Acer Aspire 5536 vent is blocked.

[Jahi]

Hey guys, I am using Acer Aspire 5536 laptop from last 1 months and it is running Windows 7 OS. All the features of my laptops are awesome but still it has got its own drawbacks. I came across this fact that my laptop’s temperatures are always high. Also I noticed that there was a vent under the CPU. After reading the manuals, I realized that the vent is provided in order to keep laptops cool. But I did not find any holes in the vent. I think this might be causing overheating in my laptop. I wanted to know why these vents are blocked. What could be the reason? Please help me.

[Beothuk]

According to me the vent of your laptop is not actually blocked, but it must be having some kind of sticker on it which is blocking the vent and you are assuming that to be blocked vent. And about overheating, there are many reasons for overheating in laptop. One of the main reason being the design of the laptops these days. As the designs of the laptops are so compacted, no proper ventilation is provided to the laptops to make its temperature under control.

[Huron]

The vent is not permanently blocked. But it got blocked because of the collection of dirt’s and dust in your vent area. So I would suggest you to make sure that you keep you vent area free from dusts. You need to clean them every now and then to prevent dusts from getting collected there. You can make use of air blowers to blow out the dust from vent. Or else you can also use Vacuum cleaners to remove dusts from your laptops ventilation area.

[Kickapoo]

I would suggest you to make sure that you are providing the correct power supply to your laptop. Also make sure you have kept your laptop in some clean place so that your laptop doesn’t come in contact with any kind of dirt and dusts. Also to solve the problem of overheating in your laptop, you should keep your FAN speed under control. The best way to keep your vent open and clear for proper cooling of your laptop is to keep it clean.

[Ceesar]

I would suggest you to visit the nearest computer store near your area and submit your laptop to them, so that they can solve your issue. Or else I would suggest you to contact the retailer, who sold you your laptop and submit your laptop to him. If the vet is really blocked then it can be possible for you to get it repaired. And as its being just one month since you purchased your laptop, you can get it completely repaired or replaced if the problem is not curable.

[Jahi]

Thank you, people for your kind suggestions. It was so sweet of you all to remove some time from your busy schedule and try helping me out by giving me your quality suggestions. But I am unable to figure out anything with my laptop’s vent. So I have decided now to go by the last suggestion. Call up the technical staff from the nearby computer shop and ask them to solve my issue and if that doesn’t help me than I have to make some more effort and travel little long to submit my laptop to Acer Service Center itself.

[doppelsonnenuhr]

Hi, sorry for the late response, but this may benefit others who bought this laptop.

1. The vent really is blocked.
2. It is blocked because - although there is a vent impression on the case plastic - it just isn't open. There is no tape blocking it or other device to keep it closed after the fact of manufacture.
3. There is no good reason for it to be blocked, and plenty of reason for it to not be blocked.

The unopened vent pressing sits directly below a centrifugal fan which is clearly intended to draw air up through the case bottom and direct it past a heatsink, and through the hot-air expulsion vent at the back of the case.

I can speaking with relative authority on this because I have this laptop and the heat problem worsened over time from 'funny, this laptop runs very hot' to 'I can't run any cpu intensive stuff because my laptop shuts down'.

So I took it to pieces and established the facts mentioned above. Then, my brother opened up the vent on the case bottom with a dremel. I used Arctic Silver thermal compound on the cpu and reassembled it.

Previously, it was running both cores at 550MHz and idling at 78C under light load. Heavy loads like running a virtual machine, or gaming, would often cause it to shut down. The mere act of increasing the clock rate to 2200MHz would cause it to shut down within seconds, load or none.

It was better when new, when the heatsink compund was more effective, but now that I have a before-and-after comparison, I can see it never ran to its full potential.

It used to score 3.2 on the Windows Experience Test. Now, it scores 3.8. Gaming is a different experience. Previously, I ran WoW with low graphics settings - now it's high and fast. I have the same experience with other games.

I can run it on high loads at 2200MHz for hours now without the temperature ever going above 68C. At 550MHz, it sits around 42C and often turns the fan off. The now-open vent draws cool air into the case (I verified the airflow).

So, Jahi, you're correct. The vent is closed off and it causes major heat problems. I suspect that Acer rushed this laptop into manufacture and missed the vent problem and subsequently elected to keep it quiet rather than face a major recall.

My laptop is a couple of years out of warranty and in most respects is a nice laptop, so I elected to fix it. You may have other options.