Acer Aspire E15 (2018 Edition) stopped turning on.

A few months ago now, my laptop decided to stop powering on, or even responding at all to the power button.

I had upgraded the RAM not long before that, and while I had some programs running that were using a good portion of that, the fan decided to up and quit.

I tried to power it back up right when it shut off, and I heard a whirring/grinding noise for just a second before it went dead again. After that, the power button didn't illicit any response from the machine.

Me and my dad worked on it for a while, replacing the fan, the battery, and some parts of the frame that snapped while we were talking it apart (we have big hands).

Is there some obvious part I could replace that I'm just missing out on entirely? Please send competent brains for assistance. 😂

Accepted answers

All comments

aphanic

I'm not sure about my brain being competent, but I'll give you some thoughts.

Assuming the RAM you replaced the old one with was of the same type it shouldn't be the problem, failing not long after you replaced it can be coincidental. When you opened the machine and got to the motherboard, do you recall smelling something burned or seeing a black-ish spot somewhere?

CPUs shutdown when they reach their maximum transistor junction temperature to prevent them from being damaged, each has its own max. temp., but throttling near it and shutting down if it's reached is pretty much universal behavior. If the old fan broke down and you continued using the laptop, things would start to get progressively warmer, but in the end it should have shutdown without any major problem.

I can't think of anything obvious to look at, if the problem is somewhere in the motherboard it can be tricky to find. Nothing happens when you try to power it on right? No LEDs, fan spinning, beeps or screen flashing.

JacobEC

The motherboard wasn't burnt, no black spots.

The charge light turns on when it's plugged in, but no LEDs, fan spinning, beeps, or screen flashing upon pressing/holding the power button.

JacobEC

aphanic said:

I'm not sure about my brain being competent, but I'll give you some thoughts.

Assuming the RAM you replaced the old one with was of the same type it shouldn't be the problem, failing not long after you replaced it can be coincidental. When you opened the machine and got to the motherboard, do you recall smelling something burned or seeing a black-ish spot somewhere?

CPUs shutdown when they reach their maximum transistor junction temperature to prevent them from being damaged, each has its own max. temp., but throttling near it and shutting down if it's reached is pretty much universal behavior. If the old fan broke down and you continued using the laptop, things would start to get progressively warmer, but in the end it should have shutdown without any major problem.

I can't think of anything obvious to look at, if the problem is somewhere in the motherboard it can be tricky to find. Nothing happens when you try to power it on right? No LEDs, fan spinning, beeps or screen flashing.

JacobEC said:

The motherboard wasn't burnt, no black spots.

The charge light turns on when it's plugged in, but no LEDs, fan spinning, beeps, or screen flashing upon pressing/holding the power button.

aphanic

Oh, something is working at least.

Nothing comes to mind as to what to check next, aside from inspecting connections or components with a multimeter the problem seems to be in the motherboard (and its replacement may be expensive, I think that model already has the CPU soldered in).

Although it wouldn't have caused the original fault, if you have touched the heatsink when you replaced the fan try loosening the screws that hold it to the CPU and motherboard a bit. A quarter of a turn or half a turn is enough, I've had instances where too much pressure made the laptop not turn on.

Other than that I'm out of ideas

JacobEC

aphanic said:

Oh, something is working at least.

Nothing comes to mind as to what to check next, aside from inspecting connections or components with a multimeter the problem seems to be in the motherboard (and its replacement may be expensive, I think that model already has the CPU soldered in).

Although it wouldn't have caused the original fault, if you have touched the heatsink when you replaced the fan try loosening the screws that hold it to the CPU and motherboard a bit. A quarter of a turn or half a turn is enough, I've had instances where too much pressure made the laptop not turn on.

Other than that I'm out of ideas

It's not the heatsink, it never got touched while replacing anything else. In the meantime, I guess we'll see about replacing the motherboard.

aphanic

JacobEC said:

In the meantime, I guess we'll see about replacing the motherboard.

Seems like the only solution to me, but it could turn out to be expensive

aphanic

This is most likely not related to your case, but I'm posting it here for completeness.

I just stumbled upon another non-booting Acer laptop and the problem ended up being too much pressure in the RAM area. The user had installed some heatsinks for laptop RAM on both sides of the stick. The top side, the one that was in contact with the motherboard, seemed not to interfere but it wasn't until we removed that one that the latptop started. The other one could stay.

We wen't through different drives, different RAM sticks (it even failed with a bare one), pressing the battery reset button for 20 seconds after everything was plugged in, working without battery, ... Nothing seemed to work and there was no apparent failure point.

We got to the cause because when we replaced the thickened stick by a bare one it turned on after the battery reset switch was pressed, but after replacing the stick with the other one, back to the same situation. What made matters worse is that there was no beeping, light indicator, etc. whatsoever when there was no RAM installed. It just played dead (with the fan running and the power LED on).

I understand flexing PCBs and soldered components isn't ideal at all, but tolerances seem to be too tight.

Quick Links

All Categories
Recent Posts

Top Members

Weekly

Puraw 220

Jack22 110

GAMING6698 60

vsparky 60

Diya1811 55

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™