Inside Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Black Edition (VN7-591G, GTX 960M) – disassembly, internal photos and upgrade options

IMG_20150321_160404Acer updated its popular among gamers Nitro line with the new GeForce 9xxM GPUs and made it one of the most wanted gaming laptops, once again. There appeared to be little doubt that it would take pole position, given the awesome price tag and the fact that the new V15 was the first GTX 960M notebook on the market. Now there are some more great alternatives, but none of them could match the price of the new Nitro.

We already showed you the notebook in its full glory, in our detailed review, but now we’re going to dig a little deeper into its internals.

Aspire V15 Nitro is one of these Acer laptops, which are a real pain in the neck when it comes to upgrading maintenance. Instead of removing a little “service cover” at the bottom, in order to upgrade you RAM, you have to do a full “dissection”, which includes taking out the keyboard and the motherboard. It’s not that hard, but we still don’t recommend you do it by yourself, if you don’t have disassembling experience. And if you do – you should still be careful if you’re looking forward to the GTA 5 release but don’t plan on buying a new (working) machine.

Taking out the keyboard

In order to take out the keyboard panel, you need to remove 12 screws at the bottom and then use some kind of pry tool to lift up the palm rest. Be careful here – you should lift it just a little, so as to get access to the attached cables. There are three – for the keyboard, for the backlight and for the touchpad. Then you can carefully remove the keyboard panel.


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HDD, M.2 SSD, Battery, Fans

That gets you access to some of the components which require frequent service – the 2.5” HDD, M.2 slot, battery and the dual fans. Be sure that you’ve disconnected the battery, before going any further.


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  • The battery is AC14A8L (52.5Wh / 4605 mAh, 11.1V).
  • The M.2 slot (in our case it’s free) is 2280-sized, SATA III with B&M key.
  • The Wi-Fi card is Qualcomm QCA6174 802.11ac Wi-Fi 2×2 MIMO


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Removing the motherboard

If you have to remove the motherboard, disconnect the card reader cable and remove the cardboard, disconnect the Wi-Fi antennas, remove the WLAN card, disconnect the speaker cable and remove the motherboard screws. That way you could remove the motherboard and get full access, including to the two ram slots. This is the “backside” of the motherboard:

backside

Don’t forget to read our detailed review on the updated V15 Nitro:
http://laptopmedia.com/review/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-black-edition-vn7-591g-gtx-960m-same-body-more-powerful-internals/

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Marcos
Marcos
9 years ago

Great and detailed job guys!

Някъв там
Някъв там
9 years ago

It’s nice that you made this awesome website, but I’d be even more happy if you update news.laptop.bg daily, or should I leave it and follow only laptopmedia.com ?

alex.n.bidz
alex.n.bidz
9 years ago

Simeon, a question. Is there going to be an option with gtx 970M in the laptop.bg online shop?

alex.n.bidz
alex.n.bidz
9 years ago
Reply to  Simeon Nikolov

Thank you a lot for the quick answer Simeon. Another question is about this Acer, is the GPU a removable one, something like the MXM standard or anything that can be changed without too much problems in the future?

alex.bidz
alex.bidz
8 years ago
Reply to  Simeon Nikolov

Simeon, I hace changed some components of my old laptop so I know more or less how to disassemble a laptop I ask you if the CPU is relatively to change, if I decide to go for An i5 and some time ahead i could decide to change it for the i7?

Mocca
Mocca
8 years ago

what is the screw size to secure the m.2 ssd?

Rossen Pandev
8 years ago
Reply to  Mocca

It’s a standart one, though I can’t give you a exact numbers, sorry. ):

Jon
Jon
8 years ago

Hello. How do I get my OS onto the M2 SSD? I installed the SSD and the BIOS sees it correctly, etc. I can’t get the system restore disk I created to let me direct it to the news SSD.

Great guide here either way. Thanks in advance!

Marc
Marc
8 years ago

Hey guys which RAM fits the laptop reviewed in this page.
ANY amazon link?
Please help.
Thanks

Darren McInerney
Darren McInerney
8 years ago

Great teardown, thanks for this Simeon/LaptopMedia. I was wondering, is there anyway you can give me an estimate of the clearance between the “bottom” of the motherboard and the case? I’ve purchased a variant of this laptop and am looking to improve the cooling with additional heatsinks and possibly reinforcing the heat exchanger pipes to address heat concerns. While copper ships, thermal paste and heat exchangers aren’t a concern, the heat sinks with prongs are. Don’t want to order things I won’t be able to use. Thanks!

kriss941
8 years ago

Thanks for the teardown guide here! I don’t know if I would have been able to swap out the HDD for a SSD without it… however my model seemed to be slightly different with the HDD having some sort of plastic coverattached to it which again was attached to the keyboard… basically it made it so there was one extra wire to disconnect and the HDD was attached to the keyboard and came out as I lifted it up… it was a bit harder to get to all the wires as well as you couldn’t really lift the keyboard much… Read more »

Rumen Мутафов
8 years ago

Hi, there! Great disassembly 🙂 I was just wondering where the speakers are? I tried to seee them on the pics but I failed to do so 😀

Niko v
Niko v
8 years ago

Are you sure this is a b and m key?

catskillmtns
catskillmtns
8 years ago

I went over this website and I believe you have a lot of superb info, saved to bookmarks (:.

seargas
8 years ago

Have you testet which modes the M.2. Slot supports?
The photos indicate that it is an M-Slot ( compatible with B ).
But you only stated that it is SATA 6Gb/s.

Did you try to use a PCI-E module?

Paul Enoy
Paul Enoy
8 years ago

I would also like to ask how was the application of the thermal compounds for the acer v15 black edition? I heard the company did a horrendous job in regards to this matter.

luicwadrian
luicwadrian
8 years ago

mine started making this buzzing/interference sound (seems like the sound is coming around the center towards the left). any ideas parts might cause this? thanks

Rossen Pandev
8 years ago
Reply to  luicwadrian

That’s definitely a sound related to the HDD. We’ve tried the notebook with an SSD and the scratching sound went away. This is an issue not only with the 15-inch version but also with the 17-incher, since they both have the same supplier of HDDs.

luicwadrian
luicwadrian
8 years ago
Reply to  Rossen Pandev

thanks for the reply Rossen. do you know if this laptop can support double ssd? I might take out the HDD if that’s the problem

Matteo
Matteo
8 years ago

Is it possible to add an SSD on top of the already existing HDD?