Acer Aspire VX15 Gaming Laptop and Linux

| Comments

I usually put a lot of thought into my choice of laptop. This was especially important when I traveled a lot and didn’t own a desktop computer. This time, though, I was in need of a gaming laptop and I was in a rush to get it ordered and delivered. My requirements were simple: a quad core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GPU, a solid-state drive, a 1080p display, and plenty of RAM. I didn’t pay attention to much else.

In my haste, I chose the Acer Aspire VX15—aka the Acer Aspire VX5-591G-75RM. I imagine you can find a better value for your money, but not by a whole lot. These are the important specifications.

  • Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor
  • Nvidia 1050 Ti GPU with 4 GB VRAM
  • 16 GB DDR4 RAM
  • 256 GB NVMe SSD
  • 15.6” 1920x1080 IPS display
  • HDMI port
  • Combo mic/headphone jack
  • SD Card slot
  • 1 USB-C, 2 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0 ports
  • Gigabit Ethernet port
  • 802.11ac (Qualcomm Atheros QXA6174)

There’s also room inside for a 2.5” hard drive. I picked up this adapter on eBay, and I installed one of my spare 1 TB laptop hard drives.

The hardware is rather good. The specs compare quite favorably to the new MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is thinner, lighter, and has a nicer display. My Acer Aspire VX15 has a faster GPU with twice the VRAM, standard USB ports, and can be upgraded past 16 GB of RAM—most of the important specs are identical, but at less than half the price of the MacBook Pro!

Can you run Linux on this thing?!

Yes, you can. You just have to disable secure boot in the BIOS, boot up your favorite Linux distro’s installer, and you should be good to go. I installed Xubuntu 17.04 on mine. I managed to accidentally installed the legacy boot loader instead of UEFI. I briefly considered reinstalling, but it was quicker and easier to just enable legacy boot in the BIOS.

Everything worked out of the box. I shouldn’t be surprised about this, except that the last time I installed Linux on a laptop, it was my Chuwi Hi12 tablet with its weird Intel Atom Z8350 system-on-chip. I’ve always had good luck with laptops that use the mainstream Intel chipsets.

The Atheros 802.11ac Wi-Fi device works perfectly. The on-board Realtek Gigabit Ethernet device works just fine. Suspend to RAM works every time. I haven’t tried to hibernate—I don’t usually set up a swap partition on SSDs.

I’m running the latest version of the proprietary Nvidia driver from the PPA. All the games I expected to play run great.

What about Nvidia Optimus?

As soon as I got my environment configured the way I like it, I installed Intel’s powertop. Powertop is a fantastic utility that keeps track of how much power your laptop is using, and it helps you figure out where all that power is going.

With the display set to a reasonable brightness level, my Acer laptop hovers right around 12 watts of power consumption while idling when using the Nvidia GPU. I used the nvidia-settings program to switch from the Nvidia GPU to the integrated Intel GPU, and I ran the same test. When using the Intel GPU, the idle power consumption drops a little below 9 watts.

There’s a program called Bumblebee that allows you to use the Nvidia GPU for games while using the Intel GPU for everything else. That sounds like it allows you to experience the best of both worlds, but it looked like a real pain in the neck to get configured properly. I didn’t think it would be worth the effort just to save 3 watts at idle.

Then I realized that 12 watts is 30% more than 9 watts—that’s the difference between 4 hours and 5 hours of battery life! I thought about using nvidia-settings to switch to the Nvidia GPU whenever I wanted to play a game, but logging out and back in just to play a game sounded like a terrible idea.

Fortunately, getting Bumblebee working was easier than I expected. I just had to switch my default to the Intel GPU, install the package, and reboot. All I have to do now is preface a command with the optirun wrapper, and the program will make use of the Nvidia GPU. This lets me pick and choose which games in my Steam library use the Nvidia GPU—most of them don’t even need it!

There’s definitely a performance impact, but I haven’t measured it. Programs running on the Nvidia GPU will be limited to 60 frames per second as well. It is a reasonable compromise, and it lets me play Team Fortress 2 without going through the tedious process of logging out of my computer.

Suspend and resume works fine for me whether using the Intel GPU, the Nvidia GPU, or both GPUs at the same time!

The Acer Aspire VX15 isn’t all that great

This is a fantastic laptop wrapped up in a mediocre shell. It is thick enough to have room for an optical drive, but that isn’t an option—not that I’d have use for such a thing these days!

The laptop has a 15.6” screen with the biggest bezel you’ve ever seen. It certainly has enough room for a 17” screen, and they should have squeezed one in. The laptop probably wouldn’t be any larger, and I would have paid a few bucks extra.

That said, I’m perfectly happy with the screen being 1080p. I do want to be able to play games on this, and it takes quite a bit more GPU to play games on a screen with the resolution of a MacBook Pro. The 15.6” screen on the Aspire VX15 has DPI of 141. That’s high enough unless you want to hunch over and get really close to the screen—like I do when I abuse the high-density screen on my tiny 12” Chuwi tablet!

I’ve had the bottom cover off my Aspire to install the extra hard drive, and I can tell you that there’s a lot of air in there. Acer could have made this a thinner laptop. I don’t really mind the laptop being so much thicker than something like a MacBook Pro. Even if it was thinner, I would still need a large bag to carry it.

It would have been nice to save some weight, but I don’t carry the laptop all that far. I’d rather have an extra $1,300 in my pocket than upgrade to a MacBook Pro.

Having a USB-C port is nice. Having DisplayPort or Thunderbolt ports would have been better. The Aspirve VX15 only has a single video output, and it is an HDMI port. These definitely aren’t deal-breakers for me, but it precludes using the Acer Aspire VX15 as a desktop replacement—I can’t work without two big monitors!

It is a big upgrade for me!

The 7th-generation Core i7 processor is nearly three times faster than the 1st-generation Core i7 in my aging laptop. It is nearly as fast overall as the CPU in my five-year-old desktop computer, and the i7-7700HQ’s single-core performance makes it a better gaming CPU!

The Aspire VX15’s Nvidia 1050 Ti is light years ahead of the Nvidia 230M GPU in my ancient HP DV8T laptop. In fact, the 1050 Ti is has nearly half the power of the Nvidia GTX 970 in my desktop computer.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a Kaby Lake Core i7 laptop with a dedicated GPU that’s well supported by Linux, the Acer VX15 should be a good fit for you. If you’re willing to pay more, I’m sure you can find a Linux-friendly laptop that’s lighter or more well made. However, it won’t be easy to find a faster gaming laptop for a much better price.

Comments