Hi everyone! Here’s my solution to a persistent BSOD and thermal issue on the Acer Predator Helios Neo PHN16-72 (Intel Core i9-14900HX).
❗Symptoms:
- Random CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT BSOD;
- System freezes when launching Adobe Premiere Pro / After Effects or under CPU load;
- CPU temp reached 80+°C even when idle;
- Second NVMe SSD (Lexar NM800 PRO) randomly disappeared from BIOS and Windows:
→ turns out it was overheating — SSD triggered thermal protection and went offline; - Reinstalling Windows didn’t help.
✅ What worked:
- Full manual reinstall of all critical drivers via Driver Easy Pro;
- Snappy Driver Installer Origin didn’t help, even with the full offline database;
- Disabling virtualization (Hyper-V, VT-x, VT-d) only mitigated symptoms;
- BSOD disappeared after updating these drivers:
🔧 Drivers that caused the crashes:
- Intel(R) Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework (DPTF) —
dtt_sw.inf; - Intel GNA (Gaussian & Neural Accelerator) —
gna.inf; - **Intel HID Event Filter (ACPI\INTC1070)`;
- **Intel Chipset INF — RaptorLakeSystem.inf`;
💡 After the fix:
- No more BSOD, even with full virtualization features enabled in BIOS;
- CPU temps dropped to ~50 °C, even under load;
- NVMe SSD no longer disappears, works flawlessly;
- Adobe apps work without any freezing;
- Restore point and full driver backup saved (
Export-WindowsDriver).
📢 Message to Acer:
Please pay closer attention to BIOS and driver updates for PHN16-72 and similar newer Predator models.
Users shouldn’t be forced to debug system-level issues on high-end laptops.
Also — overheating issues that cause NVMe drives to shut down deserve urgent attention.
