Issue with Acer Swift 3 SF315-51G-57E5 (2017) - No Display and Unable to Access BIOS

Hello everyone,

I have an Acer Swift 3 SF315-51G-57E5 from 2017 that I received as a broken unit. The laptop is missing the NVMe SSD, so the NVMe slot is empty, and there's no OS installed.

When I power on the laptop, I can hear the fans running, but the display remains dead. I've also connected it to an external monitor via HDMI, but there’s still no display. I’ve tried the usual troubleshooting steps like pressing F2, F12, and Esc to access the BIOS, as well as performing hard resets, disconnecting the battery, and even disconnecting the BIOS battery, but nothing seems to work. The screen remains blank both on the internal display and the external monitor.

My question is: Do I need to have an SSD installed in the NVMe slot for the system to function properly and for the screen to come on? Is there any chance the laptop is still usable without the SSD, or is it likely a hardware issue that makes it unrepairable?

I’d appreciate any input or ideas on what might be causing this issue and how to resolve it.

Thank you!

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Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/723911/issue-with-acer-swift-3-sf315-51g-57e5-2017-no-display-and-unable-to-access-bios

Hi, the laptop should still boot to BIOS even without a boot drive, not being able to boot indicates corrupted BIOS and/or HW issues. Acer Services in your country can reprogram the EEPROM (reset BIOS), not sure they will service a 2017 laptop, but you can try. The battery is probably dead after 8 years.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/723911/issue-with-acer-swift-3-sf315-51g-57e5-2017-no-display-and-unable-to-access-bios

If you have done all that you have listed above and there is no image or the bios doesn't come up after pressing F2 or F12 without the M.2 SSD boot drive, then its either an eDP cable or its plugs at the monitor or the mainboard that their data pins are shorted and faulty and you will not get an image.

The worst case scenario is that this laptop NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 with 2 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM has blown because a mosfet or capacitor has shorted and allowed a high 19V current to fry the gpu chip itself. You need to take your laptop to a technician that can pinpoint the exact faulty that your 2017 Acer Swift 3 SF315-51G-57E5 as doing anything else will not get the graphics going.

This is the eDP cable and plugs that you could change and see if the laptop gets an image. But before disconnecting the eDP cable and its plugs from the mainboard, make sure that the main battery and adapter is disconnected from the laptop mainboard and no power is going to the laptop.