Can a Predator Helios 300 PH315–52 overheat because of the storage HDD?

My predator 300 PH315–52 has been plagued with overheating problems since I upgraded to windows 11. The laptop repair shop now tells me that the machine is overheating because of the storage HDD. They’re basically saying that once they remove the storage HDD, which is the D: (the SSD is the C: ), the overheating goes away. Has anyone ever heard of a storage HDD causing this model to to overheat?

It can reach 90°C/ 194F temperatures upon startup and then fluctuate. These problems started when I was gaming after I upgraded to windows 11 and then the temperature kept spiking even if I was not gaming and was just doing menial tasks like word processing. The overheating is really bad when plugged in, but is much less severe on battery.

I don’t trust this diagnosis from the repair shop (they are Acer’s authorized dealers by the way) because they initially told me the overheating was caused by the GPU being incompatible with windows 11 and that I should downgrade to windows 10. So they downgraded the machine and told me that the overheating persists and then they had someone else look at it and that person says the storage HDD is causing the computer to overheat.

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Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/700912/can-a-predator-helios-300-ph315-52-overheat-because-of-the-storage-hdd

To come to that conclusion the technician may have checked the HDD temps with HWINFO, some high-performance hard drives such as WD Black series run hotter than a standard hard drive, and sometimes cooling may be required, it is a good idea anyway to replace the "spinner" with a cool running 2.5" Sata-3 Samsung 870 Evo Plus SSD (1TB $85). Tweak Power Options, reduce the Max. Processor Power State to 95% for both adapter and battery and get a powerful cooling pad will help overheating.

Veor

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1260721#Comment_1260721

But this HDD did not have this problem when I first bought the laptop. if it’s a high-performance HDD, wouldn’t it have started overheating right from the start? Also it’s just the storage HDD. When is it running? I only use this to store my media files that I rarely access. I backed up all my data to this HDD before I sent it to the repair shop. It was accessible and functioning well as far as I know but the repair shop now tells me it’s functioning only at 70% capacity and that it is the root cause of the laptop’s overheating problem. I asked them to back up my files in the HDD and they said they had trouble connecting it to whatever. And yesterday they told me they started backing up and now it’s been about a day and they tell me that it’s backed up only 50%. I don’t understand what’s going on. The techie people I’ve spoken to tell me that they’ve never heard of a storage HDD causing a laptop to overheat.

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1260724#Comment_1260724

Mechanical HDD deteriorate much faster than Sata SSDs, I busted my 2020 a515-54G HDD in only 3 years. That depends on your Power Plan settings and Windows version, most HDDs keep spinning even when not accessed, to reduce the startup time. Yes, HDDs can overheat in hot laptops, not in PCs with far more space and large cooling fans.

Veor

I JUST remembered that the repair guy told me he disabled the HDD when he was trying to roll back Windows. But the laptop still kept getting the BSOD crashes. If the HDD is disconnected can it still overheat and cause the computer to crash? I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I think I might have to sue these people.

AnhEZ28

@Veor

The HDD should not be related to overheating issues. You can go to another PC repair shop and ask them for heatsink/fans cleaning and replace the thermal paste.

Veor

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1260768#Comment_1260768

This repair shop is Acer’s authorized local dealer and I have a service warranty with them (meaning I don’t have to pay for labor). But if they don’t fix the issue I will probably have to take it somewhere else.

AnhEZ28

@Veor

The PH315-52 model is around 4 years old so it should be get cleanned. Ask them if they can clean the laptop for you.

Veor

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1260855#Comment_1260855

Of course the fans were cleaned. Thermal paste was replaced last month. That’s like the first thing people check when a computer overheats. This laptop has been serviced several times since the overheating problem started. When they serviced the laptop in December, they told me to downgrade windows because the heating problem persists. But now they tell me that the HDD is the problem.