I'm helping a friend with his Acer Nitro 5 (not the V model) who's been having a rough time with gaming. He's got Windows 11 Home, an RTX 4050, a 12th gen Intel i7, and 1TB of storage. The trouble started earlier this year when Minecraft began crashing with an "OpenGL error GLFW 65542" after about an hour of play. We tried everything: updating graphics drivers, the Intel BIOS, Intel graphics—not a single fix worked. Recently, after getting his fan fixed and having his computer reset at a repair shop, he bought the game PEAK, and guess what? It crashed again. We also tried testing another game, Megabonk, with the same result. Even switching to Vulkan crashed the system. After some investigation, we switched to the discrete GPU in the BIOS and set everything to use the NVIDIA RTX 4050, but still no luck. Weirdly, his laptop has no HDMI or display port, so the built-in display is linked to the CPU. We're kind of at our wit's end here. If anyone has any suggestions or insights, that'd be awesome! Check out this crash demonstration: [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/shorts/ARuuSjamHc0?feature=share).
3 Answers
Before diving deeper, it's worth checking the temps while gaming. If they’re too high, that could lead to crashes. I couldn't see the temperatures clearly in Task Manager earlier—how hot is it getting?
Definitely check the graphics settings and ensure that external connections are configured correctly. If it's using integrated graphics instead of the dedicated GPU, it won't perform well, especially with 3D games. Also, just a note— it should have HDMI on the side according to specs, maybe there's a model difference? Anyone else have similar setups?
It sounds like your friend's settings might be stuck in eco mode, which can limit performance. He should check his power settings to ensure it's running in performance mode. Also, regarding the lack of HDMI—if the display is indeed linked to the integrated graphics instead of the RTX 4050, that could be part of the problem. If it were adjusted to use the discrete GPU correctly, it might solve a lot of issues. Have you tried reaching out to Acer support for help? They can sometimes offer solutions that aren't obvious. Good luck!
How do we switch it off if we find he is in eco mode? Is it that 'performance' option in the settings? Here’s a screenshot of what we see: [Screenshot Link]. His laptop is set to balanced right now.
The temps are around 75°C, which seems okay but high during gaming sessions. It shouldn’t be causing crashes though...