Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

[mavo82]

lol...
on a serious note, my 7yrs old acer gives 100 mins of battery life with its original battery.

My aim to post that link was, their report seemed very comprehensive and thorough but I just wanted to check has anyone tried to imitate their settings and measured battery life? They have followed BAPco testing protocol.
(...)
If running simple office applications and photoshop, illustrater etc gives 10hrs battery life than its a big plus.

Atindra

I get 4.5 hours in idle mode out of my machine. Acer checked the battery twice and told me everything is just fine, no replacement needed.

since when are the timeline series designed to game? they are meant to be portable multimedia laptops.

In Germany, the 3830TG is advertised by Acer as a portable working and gaming machine. They use the two phrases "enough battery for a working day" and "made for demanding computer games" (not sure if demanding is the correct word in english). As I cannot use it for more than around 4 hours and as the throttling triggers each time I start a game for 5mins, the machine is unusable for me. I get around 50°C in idle mode already.

[aintz]

if acer advertise the timelinexs are gaming machine then they are fail. my almost 5 year old desktop is faster.

if you see the available benchmarks you can see that is it not strong enough to handle any recent games unless you have really low fps expections. i was a lil disappoint because i thought it would handle sc2 on lowest settings, i was wrong even after ocing the 540m to 825/1000 it was not enough.

[Bronsky]

I am playing Battlefield 3 beta on my 3820TG (specs below) at medium to high settings with no problem and have not OC'd the GPU yet.

[Sxooter]

I am playing Battlefield 3 beta on my 3820TG (specs below) at medium to high settings with no problem and have not OC'd the GPU yet.

And other than running 95C on CPU and 84C on GPU, my 4820TG can play any modern games at 30+fps (oced a little on the GPU) at low or medium settings. And I can play for hours with it running that warm with no hiccups or crashes. The x830TG series is seriously dissapointing. Compare the x830TG to the discount K53TA from Asus with a very overclockable CPU and quite capable 6650GPU which for $450 can game all day as well with another 5 to 10 fps better than my 4820TG. The K/A53TA, K/A43Ta are serious competition to the throttling mess that is the x830TG series. The A53TA, which is the version sold elsewhere than bestbuy goes for ~$600 right now, but I expect that to drop $50 to $100 in price over time, and at $500 or so it'd be a great machine by comparison. Temps running games for hours on them run in the 75 to 85C range, no throttling, and the machines run quite cool to the touch.

[aintz]

I am playing Battlefield 3 beta on my 3820TG (specs below) at medium to high settings with no problem and have not OC'd the GPU yet.

everyone have different standards on fps. i for one cant play a mp fps with less than 60fps. even 60 is pretty damn low. and sc2 on lowest is playable if i dont care about winning, fps dips to 20-30 when medium size fights happen.

but its ok because i dont plan to play much games until the next gen desktop gpus come out.

[ecchi_]

Thanks for the tip about putting ramsinks under the heatpipes, rbl_posse. I caved in and went for the full re-paste, the hardest part for me was just getting the plastic shell separated. Definitely easier than it is made to look in that teardown guide.

I just used some Zalman aluminium ramsinks that I had on hand. To make things quick I just clipped them shorter using a nail clipper, and then filed them even.

The re-paste helped a bit - combined with a Coolermaster U2, things seem to be under control. CPU hasn't been over 72 degrees during some quick Starcraft. I didn't play long enough to get up to max supply, but framerates kept up better than before.

edit: actually, I have a question about the CPU swap you did. I'm not familiar with the type of CPU mount used here. Is the socket on this motherboard a PGA or BGA? I have had a CPU replaced on a Sony UX, but that was a BGA so I had to send it out to have it done professionally. If the swap in this case is something I can do myself, I might consider doing it. I'm already running stock with the i5 2410m, so it would only be worthwhile going up to an i7 2620m (same 35W TDP) or something similar.

[rbl_posse]

I'm glad you were able to get it all taken apart and put back together with no problems. Its fairly difficult to do, and easy to break something. As far as adding heatsinks goes they certainly cant hurt your temps, and placing them under there is removable should you need to use your warranty. I know for a fact the heatsinks made a difference on my notebook, but then again I added 9 of them.

The CPU is rPGA, so it can be easily replaced. Just turn the slot head screw 180 degrees to the left to unlock the CPU, remove and replace, and then turn the slot head screw 180 degrees to the right to lock the new CPU in place. I really wanted to get the Q16M ES i7-2620M but the issue is that at this point nobody has tested that particular ES chip in the 3830TG. I went with the Q17N i5-2520M simply because it was nearly a sure shot. You could get an OEM or QS i7-2620M, which would work for sure, but expect to pay over $250, which isn't worth it. The 2620M likely only uses 1.15V for 2.7ghz, so it's the second best bin available.

[rose19082]

I wanted to purchase the Acer Aspire Timelinex 5830tg. It was released in June in my area and sold out before I could order. This happened a second time, and now it is discontinued in my country. Will this be replaced by another model? Is there some way to purchase the model I wanted?

[RobertDrake]

Yep. Buy a Lenovo x220. You might even get 10 hours out of it and its way better build than an Acer.

[Sxooter]

Yep. Buy a Lenovo x220. You might even get 10 hours out of it and its way better build than an Acer.

Those two machines aren't even remotely similar. If the OP wants a 15" laptop with a GPU, the X220 is sure to disappoint.