How do I solve this crazy heating issue on my Helios 300 (PH315-51)?

egydiocoelho said:

Perhaps this link can help you: Red-Sand ThrottleStop Undervolt Profiles Pre-Made — Acer Community

Hi. This did not work unfortunately. The game spiked the temps to 98C and basically completely froze. At that point I had to hard restart in order to get the computer working again. 

egydiocoelho said:

Is your notebook under warranty? its temperatures are incredibly hot.

No, my laptop is not under warranty anymore. Its 2 years old at the moment. At this point, I can't even take it for servicing anywhere because of the pandemic situation, so my only hope is for some software based solution as of now, if that is even possible. 

By the way, could you take a look at these? 

I found greenish white thing cotton-candy like substance wedged under the heatsink right at the point where it meets the radiator (as you can see in this image above). Is it some sort of thermal compund? I extracted a little of it (as this thing also looked very dusty) as I didn't want to remove it thinking it was gunk if it really isn't.

Hi. I'm gonna repaste my CPU and GPU with some TG Kryonaut. I'll use the videos you provided here as reference, of course. I'll post back here if it makes any difference but that's gonna take two weeks.

Padg said:

Before repasting your CPU, check your Windows power plan. Acer have provided settings, under advanced settings I changed the maximum processor state from 100% on both plugged in and on battery to 90% and System cooling to passive.

When playing games, this dropped my CPU temp from 90c to 55c.

Hope this helps.

Hey, I did change the processor state to 90% when I was trying to diagnose the problem myself. That didn't help, unfortunately. Didn't try changing the system cooling, though. I guess I'll try that. Thanks.

egydiocoelho said:

Post the result here.

Did not help. I also extracted that gum like thing from underneath the heat pipe and while that seemed to bring down idle temps by a couple degrees, under load, the CPU is still pushing 96. Otherwise, changing settings in the power profile (system cooling or processor state) did not help with temps. Still waiting on the thermal paste. Will post back after repasting.

Okay, so I did the thermal paste replacement finally and in (kinda) solving this problem, I found out a bunch of things.

First things first, TG Kryonaut is a great paste. Highly recommended to anyone having thermal issues that can benefit with a re-pasting. 
So, this first screenshot shows Intel XTU stress test temps after re-pasting. 



As you can see, the CPU temp, that used to shoot up to 95 the moment I used to start up this test, now sits at 78 - 82 tops under full synthetic load by Intel XTU. So far so good, right? Well, here's where things get weird.

I fired up Counter-Strike and well, initially, I faced a couple of freeze issues still. At this point, I was sure that that was no longer because of thermals. In playing the game further however, something weird happened. These are my temps after a 10 minute round.



CPU utilization barely touches 45 percent but temps still shoot up at 94.

However, it doesn't stay there. It keeps fluctuating like you can see in the graph here, in a range between 86 - 94. The following screenshot shows the temperature fluctuations during a match. 



This is extremely weird because I fired up AIDA64 and applied full synthetic load on both the CPU and GPU. Here are those temps.



So I need an explanation as to why the temps are same under 100% load and 37% load.

On the bright side, the game is working fine now. FWIW, the temperatures are still spiking to 97 but aren't staying there. It is going down to high 80s fairly often and I have also experienced higher framerates, overall. So, in conclusion, I can play the game now but things are still toasty.

PS : Point to note here, when the CPU is stressed all by itself, it almost never goes beyond 80 (Intel XTU). These 90+ temps happen only when CPU and GPU are stressed at the same time (Gaming or AIDA64).