Trying to undervolt my Helios 300 PH317-51-787X, but I

I've been trying to undervolt this laptop since I've had to send it in for a motherboard replacement after it fried due to heat damage. This happened while playing Witcher 3 for less than 3 hours,while using a cooling pad with fans at max and temps were still hitting 95C. I followed a variety of guides on how to undervolt my specific unit and temps have been improved greatly (max of 70C), without sacrificing significant performance and even extending battery life.

At first I used Intel XTU, but have switched to throttlestop 3 weeks ago (my issue happens while using either). The guide I followed at the time instructed to lower the voltage offset for the i7-7700hq to between -100mv and -120mv. This worked great for about 3 weeks, until my unit started crashing after less than 10 minutes of booting up. Since then, I have tinkered with different levels, progressively going down to as low as -60mv, only to find that it still crashes at times.

I haven't been able to pin down what exactly it is about my undervolting that causes the crashes, since I have been setting the voltage offset well below what is recommended and it still crashes (around -60mv instead of -100mv). However, I have noticed that when it crashes, if I reboot my unit and don't change the undervolt settings, it will keep crashing. Going into throttlestop and changing the voltage offset slightly (say from -60mv to -65mv or -55mv) will cause the unit to run stable, even during extended stress testing and gaming. As soon as I put it into sleep or shut down and reopen it it will crash sometimes. I will add that when changing the voltage offset, it has run stable for significant changes as well (from -60mv to -100mv), but the timing of the crashes seems always random. It crashes when least expected, even during low intensity tasks like watching a downloaded movie from Netflix.

The crashes happen both while the unit is plugged in or on battery. I've treated this unit with great care to avoid any damage caused by dropping or knocking it. I'm just surprised to see other people undervolting up to -150mv on the same processor and their systems running fine while mine doesn't seem to follow this trend at all. I should add that the crashes don't give any error message or blue screen, as they are complete freezes of the system. At least the only thing I can find is event viewer claiming the system shut down unexpectedly every time I perform a hard reset.

Could I have overseen something? Are there any more ways I could check how to assure my system will run stable? Is there anything else I can do to pin down the cause of these crashes? I'm quite frustrated because this is the only method that allowed my to take advantage of this laptop's performance without frying it during game sessions.

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JackE

Try setting your power plan to Balanced. No undervolting. See what happens. Jack E/NJ

reaLEtyx

Hey, I have had this problem for a while when my laptop would just crash/blue screen while gaming. I used to use Throttlestop and Undervolt by -0.120mv and used MSI Afterburner overclocking and other settings just to lower the temperature of the GPU and CPU but have been left with disappointing results of crashes/bluescrenn. These pictures below are the best solution I have come to. I don't use MSI AfterBurner anymore and CPU Park. I have found that these settings below have worked the best for me and maybe they will help you also. I have used these settings to play Destiny 2 on max settings and my laptop hasn't crashed. Also I use "High performance" power plan.

Image: https://i.gyazo.com/e813feb025d069e4bcdbd0572f760db0.png

Image: https://i.gyazo.com/4815ecec90494d602d644803c9565e34.png

Image: https://i.gyazo.com/7936dc8cc53f7fc0d93506077467a52a.png

xapim

The best solution it's always repaste with proper professional thermal paste and properly done all heating issues will be gone unless its a faulty mobo

ven98

Not all CPUs are the same. Some can undervolt and overclock better than others, while there are some that can't be undervolted at all(this is referred as silicon lottery). The reason why the voltage is 'so high' in the first place is because there are CPUs that may need this exact voltage in order to run stable at stock, while there are other CPUs of the same model, which have a better silicon and can run at the same stock speeds at lower voltage. In order words the stock voltage is the voltage at which a CPU will run at the worst case scenario or you can also say witnin spec. If you can undervolt even a bit that means your CPU is better than the worst case, but it also means that you could've had a CPU, which can't be undervolted at all and there is nothing you can do about it.

KennX

Thank you all for your input, I will update this thread on whether I've been able to fix my issue. Seems like my chip just might not undervolt too well. I will add that most crashes happen when switching power plans (power saver/balanced to high performance), regardless of what task is being worked on. I'll try out the settings reaLEtyx suggested:

Hey, I have had this problem for a while when my laptop would just crash/blue screen while gaming. I used to use Throttlestop and Undervolt by -0.120mv and used MSI Afterburner overclocking and other settings just to lower the temperature of the GPU and CPU but have been left with disappointing results of crashes/bluescrenn. These pictures below are the best solution I have come to. I don't use MSI AfterBurner anymore and CPU Park. I have found that these settings below have worked the best for me and maybe they will help you also. I have used these settings to play Destiny 2 on max settings and my laptop hasn't crashed. Also I use "High performance" power plan.

xapim

As i said earlier i would try a good repaste and i looked and your PS i would leave the fans on auto and coolboost on (after a good repaste) that should be enough there is no need to mess with the fans rpm ps and the mobo are setup to do it all on auto

KennX

Can I request this repaste to be done by Acer? I really don't want to risk voiding my warranty by opening my laptop.

ven98

Yes, you can ask Acer to repaste it, but they will use their own thermal paste, which isn't any better, but it is possible that the technician will re-apply it better. When I wanted my laptop to be repasted they supposedly 'found' that the motherboard is faulty and replaced it. Of course new motherboard means new thermal paste as well, but it performed worse after that, which means it is likely that they will return the device even in a worse state(also add a possibility that the technicians may scratch or damage your laptop during the repair process, which leads to more headaches).

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