Acer Timeline Ultra m5?

[downloads]

As far as I know Samsung has similar issues- 17" Samsung Chronos 700Z7C throttles like crazy and even 15" Samsung Series 9 with no dedicated graphics gets very got- chassis temperature up to 48*C (and that is without a GPU that's worth another 30W).

I haven't seen tests of 15" Samsungs with dedicated graphics but I don't expect them do do much better.

To answer your second question- I haven't bought either. My current Arrandale notebook is still going strong but I bought it with two years of service in mind which already passed so I'm looking at new notebooks.

[kDrum]

Oh sorry, that was actually intended for the OP :P

Anandtech is apparently reviewing the Samsung Series 7, and timelineU M5 in the next week or two, along with some Asus ultrabooks, according to one of their staff who writes the laptop reviews, so I think I'm going to eagerly await those and possibly decide.

[vacaloca]

Took it apart a bit ago. Not that hard, removed all screws in bottom, the ZIF connectors are pretty taught, used a small piece of plastic to disengage most of the ones in the way.

Once the bottom screws are all out, and removing the optical drive and the plastic card on card reader, I used a plastic pry tool carefully around all the edges to disengage the tabs, including the top hinge -- so lid should be open all the way, ideally. The whole top cover, with keyboard and touchpad (TP) cables comes off as one piece. It has three ZIF ribbon cables that must be removed, one for the TP, one for the keyboard backlight (KB), and one for the keyboard.

The KB and TP cables are attached to a separate daughter board (DB). The DB also includes the SD/MMC slot, headphone/MIC port and another ZIF connector for the external microphone. Two ZIF cables go from the MB to the DB.

The SSD is the same one they used in the M3 series -- Acer P/N: KN.0200Q.002, also identified by SSE020GTTC0-S51 AM014. Interestingly enough, when I googled these numbers, the M3-581T/TG service guide came up, haha. For that part, the battery is also the same as the M3 -- AP12A3i (31CP7/67/90) 11.1V 4850 mA, 54Wh.

To remove the hard drive, the DB must be removed, because one of the securing screws is under it. Exercise caution, as the ribbon cable from the HDD to the MB is squished into an edge.

Further, to remove the radiatior/fan, the hinges need to be removed as well. Clearly, I will be doing a re-paste job because I have the right materials... pictures eventually. I've been taking them.

There are very thin thermal pads over the four VRAM 256 MB chips near the GT640m GPU. I suceessfully saved them, but I might replace them with thicker pads (1mm) I got to fix another older Dell D630 laptop the other day. The paste job on the actual CPU and GPU is decent, but the paste might not be that great quality. There is also a thicker pad over two bigger components labeled R24 217 4RT.

[kDrum]

Vacaloca, a few things if you can:

Test for throttling in games, maybe the most graphically intense that you have. I think I can live with throttling on furmark as long as games seem ok.

I'm sure you've already/are going to cover it in your main review, but screen quality and build quality please!

[vacaloca]

Seems that the CPU re-paste job kept temperatures about the same, not really any worse though. multiplier is still steady at x24, with CPU max temps of roughly the same as before (91-93 deg C). I used AS5, although I suspect that because I used 1mm thick pads on all the other VRAM chips, the CPU might not be making perfect contact.

However, GPU temp under load with CPU has dropped from 88 C to 86 C while in Furmak and Prime95 max heat, so it seems like there is still a bit of room to improve temps with just a good repaste. Another thing I noticed... the radiator is very easy to bend, which could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on how you look at it.

Game tests of Metro 2033 and Heroes of Might and Magic VI are detailed in a later post. (I played both recently testing an older GTX 580 that wasn't quite stable at stock clocks)

A passive HDMI to VGA cable I ordered from Amazon does not work, unfortunately.

[vacaloca]

I figured some pictures would be appreciated... some are re-sized slightly and edited for any identifying info/camera reflections, but they are all high-resolution. enjoy!

        

[kDrum]

Thank you very much Vacaloca! You are quite technical XD any ideas when you'll have your full writeup done?

[leojay]

Thanks for the pics! Can you post idle temps together with your ambient temps?
80% of the time, I wont be gaming and would like to know if it gets hot browsing or watching youtube.

[Bronsky]

Factory pasting on the CPU looks typically bad.

[Yanko_mr]

So after all, would you recommend it? i am really thinking about getting one, I do light gaming, (diablo, dota 2, lol) and a bit of cad cam (solidworks).