DEAD in 18 months, requires expensive mobo replacement of $800 - Predator Helios 300 G3-572-73FH

pcshivan · June 2019

Dear Sirs,

Sub: ACER Predator Helios 300 G3-572-73FH Notebook Service issues

SERIAL NO:***********************
RAM: KH8GB07034729CB4F73400

I am Shivakumar from Chennai, India. Historically, I was never a windows fan. To be brutally honest, I hated windows. I owned 3 Mac machines so far and a bunch of iPods, iPads and iPhone. So naturally, if you were to ask me about what I thought about Acer, I would have said that I don’t see anything fascinating in them. But please take no offense as that was 2 years back. My little brother made me buy Acer Predator Helios 300 with Intel i7 processor and that changed my perception like night and day. In short, this little beast Acer Predator, rocked my world to the core. We have together used this beauty of a laptop that delivered both speed & performance that is at par with any pro desktop or mac pro with a beautiful display and amazing sound! We used it predominantly for photoshop, sound editing and a bit of gaming. But all that joy ride was short lived. Just 18 months after buying it, one day I was shocked to see this laptop dead. At first, I thought it would be the power unit that required some servicing and so I didn't panic. I just went to the nearest Acer Service Centre named Ever-Excellent Services in Vadapalani, Chennai, India and left the unit for inspection (Job Card copy attached). After a couple of weeks of thorough examination, I was called by a service executive who said that despite several attempts at chip level servicing that he had attempted on the mother board, he was unable to revive the system and that it would need a super-expensive mother board replacement costing me Rs. 50,000. That is almost 800 US Dollars. I was deeply shocked to hear this. The laptop was running just fine till the day before. I am a lover of technology and I take care of my beasts (computers) very well. I always run them clean and safe at all times. All my macs (laptop and desktop) have worked for a minimum of 7 - 10 years from the day I started using them in 2004. So having spent on the higher side of a 1100 US Dollars on predator, I felt helpless and cheated and that was easily my saddest day on the planet.

For the next few weeks, I resigned to my fate and decided to not do anything about this. This morning something deep inside me told that it shouldn't have to end this way. Acer, who have been pioneers in making quality laptop and desktop motherboards wouldn't make something that can just go kaboom in 18 months. That would really be sad since their sales figures dont support my assumption. So it would have to be that my piece was in defective in someway that I failed to notice before. I thought hard, and yes I have faced some issues last year just months after buying. Once, while working at my desk, the battery was low and it just went out of charge, shutting down the system immediately. For the next half an hour even after charging the laptop, it would not charge or boot up. I just did a battery reset and left it on charge for 24 hours. Luckily it came back that time. But I wish it hadnt come back to life. If that would have been serviced then and there, it would have been possible to find deeper issues with the motherboard which could have been arrested within the warranty period.

 But now, all i can do is throw this beauty of a laptop in the garbage bin. And knowing how much I love my beasts, it is a really sad thing to do for me, and Im sure you would agree.

So please, help me out here. I wont be able to afford this motherboard replacement. I have been running from pillar to post asking for help for the last 3 months on this and I have not received any yet. So I humbly request you to replace my motherboard for free and help me re-gain trust and confidence that I have got in Acer the last couple of years. I would definitely tweet to my 10k+ twitter followers and tell them how Acer brought me this big smile by offering to replace my motherboard free of cost! I hope you would make my wish come true!

 Sincerely yours,

Shivakumar aka PC Shivan (A wannabe acer lifetime fan)

[Post edited to remove inappropriate or personal content -Acer-Harvey]

pcshivan · June 2019

Sorry folks, I was so desperate that I shared a letter to the management on this forum. If anybody thinks I shouldn’t do this pls let me know. I want to ask other users if anyones had similar experiences like mine? Just like that, one day the battery was completely drained, and it wouldn’t charge when connected to the power within minutes, and practically that was it... it was dead before I could do anything about it!!

xapim · June 2019

Sorry to inform you but your warranty ran out long time ago so you have to either carry the costs yourself to repair it sell it as it is to someone who might need parts replacements or just bin it theres nothing anyone here can do for you my advice is that if you spend your money on a gaming laptop that you think you might not have money to fix it if it breaks out of warranty just pay for extended warranty its well worth in a long ther investement especially if you a re paying in on finance like me an many others that cannot pay for a laptop of this value in one time mine was £1200 still paying it now for 2 years and i took a 3 year extended warranty which extends my warranty by 2 years the extended warranty includes the 1 yeat ITW that already comes with the laptop itself another advice try to find a donor motherboard on aliexpress probably your best bet to find a refurbished one but as you might know the motherboard its the heard of any laptop and the most expensive part of it

Deejay_tech · June 2019

what happens when you press power button.? any led flashing or lit.

strider16 · June 2019

Man, I'm sorry.

I know what is like to use computers and take care of your stuff, and someday some device just brakes beyond repair. It happened to me with my first computer, which happens to be my first laptop too, and the first I could buy. I did some research with limited knowledge, but I got a good machine at the time nonetheless, an acer aspire 5520 with turion64 x2 and onboard geforce 7000m (these days I wasn't well informed about gpus and the number seemed pretty high, later I found out that it was botton tier).

The device was my true companion through my degree, work and gaming too. I was completely aghast when in about two years it crashed and refused to turn on.

I took it to service, need reballing, but the fixing didn't work. I found myself needing a new computer, and the device I thought would follow me for years to come, and later be a home device for my family, didn't make it.

Just as a curiosity, now I know people who bought hp devices at the same time, and while they are painfully slow for today standards, they endure high temperatures, and after a decade are still kicking browsers and macro-ridden spreadsheets.

I thought I would never buy a laptop again. The performance and repairability desktops are just unmatched. But a few months ago I needed some portable device for work and study again, and this helios 300 were just in a kinda fair price. I didn't thought twice (since ryzen laptops were nothing but rumours from distant lands then) and just bought a laptop, and an acer, again.

Months later, I tamed this beast, undervolted the hell of it. I really, really hope it endures at least five years.

I hope acer listens to you, it would increase my confidence in their branding too, and after having my experiences and reading yours, I really need to.

xapim · June 2019

Thats exactly what im expecting from mine at least 5/7 years as all my other acer aspire lasted and still kicking but because this is a really big investment (as i already stated in the above post) biggest i had ever done there was no way but going on finance and of course extended warranty just as a precaution better safe than sorry i recommend everyone buy extended warranty unless if something happens they are ok to afford another one (not my case) but i can say again its just a precaution that everyone should take in my view and this said never had any issues with it after i optimize windows (disabled windows updates permanently still on 1809 first release) undervolted repasted with kryonaut upgraded ram to 32gb hyperx and m.2 to 2tb wd blue i can say i spend almost the same amount as the laptops costed in upgrades but 14 months have passed and no issues at all and its always on 24/7 non stop since the first day so yeah pretty happy with it my 5740G from 2010 still lives well same as my 7745G (largest laptop i had ever seen at that time with 4 memory slots and 2 internal hdds it was a beast with the i7 2nd gen at the time) from 2011 mobo issues happen all the time theres no way to avoid it if youre still on warranty youre fine but if youre out its a bit complicated to get your hands on a donor mobo i always try aliexpress first because if its not there probably wont be anywhere else as they are manufactured by the companies listed there probably 90% are all made in shenzhen as far as i know

pcshivan · June 2019

xapim said:

Thats exactly what im expecting from mine at least 5/7 years as all my other acer aspire lasted and still kicking but because this is a really big investment (as i already stated in the above post) biggest i had ever done there was no way but going on finance and of course extended warranty just as a precaution better safe than sorry i recommend everyone buy extended warranty unless if something happens they are ok to afford another one (not my case) but i can say again its just a precaution that everyone should take in my view and this said never had any issues with it after i optimize windows (disabled windows updates permanently still on 1809 first release) undervolted repasted with kryonaut upgraded ram to 32gb hyperx and m.2 to 2tb wd blue i can say i spend almost the same amount as the laptops costed in upgrades but 14 months have passed and no issues at all and its always on 24/7 non stop since the first day so yeah pretty happy with it my 5740G from 2010 still lives well same as my 7745G (largest laptop i had ever seen at that time with 4 memory slots and 2 internal hdds it was a beast with the i7 2nd gen at the time) from 2011 mobo issues happen all the time theres no way to avoid it if youre still on warranty youre fine but if youre out its a bit complicated to get your hands on a donor mobo i always try aliexpress first because if its not there probably wont be anywhere else as they are manufactured by the companies listed there probably 90% are all made in shenzhen as far as i know

Thank you xapim! I will heed to your advice and get extended warranty in future.. I really regret not having one now! Thanks for the advice!

pcshivan · June 2019

strider16 said:

Man, I'm sorry.
I know what is like to use computers and take care of your stuff, and someday some device just brakes beyond repair. It happened to me with my first computer, which happens to be my first laptop too, and the first I could buy. I did some research with limited knowledge, but I got a good machine at the time nonetheless, an acer aspire 5520 with turion64 x2 and onboard geforce 7000m (these days I wasn't well informed about gpus and the number seemed pretty high, later I found out that it was botton tier).
The device was my true companion through my degree, work and gaming too. I was completely aghast when in about two years it crashed and refused to turn on.
I took it to service, need reballing, but the fixing didn't work. I found myself needing a new computer, and the device I thought would follow me for years to come, and later be a home device for my family, didn't make it.
Just as a curiosity, now I know people who bought hp devices at the same time, and while they are painfully slow for today standards, they endure high temperatures, and after a decade are still kicking browsers and macro-ridden spreadsheets.
I thought I would never buy a laptop again. The performance and repairability desktops are just unmatched. But a few months ago I needed some portable device for work and study again, and this helios 300 were just in a kinda fair price. I didn't thought twice (since ryzen laptops were nothing but rumours from distant lands then) and just bought a laptop, and an acer, again.
Months later, I tamed this beast, undervolted the hell of it. I really, really hope it endures at least five years.
I hope acer listens to you, it would increase my confidence in their branding too, and after having my experiences and reading yours, I really need to.

Thank you @strider16 ! Happy to hear that you have a new helios 300 at a good price! I know for sure that your lap will last for 5+ years and needing to be replaced only for want of more processing power, higher end graphics at a future date! I have heard from service engineers that what I am facing is a rare occurence and you need not fret about this for now. That being said, I hope you would invest in extended warranty as already suggested by @xapim to save you from any future trouble. Regards.

pcshivan · June 2019

Deejay_tech said:

what happens when you press power button.? any led flashing or lit.

No lights, no disk activity (no noise), no power basically. Its dead. And its not the battery. Not the power unit. Deeper issues within the mobo is what I hear and it couldnt be rectified after a couple of weeks long attempt by the auth service team.

Deejay_tech · June 2019

pcshivan said:

Deejay_tech said:

what happens when you press power button.? any led flashing or lit.

No lights, no disk activity (no noise), no power basically. Its dead. And its not the battery. Not the power unit. Deeper issues within the mobo is what I hear and it couldnt be rectified after a couple of weeks long attempt by the auth service team.

so are you buying a new m/b ? or want to sell the laptop as is for parts.

Raddy · July 2020

I know this too well my helios 300 mobo died at 18 months also. It was a £2000 laptop on sale for £1300 and because of the sale on it the replacement mobo is the price I paid for the bloody thing!

PcNovo · March 2022

Hey Shiv Kumar do you have by chance your helios mobo on you. I need a donor for that laptop as i have a burnt part "not dead" if it's now junk to you is there any chance you might want to sell it.

If you're interested please hit me up.

xapim · March 2022

PcNovo said:

Hey Shiv Kumar do you have by chance your helios mobo on you. I need a donor for that laptop as i have a burnt part "not dead" if it's now junk to you is there any chance you might want to sell it.

If you're interested please hit me up.

This thread is dead its 3 years old if you need something contact the OP directly he might or might not reply as the OP is not active since he opened the the thread in 2019

DEAD in 18 months, requires expensive mobo replacement of $800 - Predator Helios 300 G3-572-73FH

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DEAD in 18 months, requires expensive mobo replacement of $800 - Predator Helios 300 G3-572-73FH

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Categories

Assistance by Acer

Swift Series Intel® Evo™

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Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™