can check in the acer care center

Acer Care Center is not on my laptop and there is no download for it anywhere on Acer's website.

Nevermind, it's installed but it's called care cente not Acer care center, so I wasn't finding it when searching in the start menu xd

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