Acer AU$800 laptop is a BEAST

[PooPipeBoy]

Long story short, I was out recently picking up a new laptop and stumbled upon the deal of the century.

Ended up buying an Acer Aspire 5 A515-51G-50LA for AU$800, which seemed to have nice specs and sturdy build quality for the price.
 

These are the specs:

Core i5 8250U (Kaby Lake R with 4 cores 8 threads and 3.4GHz Turbo Boost), 8GB DDR4, Nvidia 940MX with 2GB VRAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD.

 

Being a Core i5 I knew it was a quad core, but it was only after I got home that I realised it also has Hyperthreading.

So I decided to run Cinebench R15, and the one I picked up seems to have a particularly powerful processor:

 

 

For reference, that's what you'd expect from a Core i5 4670K with a 4.2GHz overclock.

And this is a 15W TDP mobile processor, in a machine with discrete graphics and an SSD for less than a grand in Australia (where computer gear is usually priced high)....

Pretty incredible!

[genexis_x]

It's a good budget laptop, however why don't you opt for the MX150 option?
Try long period, heavy all cores load like Prime95 or Aida64 and post the clock speed and temps. I'm eager to know

[PooPipeBoy]

2 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

It's a good budget laptop, however why don't you opt for the MX150 option?
Try long period, heavy all cores load like Prime95 or Aida64 and post the clock speed and temps. I'm eager to know

Sure, I'll be testing temps.  Been a while since I've done serious benchmarking.

Is there another model that has MX150 graphics?

[genexis_x]

7 minutes ago, PooPipeBoy said:

Is there another model that has MX150 graphics?

Yes, here they are selling the Aspire 5 with 8250U, MX150, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD and non-IPS display (ya the low amount of RAM and lack of SSD kinda sucks, the specs of laptops are all fked up here) for only under 600USD (not sure how to convert to aussie dollars)
Edit: Also with 3 years warranty

[PooPipeBoy]

42 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Yes, here they are selling the Aspire 5 with 8250U, MX150, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD and non-IPS display (ya the low amount of RAM and lack of SSD kinda sucks, the specs of laptops are all fked up here) for only under 600USD (not sure how to convert to aussie dollars)
Edit: Also with 3 years warranty

In Prime95 it averages 66C (with 25C ambient) in the maximum temperature test.

Also did the OpenGL test in Cinebench R15 and got 82.77 fps, to give some idea of graphics performance.

[Snooli]

If you want more CPU performance in sustained load, you can download that intel tweak app and just increase the TDP, to help it hold it's boost longer. The temps look like it would do fine with more power, just make sure to enable it only while plugged-in, it will feast on battery.

I never actually used the intel tweak tool, so it might be able to lock it's settings to windows profiles. (AKA only run that extra boost while being charged)

[genexis_x]

26 minutes ago, PooPipeBoy said:

In Prime95 it averages 66C (with 25C ambient) in the maximum temperature test.

Nice. How about the all core clock speed?

[PooPipeBoy]

13 hours ago, Snooli said:

If you want more CPU performance in sustained load, you can download that intel tweak app and just increase the TDP, to help it hold it's boost longer. The temps look like it would do fine with more power, just make sure to enable it only while plugged-in, it will feast on battery.

I never actually used the intel tweak tool, so it might be able to lock it's settings to windows profiles. (AKA only run that extra boost while being charged)

That would explain why the temps initially jump to 80C and then settle back down to 66C, for some reason I never knew the Turbo Boost was a temporary thing.  I assumed it was the fan kicking in.

 

13 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

Nice. How about the all core clock speed?

Task Manager is saying 2.11GHz sustained while charging, which isn't too bad.  Could definitely handle more speed though.

[Snooli]

6 hours ago, PooPipeBoy said:

That would explain why the temps initially jump to 80C and then settle back down to 66C, for some reason I never knew the Turbo Boost was a temporary thing.  I assumed it was the fan kicking in.

 

Task Manager is saying 2.11GHz sustained while charging, which isn't too bad.  Could definitely handle more speed though.

Turbo boost is limited by tempreatures and power over time, that's why after runnning for a while on low speeds, it can boost way up, but it's not allowed to stay there.

 

just don't forget, that more power on the CPU shortens the battery life.