Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53-75N8 / 2060) - Is this normal or expected?

Hello! I recently purchased the Helios 300 PH315-53-75N8, with i7-10750H and RTX 2060, and had no issues until today.
Today I tried a few games, such as Dead By Daylight, Resident Evil 2 remake and Dark Souls 3.
When playing those games, my computer beeped, and the energy leds started blinking. Framerate drops and the battery starts being consumed, even while plugged.
Some games when closed return the computer to normal, others just keep it until I unplug and plug the cable again.

I did some cpu undervolting (even though I shouldn't have to reach this level of tinkering on an expensive out-of-the-box product to make it work). It manages to make Dark Souls 3 completely playable at 60fps for all of my testing, on Max settings. But other games still present the issue.

I just want to understand if this is normal and expected, or if I have a clearly faulty unit. Thanks a lot for the answers!

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Leostat

Blinking is a tad odd, did it show as running solely on battery?

It can be normal for the laptop to dip into its battery , but it should discharge pretty slowly and still show as plugged in

How hot was the AC adapter? I'm wondering if the over heat protection kicked in

xapim

mattcaetano if your temps are fine (cpu 80/85ish dgpu 70/75 max) most times its normal for the adapter to use the battery on more intensive work thats the battery main purpose and thats the way it was designed for to provide more power to the adapter whne thsi one cant provide enough to the cpu/dgpu but check your battery wear (should be fine as it brand new but sometimes might even be faulty) with hwinfo/batterybar pro and if you can check your adapter with a voltmeter to find out if its outputting the correct voltage but yeah its normal for the adapter to use the battery especially if you crank up everything to the max on newer demanding games also the other optin you have if you feel that the unit is faulty contact acer support and send it back to get it diagnosed as u said you have undervolted it but have u optimized windows properly as you may still suffering from either thermal throttling or power throttling if its thermal you might need to repaste it with kryonaut or similar if youre able to without voiding your warranty otherwise only acer can repaste it with stock paste either way good luck

mattcaetano

Leostat said:

Blinking is a tad odd, did it show as running solely on battery?

It can be normal for the laptop to dip into its battery , but it should discharge pretty slowly and still show as plugged in

How hot was the AC adapter? I'm wondering if the over heat protection kicked in

Hello, thanks for the reply! Yes, it blinks both leds, the charging and power-on ones, and on Windows it explicitly shows as if only on battery.
I will check temps on both cpu and gpu, and the ac adapter while playing. Will try on a couple other outlets as well to see if it changes.
An interesting piece of info: if I try to turn on the Turbo cooler (either by button or PredatorSense), it almost instantly pushes back to this state (it smells a lot like energy issues)

xapim said:

mattcaetano if your temps are fine (cpu 80/85ish dgpu 70/75 max) most times its normal for the adapter to use the battery on more intensive work thats the battery main purpose and thats the way it was designed for to provide more power to the adapter whne thsi one cant provide enough to the cpu/dgpu but check your battery wear (should be fine as it brand new but sometimes might even be faulty) with hwinfo/batterybar pro and if you can check your adapter with a voltmeter to find out if its outputting the correct voltage but yeah its normal for the adapter to use the battery especially if you crank up everything to the max on newer demanding games also the other optin you have if you feel that the unit is faulty contact acer support and send it back to get it diagnosed as u said you have undervolted it but have u optimized windows properly as you may still suffering from either thermal throttling or power throttling if its thermal you might need to repaste it with kryonaut or similar if youre able to without voiding your warranty otherwise only acer can repaste it with stock paste either way good luck

Thanks for the reply! Temps are probably fine, but I haven't checked them on-screen, will try now with Afterburner.
The problem is not even consuming from the battery, but it really beeps the computer as if it is not plugged anymore.
Checked battery wear and sits at 0.7% (never did the reset procedure though). Will check voltage as well.
Windows is a clean install, with newest bios and drivers. I changed all settings to try and allow maximum performance, but what is mostly weird is the fact that the computer beeps into battery-mode even when plugged (consuming battery is fine, but showing I am not plugged, blinking leds is not)

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