Enabling Thermal Thottling On Acer Aspire 5

[DGAY]

Just The Facts, Ma'am:

Acer Aspire 5 A515-51
Intel Core i3-8130U 2.2Ghz
Intel UHD Graphics
8 GB DDR4
1 TB Hard Drive

I live in Canada and contrary to popular belief, we DO have summer and they can be long hot humid mothers too. My current temperature as I write this post is 32.6C (that's nearly 91F for you poor souls still trapped on the Imperial system).

During those times I've noticed my laptop's top left corner gets fairly hot. I can even feel it through the keys at that quadrant. I've checked the underside fan intake and aft vent for dust and both the fan and the vent are clean (they should be, I vacuum out those areas once a month) . I have a Targus cooling pad that draws on the USB connection for power.

The laptop temperature is currently between 40C and 45C on both cores. During gameplay that shoots up to 90C. The TjMax of an Acer Aspire 5 is 100C

I've discovered that reducing the processor usage level from 100% to 90% on the power saving, balanced, and high performance plans in Windows makes a difference, but not by much. What I'm looking for is an application that throttles the laptop down when the temperature exceeds say, 85C, or at least allows me to control the fan. Both Speedfan and Notebook Fan Control do not appear to have configurations for my specific brand of Acer.


Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

David.

 

[Lutfij]

You might want to try your hand at disassembling the laptop and seeing the vents are clogged up. Now is a good time to dust the innards and replace the thermal paste with something higher in quality than what came from the factory(in the laptop), like Noctua's, Thermal Grizzly or Arctic. Following reassembly, you can then try your hand at ThrottleStop and undervolt the processor and the iGPU.

FYI, what games are you taxing that laptop with?

 

[DGAY]

Hi Lutfij. Thanks for your prompt reply.

I'm not technically qualified to perform laptop disassembly and thermal pasting. I am more a software person (I was in I.T. for 20 years as a programmer and systems administrator). I'm obviously very computer literate but not a hardware guru.

I could take it into a computer shop to have that done for me, and I don't mind paying money for that, but with COVID19 being what it is, I might not see it for as long as a week so no computer unless I buy a spare.

Raid: Shadow Legends, and City Of Heroes: Homecoming are my main passions (on medium graphic settings). I play Steam games like Cosmoteer, Star Traders Frontiers, Shapes.io, Airships Conquer The Skies, and Simple Rockets 2 (recommended settings). With the exception of SR2, the other games are not exactly graphics intensive.

ThrottleStop sounds like what I'm looking for to undervolt the laptop while playing games, or even when it is very hot and humid here . Yes, it will be at the expense of performance but destroying my laptop is not worth it.

 

[DGAY]

...... you can then try your hand at ThrottleStop and undervolt the processor and the iGPU.

I downloaded the program and played around with it for a couple of hours. In addition to being as complex as @#&?! to figure out, half the options are greyed out, even when run under Admin. The software did not have an impact on reducing the heat coming from the laptop during a Raid: Shadow Legends session.

Its possible the Intel chip settings are not configurable.

 

[sizzling]

I downloaded the program and played around with it for a couple of hours. In addition to being as complex as @#&?! to figure out, half the options are greyed out, even when run under Admin. The software did not have an impact on reducing the heat coming from the laptop during a Raid: Shadow Legends session.

Its possible the Intel chip settings are not configurable.

There are many YouTube videos on settings up ThrottleStop on a laptop. The actual process of undervolting is very easy once you know how.

Other things you can do are limiting the boost speed of the cpu, again can be done in ThrottleStop. The other is using an FPS limiter. By capping the FPS below what the system is capable of will reduce cpu workload.

 

[DGAY]

There are many YouTube videos on settings up ThrottleStop on a laptop. The actual process of undervolting is very easy once you know how.

Other things you can do are limiting the boost speed of the cpu, again can be done in ThrottleStop. The other is using an FPS limiter. By capping the FPS below what the system is capable of will reduce cpu workload.

Hi Sizzling. Thanks for your response.

I checked a few of the games I listed in my previous message. Apparently the installation process was wise enough to set my rate to 30 FPS for Raid: Shadow Legends, Simple Rockets 2, and City of Heroes: Homecoming, two of which are my current passion.

I'll check out some of the videos on YouTube, but there is still the question of half the setting being greyed out and thus unchangeable. This is not unusual, since I've come across other graphic tuning utilities that are unable to fiddle with integrated chips found on laptops like this Acer Aspire.

 

[DGAY]

Okay, I discovered that frequent rebooting of the laptop during the day seems to reduce the heat issue somewhat. This makes sense as excessive paging to the hard drive and memory clutter contributes to increased laptop usage, which in turn translates into wattage generated.