Review of the Helios 500

Hi fello helios 500 community,

I have recently been trying to tinker with overclocking my gtx 1070 slightly as i realized that the gtx 1070's clock speed fluctuates all the time due to hitting the power limit while gaming (as reported by msi afterburner and GPU Z). 

I also tried increasing the vram speed by an additional 300mhz on top of the turbo profile and it ran stable at 4600mhz (9.2ghz) with no increase in GPU temp and no artifacts even when running firestrike and gaming.

So just a few questions before i proceed further:

1. Understand that the gpu temp may not be indicative of the vram's temperature and as there is no vram temperature sensor in helios 500, can someone who has opened the laptop up to repaste before advise if the 1070 vrams have thermal pads connected to the gpu's heat sink? Or is it even ok to just overclock the vrams as long the game runs stable?

2. Read some where that the power limit to the gtx 1070 cannot be tweaked as its locked by acer. But is everyone's gtx 1070 hitting power limit constantly as well while playing graphically intensive games? I observed that the 1070's core clock cannot be maintained at maximum and fluctuates all the time even when i set the power management profile in nvidia control panel to prefer maximum performance. Just want to know that it is normal for helios 500's gtx 1070 to hit power limit due to safe guards that acer intentionally set for it.

Was thinking of ocing the gpu as i thought the graphic cards are running pretty cool and thought there is sufficient headroom to just push it a bit. Appreciate some advice on this and for the time to reply!

ven98 said:

I don't see a reason to overclock the VRAM, as it doesn't increase the performance even a little compared to the Vcore overclock. There are probably some helios 500 users that can push the 1070's core more than you can and also there could be some that are unable to overclock it more than what is already provided, because of silicon lottery. Some 1070s will have better silicon than others and perform slightly better. 

I don't know why they lock the power limit, probably for safety reasons and they don't want your laptop to die before the warranty peroid ends. 

I am not a helios 500 user.

Hi ven98,

Thanks for the reply. I did some benchmarking with fire strike by overclocking the vrams to 4600mhz and the score increased to 16350 from 15700. And yes, tho the increase is minimal, thought why not if there is sufficient cooling on the vrams. Problem is i have no idea if the vrams are cooled sufficiently due to the lack of temp sensors and if the fact that the gpu is running stable would be a gd indication to run it at an additional +600mhz speed. Also read that only micron vrams have problem overclocking and hynix vrams can be overclocked over 9000mhz.

i did tinker with msi afterburner and increased the core clocks to +190mhz, althought the games do not crash, the maximum clock speed in game hovers around 1850mhz and does not increase any further at all due to  hitting the power limits throttling. So i think there is no luck in overclocking the core clocks any further unless u are able to increase the power llimits. Acer's turbo profile of +150mhz is the most optimal helios 500 can run i guess.

I thought you were talking about the i9 version this whole time. You were talking about the temps being REALLY low on the CPU, but mine are between 80-90c. Now it makes more sense, you are not on the i9. Is there a good guide on undervolting with throttlestop that you would recommend? My CPU does not throttle, but I would like to reduce fan noise, if possible, by undervolting. I know how to use Intel Xtreme, but don't want to get in a boot loop, like you said...

I know how to overclock from a bios (similar to undervolting), so I could undervolt from a bios... Is there a reason that people don't just undervolt from the bios? This is my first gaming laptop, I have been building gaming PC's for over 15 years. My problem, is that I have never dealt with a laptop, other than using it for basic functions. 

STOPchris said:

Are the I9's already undervolted by -.125? When I load up Throttlestop, before doing anything, it shows my CPU cache and core offsets as -125 mV... Does this mean, these are the best temps that I am going to get by undervolting? I also noticed that just running idle "edp other" is blinking red under limits.

Hi Chris, 

The -0.125 undervolt is factory configured by acer in the different power profile in predator sense. And i believe that is done thru xtu by default. If you would like to tinker with yr i9 chip, you may be able to undervolt it even further with trial and error with the use of xtu, then create new profiles in xtu and copy and paste the profile file to replace the default profile set by acer in C:\ProgramData\OEM\PredatorSense\i7-8750H ( yours should be saved under i9 instead of i7 i  believe). Once you replace the profiles in the above folder, your new undervolt settings will auto load in your future start ups.

The xtu way is the most direct way of setting new undervolt profiles.

I believe you know how to tinker with undervolting since you hv 15 yrs experience, so i shall nt nt explain the steps in undervolting. 

Red-Sand said:

finch5 said:

Hi fello helios 500 community,

I have recently been trying to tinker with overclocking my gtx 1070 slightly as i realized that the gtx 1070's clock speed fluctuates all the time due to hitting the power limit while gaming (as reported by msi afterburner and GPU Z). 

I also tried increasing the vram speed by an additional 300mhz on top of the turbo profile and it ran stable at 4600mhz (9.2ghz) with no increase in GPU temp and no artifacts even when running firestrike and gaming.

So just a few questions before i proceed further:

1. Understand that the gpu temp may not be indicative of the vram's temperature and as there is no vram temperature sensor in helios 500, can someone who has opened the laptop up to repaste before advise if the 1070 vrams have thermal pads connected to the gpu's heat sink? Or is it even ok to just overclock the vrams as long the game runs stable?

2. Read some where that the power limit to the gtx 1070 cannot be tweaked as its locked by acer. But is everyone's gtx 1070 hitting power limit constantly as well while playing graphically intensive games? I observed that the 1070's core clock cannot be maintained at maximum and fluctuates all the time even when i set the power management profile in nvidia control panel to prefer maximum performance. Just want to know that it is normal for helios 500's gtx 1070 to hit power limit due to safe guards that acer intentionally set for it.

Was thinking of ocing the gpu as i thought the graphic cards are running pretty cool and thought there is sufficient headroom to just push it a bit. Appreciate some advice on this and for the time to reply!

The power limit you mention is the voltage set for the designated clock speed and isn't set by Acer it's set by Nvidia.

You can open the curve editor (Cntrl + F) in MSI AB to adjust it.

Hi Red sand,

I was thinking of using msi ab's more straight forward power limit percentage knob to increase the 1070's power limit as i am nt familiar with ocing with the curve editor.. read online that an increase of the power limit % to 112% is able to allow the 1070 to run stable at a fixed peak boost without throttling if the thermal performance allows it.

Or do you happen to have a profile for msi ab that could help alleviate 1070's power throttling? My main frustration is that 1070's clockspeed kept fluctuating and can never run at a stable boosted clock speed all the way while gaming. 

Also, do you happen to knw if the gtx 1070's vrams are sufficiently cooled for further overclocking?

Thank you once again for the earlier reply!