Acer Aspire One 532h is Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator Friendly

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.

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.

I have test a BCM970012 on AO532h.

The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVFLEyJeFZs
Post pending.

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?

hello, I purchased a 532h-2588, has win 7 starter 1gb ram 160hdd. i wanted to upgrade the RAM so i purchased a corsair DDR2 667 and the system doesnt even post. so i got a replacement RAM thinking it was a defective one and still doesnt post.  how r u guys getting the 532h’s to c 2gb ram?  thanks

hi, Windows 7 starter don’t recognize 2gb ram….you had to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium or Linux!

Knud,  this issue wouldnt be a windows 7 issue as the computer wont even come to post. its actually a comp issue.  as stated before acer put out wrong ram info. the 532h requires ddr2 pc6400 not pc5300.  i purchased a pc6400 chip and installed it and it booted right up.  now what is this crystal hd accelerator? i take it its a graphics card?

ok i did research on the crystall hd accelerator, now where can i purchase one? i searched only place i see is ebay.  oh and knud, windows 7 starter does recognize 2gb ram.  forgot to mention it above

Supples of the Crystal HD have been drying up, very hard to get your hands on one now. Even LogicSupply which was the source recommend on XBMC forums is now out of stock too, I’d bookmark the link to keep checking

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/bcm970012

You also get a $10 discount if you use the XBMC10 code during purchase, hopefully they will have more in stock soon oh and they do ship internationally.

thanks guys, i went to that link and it says its now instock. lol looks like that shall be my next purchase.  has n e one updated the bios to 1.21?  i have to update to bios 1.17 n e ways so i’d figure i’d update to 1.21 thanks again.

Confirmed! I have a AO532h and have installed the broadcom HD card in the open PCIE slot. It works and the drivers available from broadcom does work. Notes about the AO532h: If you upgrade the ram to 2Gbs and the netbook doesn’t start up or doesn’t recognize it. You’ll need to update the bios, available at Acer’s website. I can say that this budget netbook is the the winner for me against the Asus 1001p. I also have the Asus 1001p which is pretty much the same as the AO532h. Although the AO532h has shorter battery life and does have the fingerprint magnet exterior. It does have the easy access covers and the open PCIE slot. Battery life can be extended in the future by the use of after market batteries from china, maybe a 9 cell in the future.  The 1001p looks good and has better battery life but, it’s realy not easy to upgrade at all. There is only one pcie slot. And it’s always tilting to the rear because of the battery pack.

Wow - so the vendor and at least one well-reputed online seller (initials N.E.) refused to confirm or deny that there is a spare slot in the model.  The vendor told me: “we do not publish this information because we do not want users opening the case.”

N.E. said that if it’s not in the vendor specs they won’t promise anything, so with that said…

Should I gamble $300 on *maybe* being able to add a Broadcom to this?  Someone make me feel warm and fuzzy that I’m not going to crack the case and get a nasty surprise… please!

If you want a AO532h to add a broadcom HD Crystal then you are going in the right direction. You won’t have to crack the case all the way apart. The extra PCIE slot is accessible through the bottom panel. I have upgraded my hard drive to a 320GB, put in 2GB RAM, installed a Broadcom HD Crystal and upgraded to a wireless N without cracking the case apart. The only reason I cracked my 532H apart was to put in the bluetooth module. The AO532H is definitely one of the best when it comes to upgrading. Just look for the video on youtube by ndevil for the AO532h broadcom hd upgrade. Hope this helps!

Thank you Den!  I’m all warm and fuzzy now :D

I have 1.08 BIOS in my ASPIRE ONE 532h

is it safe for me to upgrade straight to the 1.21 BIOS.

i have no mods or anything though this crystal HD thing looks good

I have the ao532h with the Crystal HD (bcm900712) installed, and I can absolutely confirm that there ARE problems.  With the latest drivers for crystal hd, video board, audio, bios, etc.; the framerate is terrible.  Playing through WMP, MPC-HT, or XBMC, the card produces around 4fps.  This has been confirmed by others on the XBMC forums and is a serious problem.

The solution?  Install and run Arcsoft TotalMedia 3.  You don’t need to even use the player, just run it and minimize it.  Now all the other players work fine with the Crystal HD.  Why does this work?  Who knows.  But it does.  There must be some driver problem that the Arcsoft software is fixing.

I had the 1.08 bios out of the box as well and updated directly to 1.24 without any problems. You’ll have to update the bios if you want to upgrade the RAM to 2gb.

Question, maybe the wrong place but what average CPU temps are you getting with the 532h. I get 36-40 degrees C when just surfing and doing simple things.

It went up to 60 degrees when I was watching BBC iPlayer over a long period.

I just installed 2 GB RAM and the Broacdom 970015 card into my Acer 532h and everything is working great.  Video played through Flash 10.1 or WMP is hardware accelerated. BIOS is 1.25.  Be sure IE8 and Firefox are updated to latest version of Flash since the BCM drivers don’t support prior versions.  Also, get the latest BCM drivers directly from their website. Lastly, contrary to other posts I saw on other sites, you do not need to upgrade Windows 7 Starter to use 2 GB RAM - the BIOS update is all that is needed.