Acer Predator Helios 300, GTX 1050 tI, I7 7700 HQ - Mother Board got burned !!!!

AnirudhRS

Hello People !!!
This is a long question and i thank everyone who goes through this post for their patience.

I got this laptop about 2 years earlier and was having a good time, but there were some occasional problems like laptop shutting down, if laptop is shaked even a little (used more like  desktop after that incident.). All the games worked well. Some games like AC origins made the cpu sweat a lot, many times reaching temperature over 96 deg Celsius but from the forum, i had some tips regarding under-volting (didn't always help tho !!) and some info regarding, how the cpu temp will mostly be over 85 C during gaming (GPU temp never reached over 80 C btw !).

The above lines were to give a description about the general functionality of my lap. During the past week, while i was playing Far Cry 5 and within a minute's notice i saw the screen going off with some burning (not exactly burning !!) smell coming out from exhaust vent. Due to COVID 19, complete lockdown is to be followed till the end of this month in our region (Chennai, TN). So, i have surrendered the laptop to the service centre accepting to pay full money for the motherboard replacement without my lappy for next 2 weeks. While i am not here to debate about warranty not covering the mother board cost, i want to have some explanation regarding this "motherboard frying" incident and possibly avoid this incident in the future!!

There are some questions from my end,
1. Out of all the games i played, FC 5 was the toughest cookie despite the hardware is more than sufficient to run the game in 1080p. The game stuttered like a lot, suggestions were to increase the page file memory and use the command "-disablepagefilecheck". But stuttering remained and cpu got throttled a lot. Will this be a reason for the motherboard issue?
2. I also sensed the battery charger (the heavy body) getting hot within 2 hours of charging period. I felt this thing to be quite unusual as during the initial time of use, i didn't have this problem. is it a problem related to battery and cable. If so, how to test it?
3. Before i got this laptop, i had a dell laptop with me and the battery cable got burned when the lap was charging. So, may be my power outlet gives off excess current? But, shouldn't the battery cable burn first this time before the motherboard getting burnt ?  If so, how to check whether there is some voltage fluctuation how to make sure it won't happen again. Other electric equipment seems to be working fine tho !!

If anyone is able to share some similar incidents with your preventive measures, it's welcome too. Now, i am just paranoid sniffing each power socket connected to some electrical equipment ! Thanks for your time !

xapim

AnirudhRS well regarding burned mobos out of warranty the best its alwasy to get a new unit because the price of a donor replacement mobo its really not worth it and what everyone should do its to optimize windows properly then undervolt it i suggest repaste it with kryonaut or similar for those who can without voiding the warranty or already out spread method only a thin layer covering both diodes its enough clean the fans and exit airflow poperly and alwasy make sure the back its lifted 2/3 inches at all times for a proper airflow these are the steps to maintain any gaming laptop no matter what manufacturer even for normal laptops its the same exact steps to maintain them.

Regarding the adapter if they arent faulty they will always output the correct voltage/wattage to the device the only way to know exactly its with a voltmeter also check you battery wear percentage with hwinfo or battery bar pro if more than 20% consider replacing the cells are dying will not accept the designed capacity anymore ad will end up by not accepting anything in the end also never game on battery neither high demanding works and make sure its always 100% charged before start any game only use it on battery in emergency and really light works the battery was not designed for that purpose on gaming laptops.

Wish u good luck with the replacement mobo