Laptop crashes when OC-ing. (ACER NItro AN515-41)

D1stRU3T0R
D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
edited January 2019 in Nitro Gaming
So I have an ACER NItro AN515-41, and when i'M overclocking the GPU, no matter how much or what, it's crashing MOSTLY when it's idle, BUT never crash when in games. So if i'm playing 5 hours, nothing happen, but when i play 2 hours, go out, and let my laptop idle for 1-2 min, it's crashing. I tried overclocking with powrt limit increased, I tried whiout touching power limit increase (so at 0%) and problem still happening. Maybe a BIOS problem, someone has a fix for it, or who is developing bioses for these laptops ? I would also request some CPU overclock, i found a very bad way to undervolt, so It can throttle less but still. Also, i can see VERY bad performances in games. Like 80FPS mm with Excavator CPU ? WHat is this ?
 

Answers

  • tobimaru
    tobimaru Member Posts: 315 Skilled Practitioner WiFi Icon
    The internet often talks of stress testing and benchmarking after and overclock but as you've discovered you can also affect the other side of the spectrum while overclocking. Coming out of sleep mode, waking from idle, or just sitting at desktop can sometimes drop power levels to their most energy efficient. IF you've applied an undervolt you may be stable at 10-100% utilization. However, the 0-9% on the low end where you idle could be unstable (ie; not enough voltage). This is often the most difficult area to pinpoint in terms of stability, and changes of -0.005v could make the difference.

    This is how I ended up at -0.115v undervolt personally. Try a slightly less aggressive undervolt and see if you still experience these low power level crashes.

  • D1stRU3T0R
    D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
    edited January 2019
    tobimaru said:
    The internet often talks of stress testing and benchmarking after and overclock but as you've discovered you can also affect the other side of the spectrum while overclocking. Coming out of sleep mode, waking from idle, or just sitting at desktop can sometimes drop power levels to their most energy efficient. IF you've applied an undervolt you may be stable at 10-100% utilization. However, the 0-9% on the low end where you idle could be unstable (ie; not enough voltage). This is often the most difficult area to pinpoint in terms of stability, and changes of -0.005v could make the difference.

    This is how I ended up at -0.115v undervolt personally. Try a slightly less aggressive undervolt and see if you still experience these low power level crashes.
    THe problem is the GPU, not the CPU. Should I UV the GPU too ? I didn't touched the voltage on GPU, just the power limit. 
  • D1stRU3T0R
    D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
    so noone knows why my laptop crashes when I OC the gpu, no matter what and how ?
  • ven98
    ven98 ACE Posts: 4,073 Pathfinder
    Usually voltage and power limit are locked on laptops, so I don't know how are you able to adjust the PL. I suspect vBIOS is what is causing the problem.
    Always post the following characterisitcs of the device:
    -Model number
    -Part number(not required, but helpful)
    -CPU
    -GPU
    -Operating system

    Helios 300 and Nitro 5 users DO NOT update the BIOS to version 1.22 if you don't want the keyboard's backlight to turn off after 30 seconds even when the device is plugged in.


    Hit 'Like' if you find the answer helpful!   
    Click on 'Yes' if the comment answers your question!

  • D1stRU3T0R
    D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
    ven98 said:
    Usually voltage and power limit are locked on laptops, so I don't know how are you able to adjust the PL. I suspect vBIOS is what is causing the problem.
    Yea, it's locked, both on CPU and GPU, but with some hacks you can enable Wattman and also the turbo states of the CPU. I just want to unlock the TDP limit, bcs that's rly low, 35W vs 45W (designed).

    Also, does someone know when will the Nitro 5 41 get a new BIOS ? It didn't even got spektre/meldown patch afaik.
  • D1stRU3T0R
    D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
    If anyone is still reading this, just update your drivers, with old drivers the solution was to disable ULPS, and nowadays I can easly run 1460MHz on core and 1625MHz on memory.
  • sri369
    sri369 ACE Posts: 2,850 Pathfinder
    D1stRU3T0R said:
    So I have an ACER NItro AN515-41, and when i'M overclocking the GPU, no matter how much or what, it's crashing MOSTLY when it's idle, BUT never crash when in games. So if i'm playing 5 hours, nothing happen, but when i play 2 hours, go out, and let my laptop idle for 1-2 min, it's crashing. I tried overclocking with powrt limit increased, I tried whiout touching power limit increase (so at 0%) and problem still happening. Maybe a BIOS problem, someone has a fix for it, or who is developing bioses for these laptops ? I would also request some CPU overclock, i found a very bad way to undervolt, so It can throttle less but still. Also, i can see VERY bad performances in games. Like 80FPS mm with Excavator CPU ? WHat is this ?

    I used to do this, until like Windows 10 19H2 or 19H1 when any amount of OC on GPU causes it to crash randomly.
    Try the below threads and see if any help:
    https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/627441/guide-thermal-throttling-on-nitro-7-model-an715-51-mitigation
    https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/565487/solution-windows-10-v1809-reducing-temps-g3-572

    These two deal with optimizing windows power plans and CPU instead of OCing the GPU.

    Let me know if you need any help - ever since windows 10 killed OCing GPU, I moved my focus towards CPU optimization and it really helped me. Also helps to have a well optimized windows system.
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  • D1stRU3T0R
    D1stRU3T0R Member Posts: 15 Troubleshooter
    sri369 said:
    D1stRU3T0R said:
    So I have an ACER NItro AN515-41, and when i'M overclocking the GPU, no matter how much or what, it's crashing MOSTLY when it's idle, BUT never crash when in games. So if i'm playing 5 hours, nothing happen, but when i play 2 hours, go out, and let my laptop idle for 1-2 min, it's crashing. I tried overclocking with powrt limit increased, I tried whiout touching power limit increase (so at 0%) and problem still happening. Maybe a BIOS problem, someone has a fix for it, or who is developing bioses for these laptops ? I would also request some CPU overclock, i found a very bad way to undervolt, so It can throttle less but still. Also, i can see VERY bad performances in games. Like 80FPS mm with Excavator CPU ? WHat is this ?

    I used to do this, until like Windows 10 19H2 or 19H1 when any amount of OC on GPU causes it to crash randomly.
    Try the below threads and see if any help:
    https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/627441/guide-thermal-throttling-on-nitro-7-model-an715-51-mitigation
    https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/565487/solution-windows-10-v1809-reducing-temps-g3-572

    These two deal with optimizing windows power plans and CPU instead of OCing the GPU.

    Let me know if you need any help - ever since windows 10 killed OCing GPU, I moved my focus towards CPU optimization and it really helped me. Also helps to have a well optimized windows system.
    Hey. 

    I just replied before your comment about the issue. My fix was to update (even tho everything was already updated) literally everything, and the problems went away slowly with newer Windows/AMD drivers. For anyone still having these problems, I recommend just updating the OS and drivers, and if things still happen, disable ULPS, but it shouldn't crash nowadays even with that enabled.

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