Acer Aspire 5520g Heat Problems

I have recently purchased a 2nd hand 5520g laptop and need some advice.

Yesterday I was running games on it. The mouse/sound would freeze intermittently and it was very hot. So I bought a cooling pad, downloaded CPUID Hardware Monitor to check the temps and took it apart to check for dust in the fan/vents (there wasn't any). Today I tried running games again with the monitor going. There are no longer intermittent freezes but it consistently reaches 89C CPU and 90C GPU(at which point the laptop fan kicks in and cools it back down to 78ish then the fan slows down and the temp goes back up etc etc etc). The HD stays at 43C the whole time. The temperature seems fine when not gaming. As I type, the CPU is idling at 56, the GPU at 61, HD 40C, where they've been for the last hour.

So my questions:

1. Are 89/90C acceptable temps for the CPU/GPU when gaming on a laptop or will it do damage?
2. Is it possible that rethermal pasting the CPU/GPU and under volting the cpu (as suggested in other posts on this forum) would help?
3. Is there any way to make the fan speed turn to full at an earlier temperature? (once the fan went faster, the cpu/gpu temps decreased dramatically).

Thanks in advance for your help,

Daniel.


edit: Oh, forgot to mention that I took the Battery out in case that was helping the heat.

And the specs:
cpu - AMD Turion 1.9Ghz dual core
gpu - GeForce 8400m G
RAM - 3Gig
HD - 160GB

 

IF we believe the 89 / 90c (the non gaming temps are credible so lets say we do) then these are just about acceptable temperatures during gaming although the system should be throttling, running the fan at full speed etc to try to get it down to 60 - 70c

I would have expected the fan to run from 50 - 60c but speed up in stages above 70. Make sure you have the latest BIOS and therefore the latest thermal table for fan control.

Although the chips will be spec'd to not shut down before about 100c the soldered connections on the GPU in particular degrade with this sort of temperature cycling.

It may help to renew the thermal foam between the CPU/GPU/Chipset and the cooler - especially if the air outlet is actually not that hot considering the chip temperatures. Be careful with this as to allow a bit of flex between the bendy MB and rigid cooler assemblies foam pads are often used. There is often a large gap between the GPU top and the cooler and thermal grease alone is not good in big gaps. You can put a copper shim in the gap with grease on both sides but then there is less flexing space. Trying to source some pads at a reasonable price is a better idea unless you are doing something extreme

pps If the battery is generating any significant heat in use then be very afraid . . .
What is true is that hot laptops heat the battery up too . . and that leads to early capacity loss. . . but then Batteries don't last for ever however well they are treated

 

Cheers for the help!

What I meant was that the fan is running (from around 55C - but slowly) and it hits full speed (noticeably louder) once the cpu/gpu get up to late 80's. I had already flashed the latest bios for the laptop (1.33 I think it was). I got it off the acer site yesterday. Also replaced the chipset, graphics and sound drivers.

I ran games fine (decent framerate, no freezing) with the 87-90C temperature bursts for around 3 hours today. System doesn't seem to be throttling back cpu or gpu speed when they get to late 80s the fan just does it's full speed thing to get the temps back down to mid 70s and then off we go again. It's about a 60 second cycle.

The battery wasn't heating up, I just read somewhere that it could contribute to heat, so I removed it. The heating vent is blowing out some decently hot air. I have a bearded dragon (lizard) with a 150W heat lamp and it's about as hot as putting your hand close to that.

I'll give the thermal foam thing a go. If that doesn't work I'm probably gonna get DiY on its and install some extra fans. I searched all over for a way to control the Acer fans but no go on this model, it seems.

 

From your description it is just a hot running laptop. . . TBH game-capable laptops that are NOT hot running are pretty rare

 

I have same temps on my 5520G...
I am using cooling pad to... Check the air-flow hole on your cooler, there could be a bit of dust which decreases air flow...
And of course give thermal paste a try...
My temps are:
Idle: Core 1 44, Core 2 35 and GPU 55-57°C...
Load: Core 1&2 71 and GPU around 80 max after playing Crysis for 1 hour...