Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45 Idle Temps are higher after a power cycle?

BillyBob2271

OK, so to provide a little background, I'm running a Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45 with a Ryzen 7 5800H (and RTX 3070), and I initially wasn't happy with the temps/fan noise which were at 55°C+ (with fans at 2000RPM+), so after some digging (this video specifically: https://youtu.be/muYHGjSS7Ls), I used the registry editor to enable the 'Processor Performance Boost Mode' option in the control panel, which I used to disable processor boosting on my 'balance [acer optimised] power plan'. This worked surprisingly well, My temperatures when being lightly used (browsing, using word/powerpoint etc.) would drop to 40-45°C, with the fans rarely going past 1500RPM, and occasionally turning off altogether if left at idle (dropping blow 39°C), without any use (such as browsing the internet). The only time It'd spike was if i opened a game launcher or opened/refreshed a load of chrome tabs at once, where the fans may spin up, then they would quickly wind back down. Whenever i'd run an actual game, i could run it without the boost for 57-80°C in games that'd normally push 90-92°C (unless it began effecting performance, then i'd switch to [high-performance] preset with boost on).

This is where we jump to about a week ago.

After a turn off/turn on, the temps suddenly went up, with 50-55°C being the new usual temps with fans speeds of 1800-2200RPM which is annoying to say the least, with the high-performance power plan (with the boost enabled) pushing it up to 60°C (when before it'd be from 40 to 50). The fans also keep ramping up and down between those two speeds which make it 1000 times worse. Before, the fans would only occasionally ramp up to only 1800RPM if i opened a couple of things at once or switched between a couple of tabs really quickly, and now that seems to be the lowest it'd drop to at all, with ANY kind of light use pushing the fans up to 2200RPM. Performance at gaming seems to be fine, but I'm kinda annoyed how something has changed, hardware or software-wise that's suddenly made the fan-noise push past 'barely noticeable' to 'jumping between 1800 and 2000 RPM every other minute'.

I gave the laptop a dust clean, even removing the fans to get inside the air-channels to get any build-up out, to no avail. I double checked the background processes to make sure there was nothing suspect running in the background, but it seemed fine. even closing all the startup apps (GOG, Steam, discord), didn't seem to help at all, the temps just sat at 55 at idle :(

If anyone has any ideas on helping me reign in these temps, I'd be highly appreciative. I was planning on performing a repaste at some point but I've only had this laptop for around a year or less, so i was hoping to only have to do that if there was some kind of serious performance drop. Also, whilst I can't be sure, I can only speculate that maybe the voltages to the CPU has changed, resulting in the higher temps? or maybe the thermal compound managed to crust-up reducing the conducution between the heatsink and processor? I have no clue, but if anyone has some advice, I'd be highly appreciative.

[Edited the thread to add model name]

BillyBob2271

Okay, so quick update to the situation: after 3-4 weeks of the higher temps persisting, after waking the laptop from sleep this morning, the laptop somehow managed to idle at 40-45°C from looking at the Nitro Sense graph. The most bizarre thing about this, is that I'm sure you're wondering "okay, but what's your ambient room temperature?". That's a good question, and unfortunately i don't have the tools to accurately measure it, but I can say this: When this issue started, the room temp was quite low, I'd probably say 20°C or below (our thermostat in summer is usually set to 15 or below, and we have no AC). Even so, the fan was ramping and temps were climbing past 50 when it was definitely low enough to bring the CPU temp below 39 and turn off the fan when Idle.

Now, fast forward to today, and summer has finally arrived: its 27°C outside, with the room being 25 or more, I can certainly attest its warmer than usual, except now the idle is at 40-45°C? I'm certain that ambient room temp has nothing to do with this particular behaviour, either something about the laptop's ability to dissipate heat is changing rapidly, possibly something to do with the thermal paste or heatsink, or something is increasing the CPU usage in the laptop to drive the temps up occasionally. So, for now at least. I'm happily using the laptop with its fans being unusually quiet, especially for the current weather. I won't count this issue as 'solved' yet, who knows, maybe the temps will rise again after another sleep/wake or power cycle, maybe it'll be good for years to come.

I was actually, planning to bodge-together a pair of Noctua NF-A12x25 ULNs (or possibly some Noctua NF-A14 ULNs, depending on what's on sale ) to blow air more quietly into the air intakes on the underside, hopefully co-opting the laptops own fans and cooling it more quietly. I'll update if anything else bizarre happens lol

BillyBob2271

Okay, another update for anyone interested: I think I found the problem, If my solution works, I'll update with a follow-up comment and select it as the answer.

Put simply, on power-up, the discrete GPU no longer seems to go idle, this I observed from the fact that the temps of the GPU would always be shown in NitroSense (even though the usage graph wouldn't appear either), even when nothing of note was running in the background. This is what was causing my CPU temps to rise. A temporary solution is to simply unplug the laptop, wait a couple of seconds for the GPU to go idle and not show a temp in nitrosense, then plug the power back in, and presto! Temps were back to normal, even in this blistering hot weather, I'm back to 40-45 when being used lightly, and under 40 at idle.

I'm guessing this is a driver issue, specifically for the discrete GPU, so I'll see if running DDU for the Nvidia drivers, followed by a fresh display driver install will solve this issue. If not, I may have to bite the bullet and reinstall windows (which would suuuuuuck). If anyone else has any ideas, or encountered a similar issue, I'd love to hear any ideas too.

BillyBob2271

Okay, update TL:DR, DDU-ing didn't work unfortunately, even after uninstalling both the AMD and Nvidia display drivers. If anyones got any ideas, i'd be greatly appreciative.

StefanTM

I have the exact same problem. I disabled cpu boost and got amazing cpu usage, temps and fan speed. Suddenly a few months ago i play league and my cpu temps are 83 my fan speed is insanely loud.
I reinstalled windows 11 and updated all drivers and bios everything. It was good untill my norton free trial went out and i had to uninstall anitivirus and install new one or if it was the latest windos defender update that made the cpu temp insane again im not sure but now im back to windows 10 and the problem persists. IM SO ANNOYEDDDDDDDDDD HOW COME NO ONE FROM ACER CAN HELP OR KNOWS HOW TO FIX THIS???????? acer nitro 5 an517-41 ryzen 5600h gtx3060

BillyBob2271

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1223286#Comment_1223286

It sounds like a different issue to mine unfortunately, although I think that the issue I had may have been on Microsoft's end because the GPU idling issue seemed to miraculously disappear after a windows 11 update and hasn't returned since. Maybe look at the task manager for any unusual programs eating up CPU utilisation in the background, Anytime I notice my fans spin up for seemingly no reason, I usually find it's a program downloading an update or Windows sending off telemetry data or something weird like that.

eGomes

Hi guys,

First, check if your laptop's UEFI / BIOS firmware is updated to the latest available version:

For Nitro AN517-41:

https://www.acer.com/br-pt/support/product-support/Nitro%20AN517-41/downloads?suggest=an517-41;1

For Nitro AN515-45:

https://www.acer.com/br-pt/support/product-support/Nitro%20AN515-45/downloads?suggest=AN515-45;0

Because, "miraculously" Acer decided to embarrass itself and release firmware updates with improvements in AGESA microcode.

Windows 11 seems to be an "expert" at keeping the CPU and GPU in use in an uncomfortable and constant manner. I recently, discovered that memory compression was causing CPU spikes problems (and consequently high temperature) on my Aspire 5 A515-45G:

https://community.acer.com/pt/discussion/691394/a515-45g-possivel-solucao-para-cooler-fan-disparando-e-travando-em-rotacao-maxima-no-windows-11

Other problems are caused by Windows Defender (MsMpEng.exe), Edge which insists on running in the background (even though it has been configured). Not forgetting the following: dwm.exe and dxgmms2.sys that keep the System process busy at all times. Something we didn't used to see in Windows 10.