Acer Helios 300 Lag Spikes and Battery Drain while charging

I have just received my Acer Helios 300, and playing games on it is awesome. They run great, but when I am on a game for about an hour, my game lags and drops down to about 10fps for 10-15 seconds. I have tested this in multiple games such as PUBG, Overwatch, Fortnite and even CSGO. Something else that's weird is that when I am on games for long periods of time, my laptop battery drains a bit even though it is charging. I would expect the charger to keep it at 100% constantly. After playing for about 2 hours it gets down to 80% and it gets back up after i close the game for about 20-30 minutes. I know the fps drops aren't due to thermal issues because I have a cooling pad with 5 fans under my laptop, my room is about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the GPU temps never get past 75 degrees Celsius. Had the laptop for only 2 days now, so it's not an age issue. Any help with the battery and fps issues would be appreciated!

Accepted answers

ShocK

This video fixed my issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3v3o21M8gg&t=325s

All comments

sri369

What region are you in? To my knowledge, North America gets 180 Watts charger and rest of the regions get 130 Watt chargers.

I have a 180 Watt charger, and see battery draining a little while playing heavy games.

This is cos laptop components use over 180 Watts of power when playing intensive games, and power supply supply all that power. So it uses power from battery as needed. This is why you see battery charge getting lower. Keep in mind, Predator does not have laptop version of graphics card - it is a desktop version pretty much in terms of capability.

The laptops from a few years ago had scaled down components normally denoted with an M beside them.. e.g., GTX 660 for desktops and GTX 660 M for laptops. This is not the case most of the time now.

In case you are wondering why you aren't given a higher capacity charger... you actually do not need it. This kind of max power is needed in bursts, and never at sustained levels cos that would fry your components. And having a charger at 180 Watts itself is a huge power hog for a laptop.

ShocK

sri369 said:

What region are you in? To my knowledge, North America gets 180 Watts charger and rest of the regions get 130 Watt chargers.

I have a 180 Watt charger, and see battery draining a little while playing heavy games.

This is cos laptop components use over 180 Watts of power when playing intensive games, and power supply supply all that power. So it uses power from battery as needed. This is why you see battery charge getting lower. Keep in mind, Predator does not have laptop version of graphics card - it is a desktop version pretty much in terms of capability.

The laptops from a few years ago had scaled down components normally denoted with an M beside them.. e.g., GTX 660 for desktops and GTX 660 M for laptops. This is not the case most of the time now.

In case you are wondering why you aren't given a higher capacity charger... you actually do not need it. This kind of max power is needed in bursts, and never at sustained levels cos that would fry your components. And having a charger at 180 Watts itself is a huge power hog for a laptop.

I am in the US so I guess there isn't anything I can do about the battery situation, but the FPS drops are really annoying. In the middle of a game like Overwatch where there is constant fighting, I am basically useless when my FPS drops to 10. If there is no fix for this, I'm returning the laptop and getting one that doesn't come with issues out of the box.

sri369

Nearly all laptops will have this, with most of them bundling full powered CPU and GPU. You FPS drops could be due to thermal throttling.

There are multiple threads on here that help solve this issue. Try to check through any of them and let us know if you still need help.
Some options:
1. Undervolting
2. Laptop cooler
3. Limit FPS to 60 (anything over 60 on a 60Hz screen isn't really visible)
4. Disable or scale down certain graphics settings that won't effect much in gameplay but help with usage and temps (e.g., nvidia hairworks in witcher 3 kept my 1060 at 100%, and turning this one option off got it down to 60s).

Things like these help get my max temps from 85-90 to 60-70 ranges, and I am still running the game on Ultra utilizing full potential of bundled CPU and GPU.

I didn't use a laptop cooler though. I used felt pads to raise my laptop height by 1 inch to allow for more airflow below and use USB fan.

ShocK

sri369 said:

Nearly all laptops will have this, with most of them bundling full powered CPU and GPU. You FPS drops could be due to thermal throttling.

There are multiple threads on here that help solve this issue. Try to check through any of them and let us know if you still need help.
Some options:
1. Undervolting
2. Laptop cooler
3. Limit FPS to 60 (anything over 60 on a 60Hz screen isn't really visible)
4. Disable or scale down certain graphics settings that won't effect much in gameplay but help with usage and temps (e.g., nvidia hairworks in witcher 3 kept my 1060 at 100%, and turning this one option off got it down to 60s).

Things like these help get my max temps from 85-90 to 60-70 ranges, and I am still running the game on Ultra utilizing full potential of bundled CPU and GPU.

I didn't use a laptop cooler though. I used felt pads to raise my laptop height by 1 inch to allow for more airflow below and use USB fan.

Like I stated in my first post, GPU doesn't get past 75 degrees Celsius, and the 1060 doesn't throttle until at 80 degrees. I run all games at low because I play them competitively, and I lock all FPS to 144 so my GPU doesn't need to work as hard as it can all the time. I am running fans at max will cool boost on. I also have a cooling pad under neath the laptop running at max with 5 fans in it. I can't be thermal throttling every 10 minutes like this.

sri369

What model do you have? Does your screen support 144Hz refresh rate? Just wondering...

2 day old laptop... I am thinking you have windows 10 home. So are you sure windows isn't updating in the background? This is something that happens on all windows 10 home editions, even when you are doing heavy hitting work.

ShocK

sri369 said:

What model do you have? Does your screen support 144Hz refresh rate? Just wondering...

2 day old laptop... I am thinking you have windows 10 home. So are you sure windows isn't updating in the background? This is something that happens on all windows 10 home editions, even when you are doing heavy hitting work.

Acer Helios 300 is the model, and Windows is not doing anything in the background. I think I have found a solution to my problem. I am going to undervolt my laptop to make it not use as much power and see if that fixes any thing, if it does, I will post the link to the video and mark it as a solution.

sri369

If your screen refresh rate is 60, and not 144, you could set your refresh rate to 60.

I do not think lag spike is due to undervolting; undervolting is only to reduce the temps. But none the less, give it a try and let us know the outcome.

ShocK

sri369 said:

If your screen refresh rate is 60, and not 144, you could set your refresh rate to 60.

I do not think lag spike is due to undervolting; undervolting is only to reduce the temps. But none the less, give it a try and let us know the outcome.

I've been using a 144hz screen for over 2 years no, and 60 FPS and 60hz looks utterly disgusting. I am not playing competitive games at 60hz. xD

sri369

ShocK said:

sri369 said:

If your screen refresh rate is 60, and not 144, you could set your refresh rate to 60.

I do not think lag spike is due to undervolting; undervolting is only to reduce the temps. But none the less, give it a try and let us know the outcome.

I've been using a 144hz screen for over 2 years no, and 60 FPS and 60hz looks utterly disgusting. I am not playing competitive games at 60hz. xD