Thursday, December 31, 2009
Update: The free PCI-e slot seems to be locked. Read comments.
As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s pretty uncommon to find a netbook, even these days, that has easy access to anything more than a single RAM slot. Actually the trend seems to be moving towards nothing as netbooks get thinner but anyway, if you’re thinking of doing upgrades, the new Atom N450 Acer Aspire 532h netbook is a good choice. You’ve got access panels on the back for easy access to the hard drive, 1x RAM slot, half sized mini-PCIe Wi-Fi card and a free mini PCI-e slot which makes this netbook Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator friendly… should the slot not be locked that is. They have not tested it yet.
Source: Netbooknews.it
This is exactly the kind of information that’s great to have. Thanks Peter!
It’s locked (at least I think so). Just tried a 32GB SSD from Runcore. No dice. Not even recognized in the BIOS.
Ah.. that’s a shame.. hate it when they do that. Thanks Andrew. I’ll update the post with a warning.
Thanks for participating!
I have a 532h-2326 where the second pci-e slot is not locked.
I didn’t have another card to test, but I removed the Atheros wifi card from the half-slot and put it into the full slot. When the system booted, win7 installed the intel pci-e adapter as well as a second atheros wifi adapter.
I wasn’t able to confirm that the card fully worked as the cables were too short to connect to the terminals, but the fact that windows recognized the device and installed the drivers indicates that the slot is active.
Hmm.. interesting. Thanks for that info mwu. Let’s wait and see what other ao532h users say.
Thanks for participating!
I have test a BCM970012 on AO532h.
The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVFLEyJeFZs
Post pending.
Thanks Riccardo!
Thanks for participating!
May i know what are your version of bios?
I have the Acer Aspire One 532h-2268 (bought at Costco) upgraded with 2GM RAM with the latest BIOS 1.17 I believe. I tried installing a PCIe broadcom Wifi from my older Acer Extensa laptop and the Win 7 installed the Intel PCIe drivers and then installed the card (cards works too…)
my guess is that the 32GB SSD card a user tried installing requires more voltage than the slot gives…
but after this test, I am ordering one of the broadcom cards today…
So the Netbook will wind up running me about $450USD with the 2GB RAM and Broadcom HD card…and gives me just under 8hrs battery (tested)...
The 2GB RAM upgrade improved speed as well along with switching to Firefox from IE8
not bad…
Hats off to Acer for allowing the upgrades…BRAVO!
I’m glad to tell you that Acer Aspire One 532h works well with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator in Windows XP Home.
After installing driver, at first it’s still jerky. However, after upgrading BIOS to version 1.17, and switching to a monitor with bigger resolution, matter all gone but only subtitles can’t be loaded on the player. (i used k-lite mega)
However, i still dont understand why the Atheros wifi card can’t work when plug into the free slot(but it works with broadcom HD card).
*I don’t know if it support windows 7 because i only see there is a media broadcom driver for windows xp given in acer.com
I have the acer one 532h runing windows 7 start, but i only have 1 G ram, How do i upgrade to 2 G ram?