Acer Nitro 5 An515-55 I5 10th Gen

[Muredac Ford]

BEFORE beginning anything -Generalnote - Make sure your windows is up to date, plugged in and chargedand your wifi is working and your touchpad is working properly. (Someof the new Acer Nitro515-55 have error, jittery or erratic touchpadslike I did. Suggest get it fixed before if that is the case, because it could be ahardware issue.) And remember to always back up your windows filesbefore doing this. I have been doing doual boot linux distros and windows for 7 years but it was first time I did on a new Acer. Also I usually just "clone" my whole Windowsdrive to a spare external hard drive as backup. There are many cloningsoftware are available like Samsung Magician (if you are cloning to aSamsung ssd) or AOMEI backupEr (clone mode) or Minitools ShadowMaker (clone) etc I am not affiliated to any but I use them all. Also keep a WIndows recovery USB on hand just in case). (BTW Clonezilla would not recognize my Nvme drives so thats why I used other backup clone programs pre-install).

Installthe Linux distro Ubuntu 20.04 (in my case in the end was Ubuntu 20.10 but either should be same) and Windows dual boot into TWO separatedrives and keep a third drive as storage and have Grub take over as mydefault bootloader where I can later choose to boot into Ubuntu orWindows. I assume you already know how to download and verify an Ubuntu ISO and install into a USB to create a live disk (many tutorials online).

-and boot into Windows again then, next step to summarize,(read this first) we need to in Windows, set " safeboot" on then in bios "Main"menu press "ctrl S" to enter (secret) bios menu to changeto SATA AHCI mode, then go back into Windows to "disablesafeboot", the details as below;

(side note-I tested MXlive 19.2 and 19.3 live USB's loved them but both were notstable on my new Nitro 5 AN515-55 , MX live USB kept getting randomreboot and hanging on the MX live usb saying memory and ram.100%error or something.. Pop OS was ok but didn't feel as smooth asUbuntu. I tested Majaro Gnome and it was a bit buggy. Only Ubuntu 20.04,Ubuntu 20.10 and Manjaro XFCE were very stable for me. Those are theonly ones I tested.I am sure others will be able to test more.

( Tip -for those.doing this first time , I had a back up live Ubuntu 20.10USB and Manjaro XFCE live usb's on hand just in case. The last thingyou want is during installation to have a live USB fail for whateverreason, and have to make live USBs again, so if you are doing thisfirst time have backup few live USB distros just in case you wantsave time if something goes wrong).

-select "set trusted Uefi file" and then just choose path your usb>efi > "grubx64.efi" file, it will askyou name it , I named it to "Ubuntugrubx64" ( or whatever),then click enter to confirm. .... (because some who people missed thisstep apparently had problems post installation with blank screen etc so I did it anyway )

-Nextstep "disable" secure boot (again) before proceeding withfinal installation. (Reason is: I could not do installation processwith secure boot enabled. After I had set up and was ready to install, Inow wanted boot into the live Ubuntu USB to proceed with fullinstallation. .....HOWEVER I could not install with "secure bootenabled", I got some grub error mesaage need load kernelor something, so to cut a long story short simple solution, I had tojust DISABLE secure boot again for the whole remaining installationprocess...

- Ichose "ERASE DISK AND INSTALL UBUNTU" (note - remember Iam installing dual boot on TWO disks. If you are installing on onedisk with two partitions then choose "install Ubuntu along-sidewindows" INSTEAD).

... Youcan reboot now into Ubuntu and when it reboots it should bootstraight into Ubuntu ...Now for first fresh boot new installation Iusually press F12 at Acer logo right away into boot menu, and choose "Ubuntu" OS just to make sure I booted straight into Ubuntuso that I can update nvidia drivers and also update grub immediatelyby "sudo update-grub" in terminal, just make sure grub isupdated properly .

....b) Installation looked great for my new Acer Nitro 515-55-76SK BUT inthe last 10 seconds of installation , i got an Ubuntu error notificationsomething about " third party driver download error ..' and itautomatically opens the firefox browser to an Ubuntu log error pagethat shows many people got same error message.

(Side note- Atfirst I thought it was my Ubuntu 20.04 live usb so I tested the wholeinstallation process again with Ubuntu 20.10 usb and same errornotification last 10 seconds before competition....

.(...So moments later ...after reading the Ubuntu error logs one by one, and seemed this erroraffected some people with Thinkpads and my new acer nitro 5 , I sawsome people were able to workaround it).

- Forme when I force booted Ubuntu 20.10 it just booted like normal, and oncein Ubuntu I immediately updated software and drivers right away usingthe software updater program and did a quick "sudo update-grub" interminal to make sure my grub was updated.

-I readin the Ubuntu logs some people were able to do the installationsuccessfully by NOT enabling wifi during installation process andchoosing NOT to update during installation and NOT choosing toinstall third party drivers . Some people found this worked when theygot same third party driver update error notification in last secondsof installation.

Postnote: My "secure boot" installation was off (disabled)during installation and post installation also. Fast boot is alwaysoff. I also did not need to put "nomodeset" or"nuveau.modeset=0" in grub during installation. I did NOT use legacy mode BIOS at all as it is not available anymore. All done in UEFI BIOS. I did not need to reflash bios at any time. MyAcer Nitro AN5-15-55 had display NO issues and no blank screens during installation or Postinstallation, Wifi, display all works good. Touchpad NO issues. Soundis working. My Nitro 5 running on 3 days no stop and all stable and smooth sofar.)

(Forthose doing this a first time on a new laptop, once you know what todo, the whole thing should take just 15-20 minutes if you had to doit a second time . So you realise its easy post installation. Myprevious machines were dual boot Mint/Win10 on HP in two partitionson a single drive , and another laptop was dual boot Ubuntu/Win10on Asus two drives, so this time my new Nitro 5 was definitelyslightly different. I also didn't need to take the windows drive outat anytime during installation dual boot on two drives which is theold and unnecessary dual boot way .

As far as the practical aspects go, I will complain about a few details, such as the fact that the status LEDs are annoyingly placed just beneath the screen and the front lip and corners are too sharp for my liking. For the most part, though, this is a fine laptop. Acer put grippy feet on the bottom, implemented a hinge that allows one-hand operation and can get the screen to about 160 degrees on the back, and placed a fair selection of ports on the sides.

Acer offers a couple of different screen options for the Nitro 5 series. Once more, our sample gets the higher-tier variant, which is a fine IPS FHD panel with 144 Hz refresh rate and fairly good response times.

This is a solid choice for gaming and daily use, with 100% sRGB color coverage, wide viewing angles and almost 400-nits of brightness at its highest setting. Blacks are fairly washed out, though, and that also impacts the overall contrast.

With that out of the way, we then went ahead and further verified our findings with the longer Cinebench R20 loop test and the gruesome Prime 95, on the High Performance profile. The CPU runs at 45+ W on both tests, with fairly quiet fans and solid temperatures of around 75-80 degrees C.

We also ran our combined CPU+GPU stress tests on this notebook. 3DMark stress runs the same test for 20 times in a loop and looks for performance variation and degradation over time, and this unit passed it fine. Luxmark 3.1 fully loads both the CPU and GPU at the same time. The CPU stabilizes at around 45W and 90+ degrees C, with the GPU running at around 80W and 82+ C.

By default, both the CPU and the GPU run at high temperatures here, averaging 90+ degrees for the CPU and 78-80 degrees for the GPU between the tested titles. At the same time, the fans spin quietly at around 43-44 dB at head-level.

Switching over to the fans Max profile while the laptop sits on the desks has an even greater impact over the CPU and GPU, both running at slightly higher clocks. However, while the GPU drops to about 72-74 C in this mode, the CPU still averages 90+ C, but this time it runs close to its Turbo max frequencies. Even raising the laptop from the desk and switching the fans to Max is not enough to properly tame-down the CPU, which keeps running at high temperatures in this unit.

On the other hand, the high CPU temperatures with games, paired with only limited performance in CPU-heavy loads, plus the poor speakers and smudge-prone black plastic build are some of the aspects that could lead you towards something else. But even so, the 2020 Nitro 5 lineup is competitive in its segment, where some compromises have to be made to hit the lower price tag.

i got tired of skylake. i7 my ass. clearly worse than ryzen 5 4600h. and i got tired with those messy amazon links. somehow, they are everywhere, i keep getting them from each of youtuber and media guy.

"acer nitro 5 10750" in the amazon search field is a mess, not helpful and pisses people off. stop it please.

anyway, i have a technical question. i know psref.lenovo its a good place. do other manufacturers have a similar database?

As HP Omen with RTX2060 GPU and 10750H CPU is our of stock everywhere near me (for where the price isn't too high), same with Lenovo y540 which was my first choice, I'm trying to choose between the nitro with the 2060 and 10750, and omen 2060 and 9750h.

Seeing as you say that the performance of the 10750 for the nitro doesn't perform as well as the same CPU in other models, do you think it's possible that the Omen is better in that config?

Surprisingly the omen also cost about 170USD more while having weaker CPU, and 16gb ram compared to the 32GB of the nitro. How would you compare both laptops given these specs?

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