Predator PH315-51-50GY FPS Drops

Greetings fellow Predator users,

I am also a victim of fps drops.

My PH315-51-50GY has the following specs:
-Inter Core i5-8300H
-16GB RAM
-NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB

The laptop is over a year old, bought it in september 2018. My bios is on version 1.19, which is a higher version than the latest one that the acer site gives me (1.12)

I've tried the solutions in the FAQ with no luck. Disabled all other programs during gaming, and tried everything I've seen in threads on this forum.

I've seen these threads:
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/555761/acer-predator-helios-300-fps-drops
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/558994/fps-drops-predator-helios-300
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/539168/i-am-receiving-fps-drops-on-my-acer-predator-helios-300-g-573
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/554484/random-fps-drops-on-helios-300

and a lot more...

I downloaded Throttlestop, disabled turbo boost (one of the threads suggested it) with no luck. I've been running my fans on max during gaming and I also have a cooling pads, my temperatures seem to be stable AFAIK. Only a few times I've seen them hitting the 90 degrees in predator sense.

Game works fine for around 5~10 minutes, then drops to only 10~30 fps for a timespan of 15 sec to a whole minute, then goes back to normal and repeats after another 5~10 minutes. So far it has happened on the most games that I've played, but not every game. Few examples are the new call of duty modern warfare and the older Battlefield 4. (It happens on any graphic setting, even the lowest ones. Battlefield 4 is almost 7 years old and should not be a problem for this laptop) Overwatch, for example, runs fine without any problem at all during hours of gameplay. Thing is that not every gameplay is impacted heavily by this issue but since I paid full price for the new call of duty and still play battlefield 4 every now and then, I need to get rid of it. The gameplay experience of these games get ruined easily by this issue.

I've been using Throttlestop to disable turbo boost, but other than that I have no idea what values to use in this program. One of the threads showed some screenshots of the settings but none of these are for my CPU so I'm kinda scared to change things I don't really know about. Maybe you guys can help me get the right settings. I haven't tried undervolting yet 'cause I have no idea what value to set for my CPU, and the impression that I got is that you have to undervolt when the cpu temps get too high? (Correct me if I'm wrong I'm a total noob on this one)

Maybe you guys got some other suggestions? Would appreciate any help

Thanks in advance! Peace to my fellow predator users.

Accepted answers

xapim

Laantje at this point you need to get it repasted with kryonaut or similar and clean your fans and exit airflow if you can yourself without voiding the warranty if not send it back to acer to get it repasted with the stock paste also always keep the back elevated 1/2 inches for a proper airflow you are thermal throttling cpu shouldnt go above 80/85 max and gpu 70/75

All comments

HiWayKiller

Hello,

Latest version for your model is 1.26. Please check below link.

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7603?b=1

I will suggest you to do an update.

Laantje

HiWayKiller said:

Hello,

Latest version for your model is 1.26. Please check below link.

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7603?b=1

I will suggest you to do an update.

Thank you very much! I have no idea why I couldn't find that one, guess I overlooked it.

However, this did not fix my problem. So far I've gotten some more knowledge about temperatures and undervolting. It Iooks like undervolting does nothing at all since my CPU Still reaches max 93 degrees celsius when undervolting at -140.6v, same when throttlestop is not used. I got this info from the throttlestop app itself, not from predator sense. Predator sense says both my CPU and GPU Reaches 96 degrees but as far as I read these are only small spikes and thus I should not use predator sense for monitoring.

I can't see or undervolt anything about my GPU in throttlestop though, maybe the issue is in the GPU instead of my CPU? I have no idea. Either way these temperatures seem a little bit high, I'm not sure if its normal. I use a cooling pad as well.

Any other suggestions??

xapim

Laantje at this point you need to get it repasted with kryonaut or similar and clean your fans and exit airflow if you can yourself without voiding the warranty if not send it back to acer to get it repasted with the stock paste also always keep the back elevated 1/2 inches for a proper airflow you are thermal throttling cpu shouldnt go above 80/85 max and gpu 70/75

xapim

HiWayKiller bios updates have nothing to do with this and will not fix anything in fact i dont recommend anyone to update the bios unless its to solve and exact issue that the bios notes state themselves you might brick your laptop while updating it

Laantje

xapim said:

Laantje at this point you need to get it repasted with kryonaut or similar and clean your fans and exit airflow if you can yourself without voiding the warranty if not send it back to acer to get it repasted with the stock paste also always keep the back elevated 1/2 inches for a proper airflow you are thermal throttling cpu shouldnt go above 80/85 max and gpu 70/75

Hmm I had that in mind as a last resort, I'll probably bring it to Acer in that case. But I think undervolting might still be a possible solution, but I can't seem to get it to work. It shows no difference at all no matter how much I undervolt, I even tried doing -1000mv in throttlestop, which should crash my PC, and nothing happened. I've googled this problem and can't seem to find a fix for that. I'll try using Intel XTU today.

Laantje

(DOUBLE POST SINCE I COULDN'T EDIT ANYMORE)

I managed to fix the issue with Intel XTU and MSI Afterburner. The temperatures are still too high, but I don't experience any throttle in-game anymore. Intel XTU undervolting actually works for me, Throttlestop did not make any difference for some reason I still don't understand. My CPU temps stay around 80 degrees now, sometimes hitting 84/85 but no more than that. I also undervolted my GPU which was hitting 95 degrees at some points, now it hits max 89 which is still too high. I have been told that here in my country my warranty would void if I replace the paste myself, which is a bummer since I've read that some pastes are better than the stock paste they usually use.

Anyway, I've had contact with the Acer service in my country. They have provided me the option to bring/send my laptop so they'll replace the thermal paste. I'll be doing that in a few weeks since I have some exams next week, I'll need the laptop for that. Thanks for the help guys!

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