Nitro 5 and thermal issues

Hey,
My Acer nitro 5 with i7-8750H + GTX1050Ti has thermal issues. When I play in League of Legends, everything seems to be OK. Problem is with CS GO, where it's getting throttle CPU after 5 mins of deathmatch. The funny thing is with AAA games like Ghost Recon Wildlands. Laptop can handle much more time of playing but it cannot avoid throttling anyway. CPU speed is downed to 800MHz on all cores. Pause game for a couple of seconds helps for next tens of minutes. I read a lot of Acer nitro 5 and people reports that the laptop has not much thermal issues. Is any solution for my Nitro 5?

Accepted answers

ven98

Power throttling in Intel XTU means that the CPU is using 100% out of 100. Reaching 100C so early in the test is bad. The drops to 800MHz seem to not be related to temperature throttling. This isn't how coffeelake is designed to throttle because of temp limit. There is something else going on software or hardware related.

You can update the BIOS and then test again to see if the issue will appear again.

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

Make sure battery is fully charged and device plugged in before installing the update. The system may restart several times during the installation.

If the issue still persists, I would just return the laptop.

All comments

ven98

Use an HW software to find out at what temps your CPU is running while gaming.

I suggest you to contact Acer, beacuse dropping to 800MHz(this is the minimum frequency of this CPU) is very bad, that means the CPU is throttling very hard. Undervolting or using a cooling pad won't help in this situation, so your only option is to contact Acer support.

enefem

Thanks for the answer. I'm gonna contact with support, hope they will help!

enefem

Hey, again!

Acer support does not replied to my question, but I did undervolt the CPU (-130mv) and max temps are 92 after 1 hour of playing in GTA V or 30 mins of CS GO. No throttling at all. I think about change thermal paste (Kryonaut). Is it a good idea? I will void a warranty but it might drop down some celsius. Less than 90 or even 85 celsius under load would be awesome.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/oj/v3f4hhe3v9it.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/7y/fv3ljf2eb4fr.png

RCXDINBOUND

Have you tried undervolting your CPU?

If not,
try the following:

Download Intel Xtreme tuning utility

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-.

And undervolt your CPU from there which can help minimize the high temperatures.

The 2nd way is to disable turbo boost which will cool your laptop a lot.

Here is the method for it:

https://www.geeks3d.com/20170213/how-to-disable-intel-turbo-boost-technology-on-a-notebook/ <<< Disabling turbo boost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseCXuLJYcg<<<< Undervolting.

Note: I'm not 100% sure if disabling turbo boost would impact your performance or not but from what I've heard it does decrease your temperatures a lot.

enefem

Read my post again. I said undervolting helps a lot. Now I'm thinking on repaste the thermal paste with Kryonaut. Just not sure if it's worth to void warranty.

ven98

enefem said:

Hey, again!
Acer support does not replied to my question, but I did undervolt the CPU (-130mv) and max temps are 92 after 1 hour of playing in GTA V or 30 mins of CS GO. No throttling at all. I think about change thermal paste (Kryonaut). Is it a good idea? I will void a warranty but it might drop down some celsius. Less than 90 or even 85 celsius under load would be awesome.

CPU emperature spikes are normal and they sometimes they can be around 10C higher than the average temps. What you should look for is 85C max average temperature.

ven98

Just to add, repasting with kryonaut will be really helpful, but as the laptop is using autofan, which is based on temperature not load, the improvement won't be huge, but the system will run quiter.

PS: I don't know if nitro models have max fan profile or an option for adjusting fan curve.

enefem

@ven98, Yes, temps looks ok after undervolting. Maybe a little bit high, but it's 6 cores CPU. On Youtube I saw video with repasting and it gave around 10C, so it's really worth. I care about warranty because who knows when something can go wrong with the laptop. However I'm taking the risk.

PS: I don't know if nitro models have max fan profile or an option for adjusting fan curve.

NitroSense give the option to set max fan speed. It's not possible to set the curve, but not a big deal.

Earlier while playing in CS GO, CPU reduced the clocks to 800MHz again for about 10 seconds. NitroSense reported max temps 87C. Weird thing, because it didn't happened since undervolting CPU. What could cause it? I used a little of battery, it was around 88-90% percent maybe and laptop was charging while playing. Can battery cause CPU throttling or drop the clocks to that low level? I have to find if that laptop has any defects because I can RMA by some days. If so, I'm gonna buy the same model from another shop.

ven98

Earlier while playing in CS GO, CPU reduced the clocks to 800MHz again for about 10 seconds. NitroSense reported max temps 87C. Weird thing, because it didn't happened since undervolting CPU. What could cause it? I used a little of battery, it was around 88-90% percent maybe and laptop was charging while playing. Can battery cause CPU throttling or drop the clocks to that low level? I have to find if that laptop has any defects because I can RMA by some days. If so, I'm gonna buy the same model from another shop.

I have seen some CPUs in laptops throttling in a similar fashion, but that is when temperature is around 98C. There are 2 reasons I can think of, which may cause this. Insufficient power input(the charger is unable to provide the power that the CPU requires/CPU throttles down to 800MHz to prevent system crash. The other possible reason is that you might have accidentally plugged/unplugged the charger, causing the drop in frequency.

You should know whether it is reason 1 or 2 and if it is reason 1, then you can try replicating the issue in by stressing the CPU(use aida64, as it has integrated hw monitor) and GPU(furmark) at 100% and at the same time using HWiNFO for monitoring. If the CPU's frequency clocks down to 800MHz again, then the fault is in the charger(could be charger or battery or both, as the laptop is using battery and charger at the same time) or something else reporting to the system that there is insufficient power. Either way your laptop needs to be checked by Acer, as this isn't a normal behaviour.

enefem

I did 2 stress test with Aida64 and Furmark in the same time. First one, throttled to 800MHz after around 20 seconds - stock voltages. One of the cores reach 100C and it was after 20 seconds! Second one, throttled after around 3 minutes. After lowering the voltages, one of the cores reach 99C. I forgot to say, but Intel XTU show 'Power limit throttling' when did stress test CPU. Now I'm confused. In this situation with heating, repasting could not help. However it was hard stress test, while gaming it's hard to get that much heating. Just undervolting helped with throttling, but earlier, throttling issue came back. What to do? Waiting for Kryonaut and repasting, or return it and buy in another shop?

Stock:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/bd/ynbr2nxbxd4f.png

Undervolted:

ven98

Power throttling in Intel XTU means that the CPU is using 100% out of 100. Reaching 100C so early in the test is bad. The drops to 800MHz seem to not be related to temperature throttling. This isn't how coffeelake is designed to throttle because of temp limit. There is something else going on software or hardware related.

You can update the BIOS and then test again to see if the issue will appear again.

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

Make sure battery is fully charged and device plugged in before installing the update. The system may restart several times during the installation.

If the issue still persists, I would just return the laptop.