Acer VX 15 Overheated

So I was playing Battlefield 1 on Medium settings when after a game, the laptop suddenly blacked out and immediately turned off. I got worried since the laptop won't turn on even though I pressed the power button a couple of times. Luckily, after a few minutes the laptop booted okay though I noticed slight hiccups/lag spikes while playing games (probably because it was still hot?)

I've done research on this and I could only guess that the CPU reached it's maximum (I tested with MSI Afterburner, it stayed on 85 °C full load which I guess was pretty hot) and it decided to turn off the PC as an emergency procedure though I'm not sure. I'm just worried bout the internals of the laptop because maybe something got damaged in the aftermath. Is there a way or a program to find out if everything is well? Thanks in advance!

Laptop Specs:
Intel i5 7300HQ
Nvidia GTX 1050
12 GB DDR4 RAM (Upgraded same speed of 2400 mhz)

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blacklight186

I have the bit higher version of the Acer VX 15 (with i7 7700HQ and 1050Ti). I also found that BF1 makes my laptop a bit warm, but I didn't see it spiking past 82 or 83 deg C.

I was not comfortable with those temps., so I temporarily undervolt it using the Intel Extreme Tuning utility - I find that an undervolt of about -0.120 or -0.125 helps reduce the average temps by around 10 degrees while gaming (YMMV). After gaming, I just restore the voltage back to normal.

The same utility allows you to stress test / benchmark your cpu. So in case you are worried about CPU damage, you can give the test a try (without undervolting) and see if it passes the benchmark OK. Then you can undervolt it a bit and see if it helps reduce your temps.

You can watch this video for more details about undervolting and benchmarking with that utility ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omur2fNA0Kg ), don't bother with underclocking, I don't think it is necessary.

Hope it solves your problem. By the way, I don't think it was the CPU that caused your laptop to black out. The processor only does that after it crosses about 100 deg C or a bit higher. It might have just been a simple crash due to some error while gaming. Just a guess. Back up any important data to an external hard drive (before undervolting / gaming) just in case.

sickbeatskitty

Ayt bro. Imma try the utility. Thanks so much for the info! I kinda feel relieved knowing it might be the game that caused it. Smiley Happy

Regular_newUser

Hey there!! I also undervolted my laptop to about 125mv and was afraid going beyond it. Just wanted to ask if anyone tried prime95 for checking stability at/after 120mv.

blacklight186

From what I've researched on the net on multiple websites (but not experienced the freeze myself yet), if you undervolt too much and the laptop does lock up, you just need to do a hard reboot (long press the power button) and after a hard reboot the processor will reset itself to 0 volts undervolt and be fine. Then you just need to reduce the last undervolt you did and try again.

I have not used prime95, there's an in-built stress tester and benchmarker in the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) program, I just used that.

The highest undervolt I tried with my Acer VX 15 is -0.140 mV. But I ran the Intel XTU Benchmark and found it lost points at that much undervolting. The sweet spot of performance/temperature vs undervolting was -0.120 mV for my particular laptop, but it may vary slightly for others (even if model is same) due to difference in amount of thermal paste on the CPU, ambient conditions etc.