Information needed for Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-51 ram and ssd upgrade

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

Can any1 help me please
I want to buy Samsung evo 970 250GB SSD, is it compatible with my laptop? If no then is WD a good choice as my internal HDD is also WD blue 1TB

Deejay_tech · October 2018

yes. samsung 970 evo is supported. i am using it as my boot drive.

also get a 8gb ddr4 2666mhz ram stick. aliexpress has a crucial one for ₹7500.

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

Deejay_tech said:

yes. samsung 970 evo is supported. i am using it as my boot drive.

also get a 8gb ddr4 2666mhz ram stick. aliexpress has a crucial one for ₹7500.

Thank you for the help but my current ssd is m.2 so does the slot support both m.2 and nvme???
And regarding ram upgrade can I go to any IT shop and ask them to find a compatible ram with laptop?? Or I need to go to acer service center only??
One last thing to add my device is under warranty so I don't want any problems on it...

xapim · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

Mine is PH315-51
I have just validated using CPU-Z, check it out...

I would change the graphics to use the nvidia only in the nvidia settings

Deejay_tech · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

show previous quotes

Deejay_tech said:

yes. samsung 970 evo is supported. i am using it as my boot drive.

also get a 8gb ddr4 2666mhz ram stick. aliexpress has a crucial one for ₹7500.

Thank you for the help but my current ssd is m.2 so does the slot support both m.2 and nvme???
And regarding ram upgrade can I go to any IT shop and ask them to find a compatible ram with laptop?? Or I need to go to acer service center only??
One last thing to add my device is under warranty so I don't want any problems on it...

yes, nvme ssd is supported.

re: ram, just get a good brand 8gb 2666mhz speed ram. check the speed of 2666mhz, most of the shops here have 2400mhz speed rams.

if you put a 2400mhz ram , then both of your ram memory stick will work at slower 2400mhz speed.

adding ram will not void your warranty.

PredatorHelios500 · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:
Here is the memory tab of CPU-Z for your reference
[snipped screenshot]

Thank you for this update. Your RAM does seem to be running at 2666MHz! That's good for you.

I have a follow-up question. On my machine, I believe it was running at 2666MHz too until the first time I used the Faster and Turbo overclockings in Predator Sense; thereafter the RAM has always been reporting 2400MHz and there's no way to change it back without hacking the BIOS. Have you used Predator Sense to overclock the machine with Faster or Turbo? Acer may be shipping some machines with 2666MHz even though they seem to intend to only have 2400MHz machines. Or maybe it's some bug in Predator Sense.

xapim · October 2018

As far as i know the ram won't run at 2666 even if it is, my hyperx won't run either the mobo technically supports it but wont run at that speed the clock stays at 1333mhz but that doesn't mean you won't notice any speed changes because you will

PredatorHelios500 · October 2018

xapim said:

As far as i know the ram won't run at 2666 even if it is, my hyperx won't run either the mobo technically supports it but wont run at that speed the clock stays at 1333mhz but that doesn't mean you won't notice any speed changes because you will

I believe your RAM is actually running at 2666MHz. The "DRAM frequency" reported by CPU-Z is the important quantity for determining the actual configured speed of your RAM. It is saying your DRAM frequency is 1329.8MHz. As these are SODIMMs (small outline dual inline memory modules), you must double the DRAM frequency to get the configured speed: (1329.8 MHz) x 2 = 2659.6 MHz or roughly 2666MHz.

Did you use Predator Sense's overclocking as I was writing about? Because it strongly appears that my machine was originally at 2666MHz until I did and now it is stuck at 2400MHz. This is a puzzle I've been trying to figure out.

As for the difference between 2400MHz and 2666MHz, for most people the difference will not be as important as it might look. You should not expect an 8% real life speed-up for most tasks. For most users, including gamers, the I/O bottleneck is not the RAM clock speed. In gaming, for instance, loading data from disk is a bottleneck and the heavy duty calculations are done on the GPU and its RAM, not the CPU's. The RAM speed is most important for quickly shuffling data in and out of memory during heavy calculations, so a person running programs that tend to peg the CPU near 100% might chop a bit off of run time. But for normal applications like web browsing and so forth this will not be obvious.

H500 Owner

xapim · October 2018

The 8gb that came in my predator before i upgraded to hyperx it's also a kingston 2666 oem

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

As per me PredatorHelios500 said:

show previous quotes

xapim said:

As far as i know the ram won't run at 2666 even if it is, my hyperx won't run either the mobo technically supports it but wont run at that speed the clock stays at 1333mhz but that doesn't mean you won't notice any speed changes because you will

I believe your RAM is actually running at 2666MHz. The "DRAM frequency" reported by CPU-Z is the important quantity for determining the actual configured speed of your RAM. It is saying your DRAM frequency is 1329.8MHz. As these are SODIMMs (small outline dual inline memory modules), you must double the DRAM frequency to get the configured speed: (1329.8 MHz) x 2 = 2659.6 MHz or roughly 2666MHz.

Did you use Predator Sense's overclocking as I was writing about? Because it strongly appears that my machine was originally at 2666MHz until I did and now it is stuck at 2400MHz. This is a puzzle I've been trying to figure out.

As for the difference between 2400MHz and 2666MHz, for most people the difference will not be as important as it might look. You should not expect an 8% real life speed-up for most tasks. For most users, including gamers, the I/O bottleneck is not the RAM clock speed. In gaming, for instance, loading data from disk is a bottleneck and the heavy duty calculations are done on the GPU and its RAM, not the CPU's. The RAM speed is most important for quickly shuffling data in and out of memory during heavy calculations, so a person running programs that tend to peg the CPU near 100% might chop a bit off of run time. But for normal applications like web browsing and so forth this will not be obvious.

H500 Owner

As per my observations I don't think you can clock ram using predator sense, only GPU and CPU fan speed can be clocked

xapim · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

As per me PredatorHelios500 said:
show previous quotes

xapim said:

As far as i know the ram won't run at 2666 even if it is, my hyperx won't run either the mobo technically supports it but wont run at that speed the clock stays at 1333mhz but that doesn't mean you won't notice any speed changes because you will

I believe your RAM is actually running at 2666MHz. The "DRAM frequency" reported by CPU-Z is the important quantity for determining the actual configured speed of your RAM. It is saying your DRAM frequency is 1329.8MHz. As these are SODIMMs (small outline dual inline memory modules), you must double the DRAM frequency to get the configured speed: (1329.8 MHz) x 2 = 2659.6 MHz or roughly 2666MHz.

Did you use Predator Sense's overclocking as I was writing about? Because it strongly appears that my machine was originally at 2666MHz until I did and now it is stuck at 2400MHz. This is a puzzle I've been trying to figure out.

As for the difference between 2400MHz and 2666MHz, for most people the difference will not be as important as it might look. You should not expect an 8% real life speed-up for most tasks. For most users, including gamers, the I/O bottleneck is not the RAM clock speed. In gaming, for instance, loading data from disk is a bottleneck and the heavy duty calculations are done on the GPU and its RAM, not the CPU's. The RAM speed is most important for quickly shuffling data in and out of memory during heavy calculations, so a person running programs that tend to peg the CPU near 100% might chop a bit off of run time. But for normal applications like web browsing and so forth this will not be obvious.

H500 Owner

As per my observations I don't think you can clock ram using predator sense, only GPU and CPU fan speed can be clocked

He's referring to the ram clock speeds not ram overclock

PredatorHelios500 · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

As per my observations I don't think you can clock ram using predator sense, only GPU and CPU fan speed can be clocked

You can't "clock the RAM"; there's no option in Predator Sense for the user to do that. Yet somehow using the CPU and GPU overclocking feature in Predator Sense seems to have changed the configured clock speed for the RAM in my laptop from 2666MHz to 2400MHz. And there's no way to get it back!

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

Can I buy the Samsung 970 EVO M.2 250GB SSD as its cheap and very good stick? Is it compatible with my predator? And plz tell me which types of SSD are compatible (updated and cheap like under ₹10000 or $140) for my laptop.
Regarding ram can I buy any ram with 2666mhz because I'm not able to find and buy my existing ram (its like rare ram not able to find it, even the shopkeeper says is it imported??? Then I can't say anything further and move on to the next shop) ? Also my existing ram is cl19 so will cl15 work with this.
Thank you

xapim · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

Can I buy the Samsung 970 EVO M.2 250GB SSD as its cheap and very good stick? Is it compatible with my predator? And plz tell me which types of SSD are compatible (updated and cheap like under ₹10000 or $140) for my laptop.
Regarding ram can I buy any ram with 2666mhz because I'm not able to find and buy my existing ram (its like rare ram not able to find it, even the shopkeeper says is it imported??? Then I can't say anything further and move on to the next shop) ? Also my existing ram is cl19 so will cl15 work with this.
Thank you

It was already said above it's compatible regarding the ram 2666 is also compatible but bare in mind to work in dual channel you will need 2 memory sticks exactly the same i recomend if you cant find another like the one you have to buy a new dual set of 2 and take the one you have off because there is always a chance that if you buy a new stick will not work in dual channel with the one you have if it's not the same specs

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

xapim said:

show previous quotes

RohitMunnolli said:

Can I buy the Samsung 970 EVO M.2 250GB SSD as its cheap and very good stick? Is it compatible with my predator? And plz tell me which types of SSD are compatible (updated and cheap like under ₹10000 or $140) for my laptop.
Regarding ram can I buy any ram with 2666mhz because I'm not able to find and buy my existing ram (its like rare ram not able to find it, even the shopkeeper says is it imported??? Then I can't say anything further and move on to the next shop) ? Also my existing ram is cl19 so will cl15 work with this.
Thank you

It was already said above it's compatible regarding the ram 2666 is also compatible but bare in mind to work in dual channel you will need 2 memory sticks exactly the same i recomend if you cant find another like the one you have to buy a new dual set of 2 and take the one you have off because there is always a chance that if you buy a new stick will not work in dual channel with the one you have if it's not the same specs

Not necessarily as my research on tomshardware. We can use two different brands but must be of same frequency and voltage. So can I buy this...
Pic from Amazon.in

xapim · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

show previous quotes

xapim said:

RohitMunnolli said:

Can I buy the Samsung 970 EVO M.2 250GB SSD as its cheap and very good stick? Is it compatible with my predator? And plz tell me which types of SSD are compatible (updated and cheap like under ₹10000 or $140) for my laptop.
Regarding ram can I buy any ram with 2666mhz because I'm not able to find and buy my existing ram (its like rare ram not able to find it, even the shopkeeper says is it imported??? Then I can't say anything further and move on to the next shop) ? Also my existing ram is cl19 so will cl15 work with this.
Thank you

It was already said above it's compatible regarding the ram 2666 is also compatible but bare in mind to work in dual channel you will need 2 memory sticks exactly the same i recomend if you cant find another like the one you have to buy a new dual set of 2 and take the one you have off because there is always a chance that if you buy a new stick will not work in dual channel with the one you have if it's not the same specs

Not necessarily as my research on tomshardware. We can use two different brands but must be of same frequency and voltage. So can I buy this...
Pic from Amazon.in

Technically it might work or not this is why i would never buy memory from another brand to work on dual channel either buy it from the same exatly the same specs or buy a brand new dual set because most of the times saving its not the best option but as i said do it at your own risk i don't recommend it this is why dual channel sets exist they are manufactured and tested for the purpose and even the serial numbers are followed, one thing is upgrade one 8gb to 1 single 16gb sodimm another is upgrading to dual channel it's completely different but hey who am i to say anything it's you decision in the end it's you money i'm just giving my advice and by the way Adata humm not the best memory for any gaming laptop just saying gaming laptops/desktops require god ram not cheap oem inthe end Adata is a oem brand it's whay most manufacturers originally send in because its cheap enough all my acer laptops so far came with kingston ram all the time i wonder why

(maybe because memory it's one of the most important parts of a computer regarding performance just after the cpu) after all we are talking about a gaming laptop which is a beast with the right components and tweaks

PredatorHelios500 · October 2018

RohitMunnolli said:

Not necessarily as my research on tomshardware. We can use two different brands but must be of same frequency and voltage.

"must" is the wrong word regarding matching the RAM frequency among modules. You want the RAM to be the same frequency but if it's not and if the motherboard can still handle your module, it will use the LOWEST clock speed among the modules. So in that sense, you'd not be getting the full performance the RAM is capable of.

RohitMunnolli · October 2018

Thanks for the help
I am also facing serious frame drop issues on certain games like CS GO, NFS Payback and even low graphic games like CS: Source...
Anything that could be done regarding frame drops? I couldn't find any of the solutions appealing on your threads of this issue.