# Acer Aspire 5560 overheating



## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

I have an Acer Aspire 5560 (Centrino Duo 1.6 Ghz, Mobility Radeon X1400, Hitachi HDD 60GB, 1GB mem) that I bought about 6 months ago. For a long time, it's been suffering from serious overheating problems. I'm not talking about "too hot to put on lap" hot, but "too hot to put your hand on it" hot. The system regularly freezes at high system load (3D software, games, video, etc.). Along with a few problems with the factory features that I'm not sure if they're related, such as keyboard settings resetting itself, battery not always charging when needed, and inabilty to turn off the wireless NIC. I've tried cleaning the fans, etc., and I now resort to taking off several bottom panels and raising the laptop slightly to give ventilation below; it only helps slightly.

I've been searching around for solutions, but couldn't find any. I finally got the Notebook Hardware Control 2.0 today, hoping to learn a bit more about the problem. I found that the CPU temperature is regularly hovering above 80c and HDD above 50c, even when the system is near idle. I know duo core chips are supposed to be hotter, but is this too much? Is anyone suffering from the same problem, or is there something especially wrong with my system? What can I do to solve or at least improve the situation? Any suggestions appreciated.

ps. I use the Omega Radeon driver, and I have removed all the non-essential softwares that came with the system, but otherwise I don't overclock or tinker with the system much.


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## Joefireline (Apr 2, 2006)

80C? I'm sure it is suppost to cut off at that temp.

Is the fan working OK?

You should contact Acer about it, if it is too hot to touch, that can cause damage to the system. Is it in warranty?


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

According to NHC, the system cuts off at around 97c. NHC does give a high temperature alert at 80c, though, which means I'm basically getting the warning constantly. Yes the fan is working, though I'm not sure if it's working at full efficiency. Not the entire laptop is too hot to touch, though. The HDD, which is located below the right hand-rest, gets hot very quickly. The edge above the right heatsink is the hottest spot on the surface. Of course, the bottom of the laptop is much hotter, but I'm not even going to try using it on my lap.

Also according to NHC, my system should already be running at the lowest voltage setting (x6, 0.95V). I'm willing to sacrifice more performance for stability but it seems I'm already at the bottom. Changing the CPU clock modulation doesn't do anything at all except slowing the system down.

Do you know what is the normal temperature for a Centrino Duo to run at?


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## Joefireline (Apr 2, 2006)

I wouldn't have thought they should get that hot. Maybe they forgot the cooling paste? :4-dontkno 
I would contact Acer, and see what they say about it.

Make sure you don't have anything blocking the airflow.

You may wish to invest in a cooling pad for it.


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

I just mailed Acer's support here in France, and here's what I got in reply...


> Error delivering to Support France/AEB_CTA/ACER; Cannot store document; database has too many unique field names. Please ask your administrator to compact the database.


That's just great. I will continue to try to get a hold of the support. In the mean time, I'd appreciate any other suggestions.


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## Joefireline (Apr 2, 2006)

uly said:


> I just mailed Acer's support here in France, and here's what I got in reply...
> 
> That's just great.


Probably best phoning them, that is all they will tell you to do anyway.



uly said:


> I will continue to try to get a hold of the support. In the mean time, I'd appreciate any other suggestions.


All I can think of is to make sure nothing is blocking the airflow, and get a cooling pad. Also, if you get a piece of card, cut it to the size of your laptop, and put it underneth, it can keep it more cool. Also, putting small objects, like a thick coin, under the stand bits, it can help keep it more cool with better air flow.


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

I'd have phoned them already if they listed their phone numbers. (I can only find a fax #)

I will try what you said... But what do you mean by a card, though? A paper card-board? But like I said, I already raise the notebook a bit, by putting an eraser on the back end of the notebook. It does help ever so slightly, but far from solving the problem.


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## Joefireline (Apr 2, 2006)

uly said:


> I'd have phoned them already if they listed their phone numbers. (I can only find a fax #)
> 
> I will try what you said... But what do you mean by a card, though? A paper card-board? But like I said, I already raise the notebook a bit, by putting an eraser on the back end of the notebook. It does help ever so slightly, but far from solving the problem.


Hi,
luckly I have have their phone number for all countries, Acer France phone number: 0825002237

I mean just card board, something thick.


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

Thanks for the number! I'll try calling them tomorrow or monday morning. (They're not 24/7, are they?)

The cardboard, though, wouldn't that actually retain the heat? Since paper isn't a very good heat-conducting medium.

Oh, and I am under the impression, or suspicion rather, that my fan isn't performing as it should. It does make a lot of noise but the air flow doesn't feel half as strong as my previous notebook. But like I said, I regularly clean off all the visible dust-build up, but there might be build-up inside that I can't see/get to. Is there a way to check/clean them? (I'm a bit hesitant to open up a laptop, but at this point I wouldn't mind if there's a good instruction to be found.)


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## Joefireline (Apr 2, 2006)

uly said:


> Thanks for the number! I'll try calling them tomorrow or monday morning. (They're not 24/7, are they?)


I wouldn't have thought so, most likely the standard monday - friday, 9AM - 5PM so similar. The booklet thing doesn't say anything about it.



uly said:


> The cardboard, though, wouldn't that actually retain the heat? Since paper isn't a very good heat-conducting medium.


Well, it works for me. It helps airflow.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

I would get one of these in the meantime:
BYTECC Notebook Cooling Pad ( Aluminum ) Powered by USB port Model NC-500 (USB) - Retail at Newegg.com

Go into the BIOS and set the fan to "always on".


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

Okay, I know it's an old thread, but there's some new development.

I contacted Acer support and wasn't able to get much meaningful help, so I stuck with it for a bit longer.

But just now, I left the laptop on running defrag while I went out shopping. When I got back, I heard a very (relatively) loud noise from my computer... I couldn't tell what it was at first, but soon realize that it was the fan! I checked the Notebook Hardware Control, and it's registering temperature at 30 degrees, which is basically unheard of on this laptop.

So apparently the fan has finally started working properly after months. But like I mentioned before, there WAS airflow before, and honestly I don't feel the airflow being significantly stronger now. I'm still somewhat doubtful if it wasn't a NHC flook though... Only time will tell.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

I would use MobileMeter to check the temps. 30 degrees is really low, my laptop doesn't even get that low with the bottom pannels off and the cooling pad blowing directly on it. I think it is the hard disk, MobileMeter will tell you the CPU and hard disk temps.


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

Yeah, I did a bit of testing and determined that NHC was indeed freaking out. No matter what I did, the temp remained at 30. So I went ahead with MobileMeter, but got a strange result: on the graphs, two temperatures are shown (both labeled only "Temperature"). One of them hovers around 80 as usual, the other one is stuck at 30. My laptop has a Centrino Duo, I'm not sure if that's got anything to do with it. But weird.

So I guess there was no real miracle. But the fan is indeed running much louder, and judging from my scrap pad next to the fan warming up, the airflow is also actually improved... I wonder what happened during that defrag.

ps. I am very certain that I have not made any changes to my system settings in the past few days, and I defrag my drives quite frequently so that's nothing new either.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

The 30 would be your hard disk temp. The fan on my Aspire 3000 barely makes a difference. I would go into the power schemes in Windows XP, and set it to Notebook/Laptop and see if that helps lower temps. I would also highly recommend the cooling pad, it made a huge difference for me.


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## uly (Apr 27, 2003)

Yeah, I'd like to get a cooling pad, too, but I travel too much to make it useful.

So I left the laptop on overnight for testing, and the increased fan performance is very real. My lowest system temp used to be around 70, bearly reaching 69. Now it's down to 53. The better airflow is also very evident at the bottom. The system still goes up to 95 at high system load, though, but there's been no system freez so far.

My biggest concern now is that the fan is really damn loud... Loud enough to drown out the laptop speaker.

Oh and the 30 degree is apparently a different "thermal zone". No idea what that means; probably something to do with the duo core. My HD temp is around 45. Used to be around 55, yay!


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

Whenever I have to travel, I always set the power scheme to Laptop/Notebook in Windows XP. My laptop used to overheat a lot, and since I couldn't take the cooling pad off, I did that, and that lowered temps about 10 degrees.

If you are feeling adventurous, you could put some arctic silver 5 between the CPU and the Heatsink.


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## computergeekuk (Apr 29, 2010)

Just wanted to reply to this and try to help as I've had major overheating problems with an Acer Aspire 5560. Obvious checks such as fan operation, airflow etc were fine - basically got about 20 minutes of operation and the system would shut down. All points to CPU overheat and could see temperatures on CPU going above 80c on NHC. I wanted to know why and sort it out so took it apart and removed the heatsink (which shockingly is shared between the CPU, GPU & Northbridge chip!) there was a tiny bit of dust on the fan but nothing causing airflow blockage. I then noticed the shockingly small amount of odd looking thermal compund around the CPU & GPU (CPU particularly with all the paste spread away from the chip itself). Northbridge chip has a heat pad which i replaced. I then removed all the existing compounds from the CPU & GPU and re-pasted them with Arctic Silver High Density and put it all back together.

The system now runs fine and hasn't shut down since, have even ran it for 2 hours running heavyload and max CPU temperature reached is 58c. This is still high but about normal for Centrino Duo chips running at a constant 100% load on both cores. Just an Acer cheap manufacturing error here, if you can get into it and do this fix you'll be sorted - if not will be well worth an hour or 2 labour with someone to do it for you and get what can be a decent laptop running as stable as it should be.


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