Aspire 5 A515-43....is it really supposed to be this bad?

A few weeks ago I purchased the above model off of Amazon based on the glowing reviews. Reality is very different. Out of the box the fan ran at full blast 100% of the time. Searched around the net for a fix. Finally ended up messing with the processor power managment where I've clocked it down to 85% for the maximum power state. Great, no more constant fan noise. Now however the computer is running achingly slow. Like when loading up a web page it's old school picture by picture. I type and the computer lags, etc. I"m guessing it's because I clocked down the power? I'm about to put it back to 100% and see if that helps and hopefully the fan doesnt start running 100% of the time. Also I only have 4mb of Ram, but I've been checking my memory and it's usually at 70% capacity, so I dont feel that is the issue. Also, because of the slowness I went from Windows 10S to Windows Home, thinking maybe it was the browser but running Chrome isnt helping either.

But can someone please be honest with me. Is this model a piece of junk out of the box? Any fixes available or should I just return it? Thanks!

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JackE

Maybe you got a lemon. Do a full ALT+F10 remove everything factory reset. If this doesn't resolve the issues, return ti to Amazon as defective for a refund. Jack E/NJ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzLJRAZldA

thedude404

Thank you for the quick reply. I am not what you'd exactly call tech savy. What will the factory reset do? Will I have to reinstall Windows? How difficult is that?

As an aside I just put the max power back to 100% it had no effect.

JackE

The ALT+F10 cold boot factory reset should return the machine to its out-of-the-box straight-from-the-factory Windows 10 condition. Not hard. Should take a few hours and is one of the best ways to rule in or rule out a hardware issue. If it doesn't fix the issue, it's likely hardware related. Then pack it up pronto and send it back as defective. Jack E/NJ

rich1974

most likely, the drivers are not installed in a proper way. go to support page and install drivers, especially video driver.

other issue is that background processes is guzzling up your cpu. open task manager, go to details tab and click on cpu. this will put the guzzling processes in decease order.

i see that you have ryzen 3500u, this is a very good cpu. i have a 2200u and works very good.

please install the latest adrenaline driver from amd website. look for yout cpu.

Suvan

@thedude404 yes Acer has messed up this laptop big time. The bios is not configured properly. So many hardware issues. I don't know what to say. However regarding the problem, the EC fan I think is not configured properly.To fix it I think you have to reset the fan. Follow the below video to reset the fan.