A month ago I ordered an Acer gaming laptop (nitro 5 Ryzen 7 6800h 16GB ddr5 sdram GeForce RTX 3070Ti gpu) and when it got home the power adapter had a coil whining problem. I have occasional bouts of tinnitus, which means that sometimes I am easily overwhelmed by strong or strident noises so I couldn't just suck it up.
One year warranty, so I just asked them to replace it and they did. The whining noise was constant so they had no trouble recognizing the problem and, I suspect, they would likely have pacified the complaining client no matter what. The replacement had kinda the same problem though.
A month, countless calls and many shipments later I still have it and they won't help. The coil whining sometimes stops for a while and is generally a bit less loud but sometimes just as much. It also makes a ticking noise when I disconnect it after use. They tried to make me believe they can't hear these noises when my entire family can confirm I'm not having allucinations. Acer even asked me to send them the laptop with the adapter for an hardware test but now they basically mock me by telling me that I should push harder on the connector because it's slightly harder than the norm. That's ridiculous because of course I connected all parts the right way... They seem to insist on painting me as the typical totally inexperienced user that can't put 2 and 2 together in order to dismiss me and it's insulting.
But I'm not here to vent, I'm just giving some context. The problem I have now is to find a replacement. It makes no sense to keep buying original ones until I find one that has no defect. Maybe it's possible because it's just bad luck with production defects, but I do know that coil whining can also be a design flaw so... Compatible adapter it is.
My understanding is that the important characteristics of the adapter are these:
-5.5 x 1.7 mm connector.
-280.0 W
-Imput 100-240V-4.0 A
-Output 19.5V 14.36 A
The guy from the local computer shop gave me an universal adapter to try out and see if it makes noise or not, assuring that it would work well with my laptop. It's cheap and he won't charge me if I return it soon instead of deciding to buy it. It doesn't seem to make problematic noises and has many connector pieces but only one is the correct size, it's characteristics from the box are:
- Max Power 120W
-Imput Voltage 100-240V
-Output 15-24V
-Voltage regulator: automatic
-Connector Output 18V/18.5/19V
-No indication about amperes? I don't know what any of these units of measure really mean.
So imput is right, wattage is less than half and output is 0.5V under what my laptop asks for. Here are my questions:
1 Does the lower wattage constitute any kind of problem? Safety, performance, lifespan of the machine. See question 3 for details on my usage.
2 Same for the voltage.
3 I will use the laptop for many hours every day, constantly plugged in and for a good part of the day it will be used for games and software that can be heavy on the processor. I need to know specifically if using this adapter will diminish my processor's performance.
4 From my online research I have the impression that coil whining is common in laptop adapters and often ignored by both users and producers, but how common? Is the fact that this one is so beefier than the tipical web browsing, office work laptop basically a guarantee that every original adapter for it will have coil whining?
5 Are there alternatives to an original adapter or a universal charger? I'm italian if that matters for some sort of law or production standard.
I hope that someone can help me come out of this with a real solution and possibly give me sources to be sure I understand because I invested a bit too much in this laptop (I should have settled for less or, better, bought a desktop pc. I know.) and I am seriously losing my mind after all this.
One year warranty, so I just asked them to replace it and they did. The whining noise was constant so they had no trouble recognizing the problem and, I suspect, they would likely have pacified the complaining client no matter what. The replacement had kinda the same problem though.
A month, countless calls and many shipments later I still have it and they won't help. The coil whining sometimes stops for a while and is generally a bit less loud but sometimes just as much. It also makes a ticking noise when I disconnect it after use. They tried to make me believe they can't hear these noises when my entire family can confirm I'm not having allucinations. Acer even asked me to send them the laptop with the adapter for an hardware test but now they basically mock me by telling me that I should push harder on the connector because it's slightly harder than the norm. That's ridiculous because of course I connected all parts the right way... They seem to insist on painting me as the typical totally inexperienced user that can't put 2 and 2 together in order to dismiss me and it's insulting.
But I'm not here to vent, I'm just giving some context. The problem I have now is to find a replacement. It makes no sense to keep buying original ones until I find one that has no defect. Maybe it's possible because it's just bad luck with production defects, but I do know that coil whining can also be a design flaw so... Compatible adapter it is.
My understanding is that the important characteristics of the adapter are these:
-5.5 x 1.7 mm connector.
-280.0 W
-Imput 100-240V-4.0 A
-Output 19.5V 14.36 A
The guy from the local computer shop gave me an universal adapter to try out and see if it makes noise or not, assuring that it would work well with my laptop. It's cheap and he won't charge me if I return it soon instead of deciding to buy it. It doesn't seem to make problematic noises and has many connector pieces but only one is the correct size, it's characteristics from the box are:
- Max Power 120W
-Imput Voltage 100-240V
-Output 15-24V
-Voltage regulator: automatic
-Connector Output 18V/18.5/19V
-No indication about amperes? I don't know what any of these units of measure really mean.
So imput is right, wattage is less than half and output is 0.5V under what my laptop asks for. Here are my questions:
1 Does the lower wattage constitute any kind of problem? Safety, performance, lifespan of the machine. See question 3 for details on my usage.
2 Same for the voltage.
3 I will use the laptop for many hours every day, constantly plugged in and for a good part of the day it will be used for games and software that can be heavy on the processor. I need to know specifically if using this adapter will diminish my processor's performance.
4 From my online research I have the impression that coil whining is common in laptop adapters and often ignored by both users and producers, but how common? Is the fact that this one is so beefier than the tipical web browsing, office work laptop basically a guarantee that every original adapter for it will have coil whining?
5 Are there alternatives to an original adapter or a universal charger? I'm italian if that matters for some sort of law or production standard.
I hope that someone can help me come out of this with a real solution and possibly give me sources to be sure I understand because I invested a bit too much in this laptop (I should have settled for less or, better, bought a desktop pc. I know.) and I am seriously losing my mind after all this.
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