Predator Helios 300, Battery stops charging while playing games.

D0WNL1NK

Hi,

I have owned a PH315-52 (Core i5, 9th Gen, GTX 1660Ti, 8GB RAM, 6GB Graphics), since December last year. Yesterday, while playing Dishonored 2 (a videogame), the battery suddenly stopped charging. When I switched off the game, the battery still didn't start charging. But when I switched the AC Supply, Off and On again, it started charging. I have tried gaming at 100% Battery and still, the charger automatically disconnects. I have also tried gaming at below 40% and still, the laptop runs on battery power only. I have BIOS 1.10 installed in my PC and the latest Windows Version (2004). I rolled it back to 1905, still no change. 
I have tried a lot of methods previously mentioned in a variety of threads:

1) Uninstalling and reinstalling the Windows Battery Drivers
2) Resetting the battery
3) Rolling back to a previous Windows version

The product is authentic and I am using a 180 Watt Adapter, which came with the box. The battery health is 'Good' when checked on Acer Care, and battery life is decent at 4+ hrs, for everyday use. Also, the AC Adapter must not be faulty as it is normally charging the laptop during everyday work. Overheating is not an issue as the temperature never crosses 75 Degrees while Gaming. I also make it a point to game in an air-conditioned room for better cooling.
The problem is, I bought this because it is a 'GAMING' Laptop. If I can't play games on this, what is the point?
I've seen almost all threads on this topic for a variety of laptop brands including Acer, and some brands like MSI have some software, which causes this problem, but I have found NO solution whatsoever for any Acer product. It has not been even a year and problems are already cropping up. Immediate help would be greatly beneficial, for a lot of my fellow Predator Owners.

D0WNL1NK

Update: The above-mentioned problem doesn't occur for light (Dave Mirra's BMX) or moderately heavy (My Friend Pedro, 2019) games. I've also downgraded to a previous version of the Nvidia driver, still no change for heavy games like Dishonored 2 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

xapim

D0WNL1NK on performance mode when the adapter its being used to full on heavy gaming/for long periods of time it will not recharge the battery unless the battery discharges under 40% at this point you will notice as you will loose all performance as the adapter cannot do both you need to stop and let it recharge the battery also never start any games without the battery full charged the battery main purpose its to aid the adapter when this one cannot provide enough power to the cpu/gpu apart from that you should only use it on battery on emergency or really light works and make sure to calibrate your battery once every 3/6 months depending on the usage completely discharge and let i recharge to full repeat the process 3 times good luck

Also battery health its not checked on acer care center neither windows they are useless care center its only to see you model number serial and snid nothing else its completely useless for anything else check your battery wear with either hwinfo  or battery bar pro if under 20% consider replacing it as its faulty cells are dying will not hold the designed capacity anymore also i assume you have your windows properly optimised if no do so and even undervolt it further with TS check here

D0WNL1NK

 xapim said:

"D0WNL1NK on performance mode when the adapter its being used to full on heavy gaming/for long periods of time it will not recharge the battery unless the battery discharges under 40% at this point you will notice as you will loose all performance as the adapter cannot do both you need to stop and let it recharge the battery"

Hi! Thanks for your reply! The thing is, I've started with 100% battery and the AC Adapter connected, still the moment the game boots up, the charging light switches off, there is a "beep" and charging stops. I've also continued playing till the battery drops below 40%, after which neither the battery starts charging, nor there is an improvement in the gaming performance.

I've already gone through 3 complete charge cycles, for recalibration, as you mentioned. Still no use .

"Also battery health its not checked on acer care center neither windows they are useless care center its only to see you model number serial and snid nothing else its completely useless for anything else check your battery wear with either hwinfo  or battery bar pro if under 20% consider replacing it as its faulty cells are dying will not hold the designed capacity anymore also i assume you have your windows properly optimised if no do so and even undervolt it further with TS check here"

On HWinfo my battery wear is being showed equal to 0%.

xapim

D0WNL1NK uninstall the acpi driver then perform a battery powerdrain (2019 models and up do not have the battery pinhole use the power button) and reset bios to default settings let the acpi driver reinstall if the issue persists the last option available before send it to warranty would be stock recovery clean install to completely rule out any software issues but backup whatever you need first ALT+F10 on boot and delete everything option worst case scenario would be a hardware issue either way good luck

Commodore_1995#

It probably won't solve the problem. However, what happens when you disable batteryboost in the geforce experience and the battery savings in windows settings?

D0WNL1NK

egydiocoelho said:

It probably won't solve the problem. However, what happens when you disable batteryboost in the geforce experience and the battery savings in windows settings?

Hi! Thanks for your answer. Well, I disabled both of them and found that the charger still got disconnected, on booting up heavy games like Dishonored 2 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, although now, the performance is a bit better, which is kind of obvious. Another thing that I've noticed is that on HWinfo, the performance limit of my GPU hits 100% exactly when my charger gets disconnected in-game. On Afterburner, I found that the GPU Powerlimit and Usage Limit hit 1 almost simultaneously and almost exactly when the charger got disconnected. I'm feeling super scared as I'm not sure what to do. Any other time would've been okay for me to just send this laptop to a service centre, but in these times of COVID, everything has changed😔.

Commodore_1995#

Can you provide the exact model of the laptop? Example an515-51-75kz. Also, can you check battery wear with hwinfo64?

D0WNL1NK

egydiocoelho said:

Can you provide the exact model of the laptop? Example an515-51-75kz. Also, can you check battery wear with hwinfo64?

Yeah sure! It is PH315-52-58AV. HWiNFO64 Shows battery wear equal to 0.0% (Screenshot here:). Thanks a lot!

xapim

D0WNL1NK your battery its completely fine the battery its not supposed to charge when your gaming the adapter cant provide enough power to do both so you either game or let the battery charge to full you cant do both at the same time if your issue persists i suggest u to contact acer support and send it to get it diagnosed 

D0WNL1NK

xapim said:

D0WNL1NK your battery its completely fine the battery its not supposed to charge when your gaming the adapter cant provide enough power to do both so you either game or let the battery charge to full you cant do both at the same time

Yes I understand that. I don't care if the battery charges or discharges. All I'm saying is that the orange light on the side, which indicates that the AC Adaptor is connected, turns off (neither Blue nor Orange, just Off), while playing a game. To provide sufficient power, the adapter can direct all its power to the GPU and CPU and not the battery, but it should NOT get disconnected altogether in my opinion.

xapim

D0WNL1NK best case scenario its just your adapter thats faulty worst case its the mobo itself either way you should really send it to get it checked  do not wait more time the sooner the better as its not normal

D0WNL1NK

xapim said:

D0WNL1NK best case scenario its just your adapter thats faulty worst case its the mobo itself either way you should really send it to get it checked  do not wait more time the sooner the better as its not normal

Yes I would've done it asap, if COVID hadn't happened smh. Also, the Adapter isn't faulty as the supplied voltage is +- 0.1 V of the rated value. Thanks anyway.

D0WNL1NK

xapim said:

D0WNL1NK best case scenario its just your adapter thats faulty worst case its the mobo itself either way you should really send it to get it checked  do not wait more time the sooner the better as its not normal

Update: I got my laptop serviced, and it turns out that the AC Adapter was faulty. I'll test it for a few more weeks before coming to a conclusion. Thanks!

D0WNL1NK

 xapim said:

"D0WNL1NK on performance mode when the adapter its being used to full on heavy gaming/for long periods of time it will not recharge the battery unless the battery discharges under 40% at this point you will notice as you will loose all performance as the adapter cannot do both you need to stop and let it recharge the battery"

Hi! Thanks for your reply! The thing is, I've started with 100% battery and the AC Adapter connected, still the moment the game boots up, the charging light switches off, there is a "beep" and charging stops. I've also continued playing till the battery drops below 40%, after which neither the battery starts charging, nor there is an improvement in the gaming performance.

I've already gone through 3 complete charge cycles, for recalibration, as you mentioned. Still no use .

"Also battery health its not checked on acer care center neither windows they are useless care center its only to see you model number serial and snid nothing else its completely useless for anything else check your battery wear with either hwinfo  or battery bar pro if under 20% consider replacing it as its faulty cells are dying will not hold the designed capacity anymore also i assume you have your windows properly optimised if no do so and even undervolt it further with TS check here"

On HWinfo my battery wear is being showed equal to 0%. As I said this is a relatively new laptop, around 7 months of use, and hardly one month of hardcore gaming.

Any other help would be greatly appreciated!

xapim

D0WNL1NK thats very strange i would really insist with acer support to check it properly as your issues still persist do not let them convince you theres nothing wrong because there certainly is might even be a hardware issue in the worst case scenario

Vladimir02

Do you still have the problem? Because im thinking about buying it but im having second thoughts cus from what i read many people also have this problem

D0WNL1NK

Vladimir02 said:

Do you still have the problem? Because im thinking about buying it but im having second thoughts cus from what i read many people also have this problem

No. I contacted Acer and they replaced my AC Adapter. No problems since then, touchwood😇.

Vladimir02

So there's no problem with the laptop itself then? Only AC adapter? And also what do you think about the laptop do you recommend it?

D0WNL1NK

Vladimir02 said:

So there's no problem with the laptop itself then? Only AC adapter? And also what do you think about the laptop do you recommend it?

No problem with the laptop . I would've absolutely recommended it a few months back, but Predator 2020 is here already and it is awesome! A lot of new features including the 4d aeroblade fans (for better cooling). Plus, since the 3000 series graphics have already been declared by NVidia, although there's not much news regarding their portable versions, you can still wait for a while before you take a decision. 

MartyLz

D0WNL1NK said:

Vladimir02 said:

Do you still have the problem? Because im thinking about buying it but im having second thoughts cus from what i read many people also have this problem

No. I contacted Acer and they replaced my AC Adapter. No problems since then, touchwood😇.

I have the same issue, how was the proccess about replacing the AC adapter. Did you pay?