Inside the Acer Aspire 5315 $348 Wal-Mart special laptop.


Here's what you see once you get the giant "thermal door" cover off. To remove the cover, first, remove the four screws. Now carefully slip a thin tool like a table knife under the edge of the cover where the indent is and work around towards the front and back of the laptop. DON'T pry along the side towards the side of the laptop or you'll break those longer tabs. That's the egde which goes in first when you replace the cover.

Acer saved a few cents per unit by leaving out the Mini-PCI slot and whatever that other connector would be for. (Could be BlueTooth.)

The RAM pops out easily by spreading the clips on either side. The CPU is in a mPGA 478 socket. (CPU-Z from www.cpuid.com identifies it as a mPGA 479.) From what I can see, to remove the CPU you'll first have to remove the three screws holding the cooling fan- which I've marked with red dots. The heat exchanger is a bit loose so I don't think anything holds it other than pressure from the thermal door. The four screws marked with blue dots hold the combination CPU and chipset heatsink with the heatpipe and heat exchanger attached.

Acer didn't manufacture the mainboard. Under the RAM, partially hidden by a lable is this text:
Vendor: HannStar

A quick web search reveals that HannStar also makes LCD panels, which makes the company the major supplier of the parts in this laptop.