About energy effiiency on Helios 300

strider16

I've found an online guide which shows a interesting tool built in windows 10, running in an elevated prompt powercfg /energy . This writes a log which shows what can be impacting in energy management in the device.

My helios 300, g3-572, shows 4 errors in this log. Two of them are irrelevant, one is due to a virtual driver to a vpn client I use, and other one was about my browser putting cpu out of idle state.

But then, two errors are due to hardware, and I'm thinking if we can do something about it.

PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) has been disabled due to a known incompatibility with the hardware in this computer

Platform Power Management Capabilities: PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) Disabled

Drivers de dispositivo:
Dispositivos com drivers configurados de forma incorreta ou sem drivers podem aumentar o consumo de energia.
Nome do Dispositivo         Dispositivo de vídeo USB
ID do dispositivo              USB\VID_04F2&PID_B5F7&MI_00\6&DF3DF43&0&0000
Status do Dispositivo        0x1802400
Código do Problema do Dispositivo     0x16

Did you guys noticed something about it?

I don't know how active is acer intl. support regarding this kind of stuff. I know it is somehow more reasonable expect this kind of support from dell or hp, but who knows? So I'm posting this here, where other heavy users can provide a reasonable sample number for acer do something about it.

sri369

This tool has been there since windows 7 to my knowledge.
Go to device manager, and see if any hardware has any exclamation mark against it. Are all yours devices without any error?

And one important thing:
"Platform Power Management Capabilities:PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) Disabled"
This is a very common issue with most hardware... and this could stem from things as simple as any USB device connected to the computer. Don't bother about this since neither MS nor hardware manufacturers provide any useful answer towards resolving this issue.

strider16

The system updated itself to 1803, every driver reports installed without issues. But, I think the usb stuff has to do with the fact that the usb C in this laptop isn't compatible with video.

I would bother since, well, most hardware has issues. Not all. If theres a chance to make this device better, why not? And it isn't impossible, since many devices shares the same design, I think this may interest acer too. Not the local support, but higher instances.

sri369

strider16 said:

The system updated itself to 1803, every driver reports installed without issues. But, I think the usb stuff has to do with the fact that the usb C in this laptop isn't compatible with video.

I would bother since, well, most hardware has issues. Not all. If theres a chance to make this device better, why not? And it isn't impossible, since many devices shares the same design, I think this may interest acer too. Not the local support, but higher instances.

Personally, I would recommend overlooking this... for, considering this issue has been there since early 2000s, and neither MS nor manufacturers feel its important enough to handle on their ends...

Plus, you can achieve better power optimization via 3rd party tools - like throttle stop - my low usage power consumption is at about 11k-12k mW. On idle it goes down to as low as 8-9k. Consider this to when this was still an untuned laptop and the values were at about 12-14k on idle and 14-17k on low usage at their lowest power usages.

strider16

Well, since this is issue which goes that back, I guess there's no other option besides dealing with.

I will search for more optimizing stuff. Already using xtu and undervolting the 1060 with afterburner (which i notice better disabled while gpu not in use, since it keeps using cpu time for monitoring stuff), and park control to enable... parking.

The main problem here is perception. My desktop runs a well oiled windows 7 with less than 50 processes idling, and windows 10 need more than 130. Besides that, suddenly after the first week the battery life went from almost 5 hours to little more than 2. Maybe I just had the expetation that if I used it as a low power device, the battery would agree and behaves like that...

sri369

strider16 said:

My desktop runs a well oiled windows 7 with less than 50 processes idling, and windows 10 need more than 130. Besides that, suddenly after the first week the battery life went from almost 5 hours to little more than 2. Maybe I just had the expetation that if I used it as a low power device, the battery would agree and behaves like that...

This is one of the reasons I downgraded my laptop to 7, and plan to keep it on 7 atleast as long as 7 keeps getting security upgrades. By then it would be windows 11 or so (10 won't live that long anyways I feel). 10 has lots of services that one doesn't actually use and worst part is that many of them cannot even be disabled without hacky ways. Also 10 tends to push device to high performance power plan at will irrespective of power source.

strider16

The only reason I wont downgrade to 7 is because I dont have a spare key... Anyway, the first thing I did when I receive this laptop was making lots of partitions, and already downloaded ubuntu, just need a usb drive to dual boot.

sri369

strider16 said:

The only reason I wont downgrade to 7 is because I dont have a spare key... Anyway, the first thing I did when I receive this laptop was making lots of partitions, and already downloaded ubuntu, just need a usb drive to dual boot.

I won't say go to 7... i went to 7 for many reasons... security being one. Anyways... get a USB bootable linux :-) would help.

xapim

sri369 said:

strider16 said:

The only reason I wont downgrade to 7 is because I dont have a spare key... Anyway, the first thing I did when I receive this laptop was making lots of partitions, and already downloaded ubuntu, just need a usb drive to dual boot.

I won't say go to 7... i went to 7 for many reasons... security being one. Anyways... get a USB bootable linux :-) would help.

as soon as i find out how to dual uefi 7 with win10 ill go back to 7 tried to install 7 through usb but i got nothing but a bsod lol with the secure disabled
legacy mode not an option unless i format everything from scratch

xapim

strider16 said:

The only reason I wont downgrade to 7 is because I dont have a spare key... Anyway, the first thing I did when I receive this laptop was making lots of partitions, and already downloaded ubuntu, just need a usb drive to dual boot.

Spare key for what ?? genuine validate win7 activators solve the issue lol

strider16

xapim said:

as soon as i find out how to dual uefi 7 with win10 ill go back to 7 tried to install 7 through usb but i got nothing but a bsod lol with the secure disabled
legacy mode not an option unless i format everything from scratch

That's the main issue I think there is, I already found a laptop where 10 was reinstalled in a wrong way, and nvidia driver simply refused to be installed. I don't understand uefi yet, better find a good tutorial to not screw any of the OS.

sri369

@strider16 On forums here... search for posts created by me. I have 2 threads on how to install Windows 7 on G3-572. And also enabling advanced touch pad features and such.