Flashing a custom BIOS-how to do that and should I attemp?(Acer PH 300 G3-572).

HK1994
HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
Dear fellow Predator users,
I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
Is it possible to do this and should I?
If it is,is there a guide for it?
Thanks beforehand!
«1

Answers

  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    Hey,what the hell man?
    You are directing me to a online flower shop.
  • HK1994 said:
    Hey,what the hell man?
    You are directing me to a online flower shop.
    I flagged it. Lol
    - Hotel Hero
  • Red-Sand
    Red-Sand ACE Posts: 1,892 Pathfinder
    edited September 2018
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    - Hotel Hero
  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?
  • sri369
    sri369 ACE Posts: 2,763 Pathfinder
    HK1994 said:
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?
    These laptops are already pretty much pushed to their limits... unless you want to brick/fry the unit, I would recommend against this. You could do almost everything via software that is reversible. On the other hand, a bios update could render it unusable too, let alone reversing it.
    -----
    Karma...
    LIKE - if helpful
    ACCEPT - if helped resolve
  • HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?

    Someone overclocked the HQ CPUs? That's new to me... what clock speeds are they pushing?

    I know Speed Shift EPP can be adjusted in Throttlestop which gives 3.8ghz performance to all threads opposed to be capped at 3.4ghz when all are active
    - Hotel Hero
  • HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?
    Here's some pics




    - Hotel Hero
  • vanadium
    vanadium Member Posts: 68 Devotee WiFi Icon
    I modded the bios on my Helios 500 too. So far have used it to undervolt the CPU without having to mess with software on OS startup. Also have overclocked the RAM from 2400Mhz to 2933Mhz. Finally, Increased Short Turbo Boost Duration from 28sec to 128sec.

    I see it useful if you want to undervolt directly from bios, install high speed sodimm (like 3000Mhz+ RAM). Other than that, most settings are obscure and difficult to figure out what they do.

    If you mess the bios settings, you have to reflash it because settings are written into the bios. Clear cmos has no effect.
  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?

    Someone overclocked the HQ CPUs? That's new to me... what clock speeds are they pushing?

    I know Speed Shift EPP can be adjusted in Throttlestop which gives 3.8ghz performance to all threads opposed to be capped at 3.4ghz when all are active
    One ASUS guy that I knew have an OCed i7-6700HQ to 3.6GHz by rasing the BLCK clock speed to 102 I guess.
    Do you have any proof of your CPU running at 3.8GHz all cores?Videos,screenshots?
    I tried and believe me,it's only at 3.4GHz.I have directly asked UncleWebb-TS creator and the TL;DR answer is NOPE.
  • HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    HK1994 said:
    Dear fellow Predator users,
    I am using an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an GTX 1060 and so far it has been a great experience.
    However I have been intrigued by the idea of flashing a custom BIOS onto my laptop to explore and tweak advanced settings.
    Some people have been successful at it,like @Red-Sand and a guy on Youtube.
    Is it possible to do this and should I?
    If it is,is there a guide for it?
    Thanks beforehand!

    To be completely honest with you bro, once I unlocked the BIOs I haven't used a single feature of it lol.

    Pretty much everything can be tweaked via software so there's no need.

    What are you trying to do?
    What's there for you to tweak?I have seen people OCing their CPU via the BCLK method.
    Is this possible?Can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS?And will you release more guides on your Youtube channel?

    Someone overclocked the HQ CPUs? That's new to me... what clock speeds are they pushing?

    I know Speed Shift EPP can be adjusted in Throttlestop which gives 3.8ghz performance to all threads opposed to be capped at 3.4ghz when all are active
    One ASUS guy that I knew have an OCed i7-6700HQ to 3.6GHz by rasing the BLCK clock speed to 102 I guess.
    Do you have any proof of your CPU running at 3.8GHz all cores?Videos,screenshots?
    I tried and believe me,it's only at 3.4GHz.I have directly asked UncleWebb-TS creator and the TL;DR answer is NOPE.

    - Hotel Hero
  • 2 or 3 cores fluctuate between 3.6ghz and 3.8ghz.
    But it does indeed work.
    - Hotel Hero
  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    Red-Sand said:
    2 or 3 cores fluctuate between 3.6ghz and 3.8ghz.
    But it does indeed work.
    Can you please post something else than this age old screenshot?
    Live action or recording or TS log file would be much better.
  • What's wrong with my screen shot?

    Set speed shift epp to 0 then enable MSI OSD showing all CPU clock speeds and run firestrike benchmark to see for yourself. 😁
    - Hotel Hero
  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    edited September 2018
    From UncleWebb-creator of ThrottleStop:
    The on screen MHz information you see while playing a game can be misleading. At any instant in time, these Intel CPUs are using a single multiplier. All active cores are locked together and they are all forced to use the exact same multiplier. Inactive cores that are in one of the low power C States are usually not using any multiplier. The clock signal going to the inactive cores is stopped. The inactive cores are technically running at 0 MHz because they are not running at all. 

    Some monitoring software wakes up these inactive cores and immediately asks them what multiplier they are using. Now think about it. Does any information from a core that was inactive at 0 MHz represent what speed the active cores were running at? Of course not. It is useless information. In actual fact, the inactive cores are not using any multiplier because they are inactive. All those different MHz numbers while gaming looks nice but it does not mean anything. If information is not accurate or does not represent what the CPU cores are doing, it should be ignored. 

    You already posted your example where multiple cores are running at 3.8 GHz. According to Intel, that is physically impossible. The 7700HQ only uses the 38 multiplier when a single core is active. If two or three or four cores are active, all of the active cores are definitely not using the 38 multiplier. Monitoring software that shows data that is physically impossible should be ignored. 

    CPU World shows what a 7700HQ is capable of.
    http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core i7 i7-7700HQ.html

    If you have a look at the ThrottleStop log file it shows only a single multiplier. Some users might not like that but it is a much more accurate representation of what an Intel CPU is doing. 

    The second piece:
    An unlocked bios does not change what a 7700HQ is capable of. Read the CPU World info. The only possible way to run the 38 multiplier on all cores, all the time is if you go into Windows or the bios and disable 3 of your 4 cores. Now you will have a single core CPU and it will happily run at the 38 multiplier continuously. Gaming frame rates will be terrible but at least the on screen data will represent what speed the CPU is running at.
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-827
  • Yes I've read this as well.

    What doesn't make sense is that the speed shift epp values increase in performance the closer they are to 0. 0 being max performance... so why would my other cores be inactive giving false readings?
    Also why does my benchmarks improve instead of decline?

    Im all about learning if im incorrect as all I did was set speed shift to 0 and walla OSD shows all at 3.6-3.8ghz.

    Also, not sure what the unlocked BIOs has to do with this.. as I never said it did. 👍
    - Hotel Hero
  • xapim
    xapim ACE Posts: 7,253 Pathfinder
    well it seems on my G3-572-56AS i cant mod the bios without a SPI-programmer+SOIC8 i'm on V1.14 so ill just forget it until someone comes out with a working modded rom to flash :p


    https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/11532543

    UserBenchmarks: Game 43%, Desk 61%, Work 40%
    CPU: Intel Core i5-7300HQ - 63.5%
    GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050-Ti (Mobile) - 41.9%
    SSD: WDC WDS200T2B0B-00YS70 2TB - 71.4%
    HDD: WD WD10SPZX-00HKTT0 1TB - 93.7%
    RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR4 2666 C15 2x16GB - 76.8%
    MBD: Acer Predator G3-572

    I'm not an Acer employee. (just here to help in the best way i can)
    If my answer fixed you issue please accept it for any other users who search for it would find it quickly thanks :)
    If you want to learn more about undervolting/optimizing windows join the Predator fb group and youtube channel:

    Owner/Admin (HOTEL HERO/Red-Sand/Opoka Opoka)
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/PredatorHelios300
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNJwGUHxSJ8FKqAhnOqQuAw
    Acer support:
    https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/service-contact
    http://www.acer.com/worldwide/support/  


  • vanadium
    vanadium Member Posts: 68 Devotee WiFi Icon
    You can buy a CH341A + SOIC8 clip for 5€ shipped from aliexpress. This is what I did. And it takes only half an hour to disassemble the laptop, dump the bios and submit it on bios-mods.com to get a modded one. There is no other way around: the bios chip is write protected. Only hardware programmer works.
  • Overall there really isn't much to gain from a modded BIOs.

    Theres no power throttling issues (CPU performs nominally) and changing the fan curve settings in BIOs doesn't effect Predator Sense's fan curve.
    - Hotel Hero
  • HK1994
    HK1994 Member Posts: 43 Devotee WiFi Icon
    Red-Sand said:
    Yes I've read this as well.

    What doesn't make sense is that the speed shift epp values increase in performance the closer they are to 0. 0 being max performance... so why would my other cores be inactive giving false readings?
    Also why does my benchmarks improve instead of decline?

    Im all about learning if im incorrect as all I did was set speed shift to 0 and walla OSD shows all at 3.6-3.8ghz.

    Also, not sure what the unlocked BIOs has to do with this.. as I never said it did. 👍
    Firestrike in general isn't something too demanding on the CPU. You will need games like The Witcher 3 to see the real stuff.
  • HK1994 said:
    Red-Sand said:
    Yes I've read this as well.

    What doesn't make sense is that the speed shift epp values increase in performance the closer they are to 0. 0 being max performance... so why would my other cores be inactive giving false readings?
    Also why does my benchmarks improve instead of decline?

    Im all about learning if im incorrect as all I did was set speed shift to 0 and walla OSD shows all at 3.6-3.8ghz.

    Also, not sure what the unlocked BIOs has to do with this.. as I never said it did. 👍
    Firestrike in general isn't something too demanding on the CPU. You will need games like The Witcher 3 to see the real stuff.

    It does the same thing on every game.. Witcher 3 included.
    - Hotel Hero