BIOS update to support Ryzen 3700x? Helios 500 question

BurnsXL

Hi - I managed to get the Ryzen 2700/Vega 56 Helios 500 laptop at a super good price AND snagged a 3700x before they sold out. 

My understanding is that this should be a totally fine upgrade with a BIOS update...is Acer going to do this, and if so, where do I get said update? If it's not and never going to be supported, I'd appreciate being informed now so I can adjust accordingly .

Thanks

xapim

BurnsXL there is already a thread about this and personally i dont think acer will release any bios update because the motherboard will not support the new features of the new cpu anyway ( and it would be bad for business) so the best its to either refresh the H500 or release a brand new variant for the 3rd gen but no one knows if it would even work until someone buys one and tests it you can upgrade up to 2700X and thats about it unless as i said someone buys the new 3rd gen and tests it only acer themselves would know the answer for this one this is a user community run not acer direct support you could try to contact them directly and ask them about it

PS: if you bought the new Ryzen3 everyone here would love to know if the mobo would support it or not it was not tested by anyone so far 

BurnsXL

I've never swapped out a CPU but I'm totally willing to try it, I did purchase a 3700x today. It's unclear to me whether or not this will work; all resources imply that the hardware SHOULD do it but the BIOS has to as well.

If it the AM4 motherboard in the 500 doesn't support the new 3700x, what will happen if it's installed? Just a non-boot on attempt? Really disagree with Acer if their decision with the "replace your desktop laptop" is to not let it support something that is a huge part of the appeal. 

Will let you know I suppose, I can't rightly keep it if I can get a new-gen version for the same amount of $. 

EDIT - can an Acer employee please answer this? This is a huge thing to just avoid answering altogether IMHO. 

xapim

BurnsXL probably it will not boot up or just boot with black screen wish u good luck with your test its no big deal anyway you wouldnt damage anything just be careful taking it out dont break any of the pins the issue its not supporting the cpu the issue here its not supporting the new features of the cpu so basically you would have a good cpu in an outdated mobo that wont support the full new features of it same as for ex putting some 2666 ram in a mobo that only supports 1600 just an ex anyway and just my opinion if this is the case its better for acer to refresh/create a new variant for the new features to be fully supported

Let us know how it went everyone here is curious

BurnsXL

I'll let you all know - the laptop doesn't appear to have even shipped yet (been a week?), so I may just have to pass on Acer if they don't clarify this. We'll see - I really like the Vega/Ryzen build but it would xxxx to be software-limited to the older generation.

caito

@BurnsXL - THANKS so much for the post & BEST OF LUCK with this
I logged in just last night to see if there was an answer to just this same question and would be EXTREMELY interested in learning what you find out in your experiment.  Im in the market of getting a new laptop, and the AMD flavoured Helios500 is my first choice with the EXACT reason of what your hoping to accomplish.  Everything seems to point in the direction that it should be swappable since they are both AM4 sockets, which is the whole appeal of alleged AMD chip upgradability, but i imagine your correct in that the BIOS would also need to updated.
Although I have read elsewhere that this laptop in question can swap out the 2700 for the 2700x  without issue or any bios update whatsoever and it inmediately recognizes it, so thats promising.. .
again, best of luck, and please let us all know how it turns out for you, as this would be a HUGE deal breaker for many thinking along the same lines as you are
Thanks again for the post, looking forward to what you find out!
Carlos

BurnsXL

So it looks like the CPU will be here tomorrow and the laptop will be here on Wednesday. Question does the 500 have an x470 or x570 mobo? 

xapim

Probably the older chipset

BurnsXL

Apparently it's better if there's an x470 motherboard, as the x570 wastes a ton of power? 

NiteNinja

What's in the Helios 500 is a modified B450 motherboard. Really the only difference is the form factor, and the Vega 56 is soldered directly to the PCI-E bus and share the same VRMs with the CPU.

However, Acer doesn't make their own motherboard, so you can't do a BIOS hack using a mini ITX board BIOS like you can with the ASUS GL702ZC.

However if the chip itself matches something else that's out there, theoretically you could side-load a desktop motherboard BIOS and it would "work". There isn't anything special with this Acer BIOS GUI or anything.

But that would depend on how proprietary the chipset is as well. And who would risk bricking their $1400-1900 laptop.

Regardless I'm sure Acer is aware of the community and we can only wait and see what they'll do. Hopefully they release a refresh system based on the same machine with Ryzen 3 and Navi, and  provide BIOS updates to current owners who wish to upgrade the CPU in the Vega models, that would be the best marketing. 

caito

Just spoke with ACER customer service whom tells me that its not upgradable to the 3700x, but to be fair, they were unaware that it was upgradable to the 2700x either, or that it even worked at all.  i think that its fairly possible that all i got was someone reading off a scripted database response system as their response was fairly generic, so theres still hope that it may work  , i hope acer/amd or someone is able to confirm, as this is a HUGE dealbreaker for those of us who would like to purchase hardware thats actually upgradable and not stuck with the system for not having the foresight or vision to allow for it

BurnsXL

So just to give you all an update...Newegg apparently "is looking for my package in their warehouse" and told me that it's 50/50 that I'll even get the 3700x I paid for in this batch. Amazon/Adorama, once again, just shipped the Helios 500. UPS at least has that and will be delivering it Friday, maybe, as it's sig-required and I'm not sure I'll be home. 

Was supposed to come tomorrow, as I'll be home then. So earliest I'll be able to try anything is hypothetically Friday. 

BurnsXL

Got my Ryzen 3700x from NewEgg today...box was absolutely beat to ***** but the insides are hopefully OK. The Helios is coming on Friday, so I'll be updating on that probably Sat morning.

Does anybody have any real-world experience of the 2700->2700x upgrade for 1080p FPS framerates? Wondering if that's an upgrade worth making if the 3700x doesn't work. 

kingmetal

Really excited to see your progress, I'd buy a 3700X immediately if it somehow manages to work.

As for the 2700 --> 2700X upgrade, I suspect that you could get roughly the same performance by overclocking the 2700 that ships with the machine. I was able to hit 4ghz all-core easily, and I suspect 4.1ghz is possible. I run at stock temps because I'd prefer fan noise over raw performance, since the fans in this machine are so quiet stock. The handy "MAX FAN" mode would let the overclock run at decent temps if you don't mind the noise! If the 3700X doesn't pan out, I'd suggest just playing around with Ryzen Master and seeing how close to 4.2ghz you can get - you might get slightly higher boosts with a 2700X and PBO but a solid 4ghz+ all-core will be close enough where it wouldn't be worth the cost in my opinion.

Also of note, the version of Ryzen Master that Acer requires to make the Predator Sense (fan control and backlighting control) software work is not compatible with the latest version of Ryzen Master, which you will want to use if you get that 3700X working. This is NBD, as you can just set whatever you want in Predator Sense and then upgrade to Ryzen Master (macros, backlighting and the fan profiles don't need Predator Sense to be running), but this is an annoyance. Not sure why Acer does this, but I run the old Ryzen Master because the newer versions are incompatible with Hyper-V for some reason.

BurnsXL

Thanks for clarifying...I mean as long as I'm not risking bricking my computer with the 3700x I'm totally fine popping it in and seeing what happens. Somebody else who has this same model said that it's whisper quiet with the 2700 and super loud with the 2700x, so I'll probably just add 16gb of RAM and a 2nd SSD to speed things up a bit and call it a day. 

Assuming I'm there to get the delivery tomorrow I'll probably spend time on Saturday trying to do the upgrade. Given that they just released a whole new series of Helios or Triton laptops I'm not super hopeful. 

As great as this laptop is, it'll be really ***** of Acer to software-lock a model that's less than a year old from being able to utilize one of its major selling points. Typically "upgradeable" isn't just "add ram and a hard drive" and they shouldn't market it as such if it's not. 

kingmetal

Yeah I hear that - although to be fair, I don't see anywhere that Acer advertises an upgradable CPU. They advertise RAM and HDD / SSD upgradeability, which they deliver on, but they don't actually say anywhere that the CPU is swappable, and clearly didn't design the machine for that purpose. The Area 51M is a good example of a desktop replacement where the vendor says "yeah you can totally upgrade the CPU!" although the upgrade path for that machine is questionable. I think that the AM4 socket in our machine is more of a byproduct of wanting a desktop Ryzen chip in a thick laptop and less a desire to allow users to upgrade.

This doesn't mean that releasing the necessary BIOS to allow us to upgrade (and void our warranties) isn't the right thing for Acer to do though, so I hope they give us what we want. Like I've said before in other threads, if Acer lets me put a Ryzen 3000 in this system I will likely default to buying Acer products in the future. That's the kind of support that builds brand loyalty.

xapim

kingmetal i agree with you they dont state officially anywhere (as far as im aware)  that the cpu its upgreadable but it seems because its socketed and its rare to see socketed cpus these days so everyone started to suppose that it was i have my 7745G and when i got it i eve thought i could probably upgrade it in future but again it doesnt say anywhere that it would support anything apart from the i7 740QM that came with which at the time was a beast :P so this its all just suppositions since the beginning its the upgrade at your own risk trial/miss

NiteNinja

You won't brick your laptop putting in an invalid CPU. Worse case, it'll just not boot, kinda like populating the 2nd m.2 drive with a second NVMe drive. It only supports a m.2 SATA SSD. Only thing you'll lose is the time, bit of thermal paste for the CPU and GPU, and whatever screws you don't keep track of

xapim

NiteNinja exactly

BurnsXL

You're right in that technically the Acer website says that it's easily upgradeable (if you want more RAM or storage), but TBH almost every computer can have that said about it (unless it's already got something in all slots).

What I'm saying is that upgradability shouldn't be touted as a feature of this model when we're talking about just RAM and an SSD slot - almost every computer can have more RAM or storage put in. Also, one of the major selling points of AMD in general is that the new gen chips are backwards compatible with the existing setups. AMD isn't Acer, but if I'd known that it'd be a software-based lockout keeping me from using a CPU I'd maybe have just waited until they were out and purchased something then. 

It's on me for not researching even more, yet I think it's hard to argue that it's not at a minimum disappointing. Maybe even misleading, depending on how much the basic upgradeability statements are considered. 

Anyway - I'm sure it'll be pointless but I'll try the CPU install tomorrow and will report back. It's still a great laptop, is what it is. 

kingmetal

Good luck! Keep us posted.