How to make Windows 10 on Acer swift 3 lean, clean and more performant

ed4myra
ed4myra Member Posts: 80 Fixer WiFi Icon
edited March 18 in 2019 Archives
I just bought an Acer swift 3 SF314-56G and I am not happy with the performance, due to a lot of bloatware from Windows and Acer clogging up memory and cpu, making the system unnecessarily slower than it should be.

I have been reading on internet ways to make Windows laptops more lean and performant, however I have not come across experience with Acer swift laptops.

I like to open this topic for a discussion and feedback on how to do it, and do it as simple as possible without breaking anything functional, and most importantly getting the laptop more performant and having a better battery life.

Here are the steps I imagine to do:

1) having a new laptop, do a factory reset or Fresh Start of windows 10 and install windows with the highest privacy and unnecessary background services in mind.

Questions: will this step get rid of the Acer apps? If not, which steps to get rid of the Acer apps? Are there very necessary Acer apps that I cannot download from the Acer support website?

2) update Windows 10 to the latest software and Acer drivers
3) make a system recovery point
4) use the Windows10Debloater GUI script to get rid of most of Windows bloat apps and services.
Note to review the script thoroughly to enable or disable some features of Windows. You always can reapply the script to enable a feature you have mistakenly disabled.
You can also think of using the ShutUp app, if you have missed some privacy settings at initial install in step 1. Check Windows10Debloater and Shutup10 

Questions: anyone have good experience with debloating Windows using above method, that you would like to share here? How much memory and and percentage of cpu can be saved here? How about additional battery life? Are there some steps or features that Acer Swift 3 laptops require that should absolutely not be disabled? Think of Biometric service for fingerprint scanner to work

Looking forward to your reactions. Thank you

Answers

  • ccl2003
    ccl2003 Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer
    edited October 2019
    Upgrade your RAM that's all. The onboard 4GB is barely enough for Windows 10 especially with the latest updates. I own the same model and upgraded the RAM to 20GB (4GB+16GB) and the SSD to Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB and it is buttery smooth.
  • ed4myra
    ed4myra Member Posts: 80 Fixer WiFi Icon
    I have completed the process of debloating the pre-installed Acer and Windows bloatware.

    The result is not bad. The device has 8GB memory and 16GB optane + 1 TB disk.
    At idle the cpu uses less than 1% and RAM around 2.5GB (note that the gpu's allocate 4GB, 2GB more than the dedicated 2GB).

    The pc mark 10 score is 3900. Online reviews have shown scores of 4000 for a 56G model (with 16GB ram + nvme ssd) and 3600 for the 55G model with similar RAM and ssd. 

    There is still some throttling being done I think, cause during stress test the fan does not get loud and the gpu temp does not get hotter than 78C, while on the keyboard surface max temp gets 41C - room temp at 28C. I have not yet undervolted or overclocked.

    Acer has deliberately limited the Advanced Power Plan options, so before you start benchmarking, search on the internet for clues to get back the Ultimate Performance power plan and a registry setting to get the full Advanced Power Plan options.

    Notes of caution when using Windows10Debloater: please use the blacklist and make sure to retain the driver utility programs like Intel Optane, Realtek and  NVIDIA, as it is not easy to find on internet the one pre-installed.

    .

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