Helios 700 love/hate relationship (incl. Predator Sense / Audio/ Screen)

TimoFaust

belik said:

TimoFaust said:

belik said:

I have one question, can you share whole folder C:\ProgramData\oem\PredatorSense from your machine?
When you set custom fans profile, is it common for all PS profiles or individual for every profile?

Do you still want that? I can share in the next few days when I am back home, if you like.
Sadly it is one profile for all.

Yes I’d like to see your settings in those folder
So all how you can set fans is through the single Custom profile? And they will be always on this custom set speed?

As for fans control well this is not a fix actually but we found the way how to control fans through the third party app NBFC on Helios 300 2019 and it can override signals from PS so at least this is some alternative
I’m sure that Helios 700 can use the same approach but still lot of details need to understand 

Ok, will share once I am back home.
Yeah, in PS you can only set 1 custom profile that has a set speed. Quite disappointing, when stuff like MSI Afterburner does all that and more for years.

mikeyjames

TimoFaust said:

Ok, at this point I think it is either bugged or I am blocked by Mikeyjames, as I get a lot of notifications about posts, but can not see a single one.

It would be much appreciated, if somebody could put all of his posts in a single qoute post, to bring me up to date about his last 3 to 5 posts I can't see. Thanks.

I have no idea what is going on with my posts. As I said earlier (which you probably can't see I admit) I can't even see my posts sometimes.

Anyone have any idea what may be going on with my posts on the forum?

mikeyjames

My Posts seem to have disappeared again. What is going on?

Sehnsucht

belik said:

Yes I’d like to see your settings in those folder
So all how you can set fans is through the single Custom profile? And they will be always on this custom set speed?

As for fans control well this is not a fix actually but we found the way how to control fans through the third party app NBFC on Helios 300 2019 and it can override signals from PS so at least this is some alternative
I’m sure that Helios 700 can use the same approach but still lot of details need to understand 

Can anyone confirm that NBFC works on the Helios 700? Looks like it supports custom fan curves, which is fantastic - if it works. I'll have to try it myself this weekend.

belik

It can be confirmed by owners 
Download app 
http://rweverything.com/download/
Go to menu Access - Embedded Controller
If you can see values and some of them changing somehow then yes, you can read parameters like fans speed, temperatures etc and manipulate some of them
But not necessarily in the way you would like but it could works somehow    

Sehnsucht

belik said:

It can be confirmed only buy owners 
Download app 
http://rweverything.com/download/
Go to menu Access - Embedded Controller
If you can see values and some of them changing somehow then yes, you can read parameters like fans speed, temperatures etc and manipulate some of them
But not necessarily in the way you would like but it could works somehow     

There is no profile for the Helios 700, or any other Helios for that matter. But I'll experiment some with it this weekend. I'd love to be able to not run the thing at close to 2K RPM all the time.

belik

Yep there is no profiles but NBFC allows to create your own very easily
In this profile you can set which registers in EC to read and write 
And the main issue here is that it's unknown which registers exactly   
I also strongly recommend that before you try to write anything you need to know how to reset  EC, this info can be in service manual
In Helios 300 2019 for ex, you can reset bios by pressing power button for 10 seconds and reset EC by pressing power for 12 sec

mikeyjames

Hey All,
It's been about six weeks now and I am loving the Helios 700.

I have my custom CPU OC running at startup that has all eight cores rock solid at 4.4Ghz

The GPU OC is rock solid at my new 'Fast' Setting (Core OC from 100 to 180MHz and RAM OC from 400 to 525MHz)

It stays so much cooler than my Helios 500. Currently sitting in a room with 26c ambient temp and the system Temp is only 31c (with the keyboard in place).

When doing a 60 min loop of Timespy Extreme demo in with 3DMark, the GPU never gets above 60c and CPU about the same.

When playing a really CPU intensive game like Prepar3d or MS Flight 2020 Alpha, CPU rarely gets above 75c with occasional short spikes into the 80s

At present with ambient temp 26c, CPU idling at 33c, GPU at 31c, and System at 31c 

In the same room, with a clean install of Windows 10 (Set up to sell), My Helios 500 is idling at 50c, GPU 44c and System at 42c.

sok_z_kota

Hey, is this beast worth buying?
Is it usable on a normal day to day scenario some gaming, most of the time web and office things (I saw review on LTT  where it was told that it spins fans at every windows update etc.) Did acer allowed users to build own fan curve? Can it be UV?

Sehnsucht

sok_z_kota said:

Hey, is this beast worth buying?
Is it usable on a normal day to day scenario some gaming, most of the time web and office things (I saw review on LTT  where it was told that it spins fans at every windows update etc.) Did acer allowed users to build own fan curve? Can it be UV?

Yes, with some caveats. You have to be willing to change fan speeds when switching between gaming and light usage. There is absolutely no way to edit the fan curve that I know of. You can use one of the macro keys to switch from manual fan speed -> auto fan speed. That's what I do now. Though I barely use the thing anymore. Mostly use my 2080Ti desktop, which just works with no kind of tricks needed.

But if you are looking for a potential desktop replacement, then this will do, with some minor hassle. You can UV, but it doesn't help much. I've resorted to disabling CPU turbo entirely now to push fan speeds down as much as possible. Quite a few modern games bottleneck when you do this though, so that's some more hassle having to enable turbo when you play demanding games.

It's a handsome machine though. I like it, even with its issues.

TimoFaust

Ah,

I see you got the one with the 9750h... does that throttle down that much in game? My 9880HK usually stays around 4.3 Ghz.

Hopefully one day PS will have an included fan curve option as well....

TimoFaust

At this point I think about giving up on the "OC by pulling the keyboard out feature" as it is implemented very user unfriendly (and the tucked in turbo is totally useless) and therefore becomes a bad gimmick.

Thinking about going with a simple MSI Afterburner fancurve solution for the graphics card, as that one stays super cool anyway (even when I OC it quite heavily); and throttlestop for the CPU, set up simply with 2 profiles, one silent with decreased clocks (thinking about 4 GHz 1 core to 3.8 GHz all cores at ~  -0.130 mv) and one performant with higer clocks.

Just need to figure out how I can keep the option to change keyboard illumination, thoug, as I do not want to end up with a totally dull keyboard or worse, stuck with that freaking opening lightshow disco effect.

TimoFaust

BTW: Super disappointed with battery wear levels. 9 months in use, 25% battery wear. That is not a good result. Might exchange the battery once it hits about 40% as that would mean I get an hour of battery life out of it -.-

Is there a certain threshold were battery wear when using the laptop normally is counted as defect and can be handled via warranty?

Sehnsucht

TimoFaust said:

Ah,

I see you got the one with the 9750h... does that throttle down that much in game? My 9880HK usually stays around 4.3 Ghz.

Hopefully one day PS will have an included fan curve option as well....

Dunno if you're talking to me or not, but since I have one with a 9750h, I can answer. It doesn't seem to throttle down, no, but it is unusable in auto fan mode anyway, since it's way too loud. Auto mode is unusable no matter what you use it for, since it keeps shutting down the fans and revving them up like a chainsaw 5-10 seconds later usually. This keeps being a source of annoyance. Keep checking for new PS versions, and I've even updated the BIOS several times in the hopes that the auto fan curve would be updated as well. 

TimoFaust said:

At this point I think about giving up on the "OC by pulling the keyboard out feature" as it is implemented very user unfriendly (and the tucked in turbo is totally useless) and therefore becomes a bad gimmick.

Thinking about going with a simple MSI Afterburner fancurve solution for the graphics card, as that one stays super cool anyway (even when I OC it quite heavily); and throttlestop for the CPU, set up simply with 2 profiles, one silent with decreased clocks (thinking about 4 GHz 1 core to 3.8 GHz all cores at ~  -0.130 mv) and one performant with higer clocks.

Just need to figure out how I can keep the option to change keyboard illumination, thoug, as I do not want to end up with a totally dull keyboard or worse, stuck with that freaking opening lightshow disco effect.

Don't much use this myself. I run the laptop with GPU OC disabled and CPU turbo completely disabled most of the time, which keeps it pretty cool even under heavy load and moderate fan speeds (~2000 rpm). Some games which are not well optimized for multi thread require turbo to run smoothly though. It has gotten to the point where I kind of regret buying it, and 90% of the reason is the ***** fan curve. I was going to try making a NBFC profile for it, but gave up after seeing how much work it is. It's no longer my primary gaming machine. I'm considering paying someone to do it, but it'd have to be someone who owns one. And if it doesn't override PS when it is installed, one can no longer adjust the keyboard lighting, like you mentioned, and that's not acceptable either.

That lightshow when booting up is an annoyance for me as well. Makes the thing seem like a kindergarten toy until it's booted up. 

TimoFaust said:

BTW: Super disappointed with battery wear levels. 9 months in use, 25% battery wear. That is not a good result. Might exchange the battery once it hits about 40% as that would mean I get an hour of battery life out of it -.-

Is there a certain threshold were battery wear when using the laptop normally is counted as defect and can be handled via warranty?

Checked mine a month or two after I bought it, and had no noticeable wear. My previous laptop from 2016 has barely had any wear so far (I think max 10%). I'd check with MSI. Oh, and disable CPU turbo with Throttlestop if you want to squeeze more battery life out of it. Adds at least 30 minutes of battery on low load.

Edit: just checked. Mine has had around 15% wear, in less than 6 months. Battery seems to be of very low quality on this machine..

TimoFaust1

Yeah, same here.

I really wonder why ACER releases a high end enthusiast machine and then gimps their software in a way that users want to abandon it's USP.

I really need to figure out how I can edit keyboard lighting without PS, as I do not want that ***** on my machine anymore until Acer finally releases a version with fan control or giving us back the option to edit it more freely.  Had been checking the updates as well, but I feel like the Helios 700 must have not sold well, so Acer simply abandoned finetuning software / Bios for it.

Sehnsucht

TimoFaust1 said:

Yeah, same here.

I really wonder why ACER releases a high end enthusiast machine and then gimps their software in a way that users want to abandon it's USP.

I really need to figure out how I can edit keyboard lighting without PS, as I do not want that ***** on my machine anymore until Acer finally releases a version with fan control or giving us back the option to edit it more freely.  Had been checking the updates as well, but I feel like the Helios 700 must have not sold well, so Acer simply abandoned finetuning software / Bios for it.

I will most likely never again purchase a laptop from Acer. I was very happy with my MSI laptop I had previously, so I'll probably go for that again next time (assuming it has a manually adjustable fan curve - although I never messed with it on the MSI laptop - was perfect out of the box).

I'd actually be content if I could just disable the auto fan shut off feature. Did they even test the laptop at idle? Because no matter how cool the ambient temperature is, or if the keyboard is slid out - it will ALWAYS rev up the fans very loudly at some point, when the machine is 100% idle, and go on an infinite loop of shutting down fans and revving them up again. It even does this with cool boost on, and cpu turbo off. If somebody knows of a way to force fans to stay on, I'd love to hear about it. That way, I could actually use the auto fan mode for doing light stuff, and custom fan speed for gaming. Thankfully I have like 4 laptops at home that I can use, and 2 desktops, so I never have to use the Helios for anything other than gaming. 

I don't think the Helios 700 sold very well. It's hard to find people who actually own one, even on these forums. I think it's just too bulky and monstrous for most people. And considering its glaring issues, one would think that owners would be very vocal about it online. Well, at least it seems pretty solidly built. Mine has gotten some considerable abuse (particularly the sliding mechanism), and everything is still fine.

lisaschra

Many useful info, thank a lot!


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