Links:

130w bios: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/232998/232998

Hi all,

I recently purchased a Helios 300, with a 10870H and 3060 6GB 105W. In this guide,
I will describe the stuff I have done to tune and optimise this laptop - for both
performance as well as battery life. Just to set context, here are my Superposition
4K scores and RDR2 Benchmark FPS (average of 4 runs) out of the box and after all
tunings, with and without Turbo mode:

Stock

Auto Fans Superposition 4K - about 6000 points

Turbo Mode Superposition 4K - about 6250 points

Auto Fans RDR2 benchmark Custom settings - 43 FPS

Turbo Mode RDR2 benchmark Custom settings - 45 FPS

After all tunings and optimisations

Custom Fans Superposition 4K - about 7200

Turbo Mode Superposition 4K - about 7210

Custom Fans RDR2 benchmark Custom settings - 55 FPS

Turbo Mode RDR2 benchmark Custom settings - 56 FPS

Btw my Superposition score of 7200 beats most desktop 3060 cards as per
Superposition 4K leaderboard.

I've divided the guide into roughly 2 parts - CPU and GPU optimisation.

CPU

First of all, I downloaded ThrottleStop and undervolted my CPU as far as possible.

Do note that your undervolting values may not match mine, since each CPU is
different. For a guide to undervolting, I recommend this and this - in that order.
My undervolt on core is -186.5mV, and -86.9mV on cache. iGPU and iGPU Unslice are
both at -25.4mV, while System Agent at -46.9mV. This made a huge difference to my
CPU performance and temps, and in all probability to battery as well. My all core
boost went from 3.2Ghz all core in CBR20 on stock to 4Ghz all core, increasing my
scores from about 3300 points to 4140 points, while at the same time decreasing
power consumption by a very significant margin. Even if you don't get as big of an
undervolt as me, every bit helps. I recommend OCCT to test CPU undervolt stability.
I also reduced max turbo multiplier to 45x, instead of stock 50x. This probably
helped my stability too since the CPU now doesn't target 5Ghz at all, for which it
probably requires a lot more voltage due to how voltage/frequency curves work.Now,
I made 2 profiles for battery and plugged in mode in TS.On AC mode, Speed Shift is
at 32, while on battery it is 202. I have also permanently switched on power saving
mode for battery mode, and reduced turbo ratio to 35X on battery. Additionally, I
used this guide to automatically change refresh rate to 60hz on battery, and 144hz
on AC.
Using TS with the above settings gives me a battery life of about 4.5-5hrs of
battery life between 80% and 15% (screen at 25% brightness, music playing, editing
word, and browsing about 70tabs in Brave). I've set up the charge limit feature in
Acer Care Center so that battery doesn't charge over 80% to reduce battery wear
over long term, and also because this laptop will stay plugged in 70% of the
time.The other usual battery tips apply - don't have unnecessary programs running
in the background, ensure dGPU is off on battery, keep screen brightness as low as
comfortable etc.

GPU

Firstly, to fix the infamous stuck at 30W bug (or core/memory clocks stuck at a low
frequency) all I had to do was lock the clocks to a certain (high) frequency in MSI
Afterburner. I have detailed the same in this guide here.

There is an optional step here - vBIOS flashing a different manufacturer's 3060

mobile vBIOS. Now I know Acer has released a 105W vBIOS, but my problem with that
is that the only way to use the full 105W is in turbo mode, which is too loud for
me. So I figured that if I could get another manufacturer's vBIOS, it may actually
boost to 105W without Turbo, and Sager's 90+15W vBIOS works brilliantly for this. I
tested out the Acer 105W vBIOS as well, and for some reason the Sager gave me
higher overclocks and a slightly higher Superposition 4K, even after repeated runs
(by about only 50 points, but the difference was repeatable). So I am sticking with
the Sager vBIOS for my laptop. The only downside of this is that the power
consumption and voltage values are incorrect. But thanks to the clocks, I know that
it is in the 105W power limit so I'm not worried

After just the vBIOS flash (to Sager), I got an increase of about 200-250Mhz in
core clocks, which I presume is due to the increased power being delivered even in
non-turbo. My GPU was hitting power limits at around 1800Mhz on the stock Sager
vBIOS voltage/frequency curve, so I undervolted and overclocked keeping a target of
1800Mhz in mind. This reduced my temps from a peak temp of 80C in Superposition 4K
to 74C, while keeping scores unaffected.The scores after just vBIOS flashing
itself, in stock fans as well as turbo mode was about 7050 points, though I did
reach about 7200 points with a slightly unstable overclock of 270mhz on core and
350mhz on memory. But overall, the score with my undervolt+oc curve, and memory oc
of +321Mhz, on custom fan speed (max CPU fan, GPU at 5000 RPM) gave me a score of
around 7050 points - a fantastic increase over the the stock vBIOS even in Turbo
mode by over 15%, with similar gains in RDR2.But even if you don't want to flash a
custom vBIOS, you should upgrade the to the official 105W one at least - that gave
me a score of about 6950 points on Turbo mode.

Once vBIOS flashing is done, the best thing you can do is undervolt the GPU via
Afterburner's Curve Editor, and I've mostly described this above. This is how my
curve looks. You can find guides to undervolt GPUs aplenty on YouTube. My
frequency/voltage curve also has a +230Mhz overclock as well, though that is
optional. This will greatly reduce your temps, and hence also increase performance
since lower temps means higher boosting and better CPU performance (since there is
one shared heatpipe).

Closure

After the above is all done, I set up Game Sync in PredatorSense such that it
automatically switches to custom fan curve (and keyboard colour if you so desire)
when you launch an application. So I have that configured with all my games so that
I don't need to manually change the fans to custom fan curve every time I launch a
game.

My temps after an hour of playing Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition with custom fan
curve (everything maxed out, hairworks and motion blur off, DLSS at quality,
connected to external monitor and getting 80-130fps) is 72-78C on GPU, and 70-80C
on the CPU (depending on the scene). GPU clocks stay at a locked 1800Mhz (with the
uv ofc), memory clocks at 7322Mhz.

I also added a second stick of 8GB 2666 RAM (since I didn't want to overpay for RAM
as percurrent market, and I already had it lying around), and that increased my
performance in Superposition 4K from 7050 (with the same frequency curve and memory
OC) from 7050 points to around 7200 points. So I can say with a fair degree of
confidence that dual channel 2666 RAM is objectively better than the single channel
2933 RAM the laptop ships with, and I'd highly recommend upgrading the RAM when
possible. I will think of buying a 16GB 3200 kit for dual channel 2933, but no way
I'm paying more than ~6k for it - I had purchased the 8GB 2666 stick in 2019 for
2.6k!

Anyway, so that, my friends, is how you increase the performance of your brand
spanking new laptop. Enjoy gaming and productivity on the beast!

Appendix (Other optional optimisations)

Changed SATA mode to AHCI from stock "RAID with Optane" since I plan to dual boot
Arch. (Go to BIOS with F2, add supervisor password and exit. Again enter bios, go
to advanced settings with F1 inside BIOS, then on the "Main" page press ctrl+s to
unlock SATA mode settings. Don't forget to change Windows' RAID drivers to AHCI
before this step or else Windows won't boot.)

Uninstalled Killer Control Center and replaced the Killer drivers for 1650i with
Intel ProSET Wifi and Bluetooth drivers (separate for bluetooth and wifi). Got
Bluetooth 5.2 as well thanks to latest Intel Bluetooth driver.

Installed Realtek driver for E2600 Gigabit port, increased performance (improved
latency for some reason) compared to stock Killer driver. More than increasing
performance, it also increased stability of the port - with the Killer drivers, it
would sometimes refuse to work when connected. With the Realtek drivers, it's
flawless.

Uninstalled DTS software and drivers; only kept Realtek drivers. Uninstalled
Realtek Audio Console as well since I was getting a delay of about 1-2.5 seconds
with day to day playback (such as yt videos). The delay issue was fixed after just
removing the DTS sofwares btw.

Do keep in mind that any OEM drivers you uninstall will be automatically installed
at next boot, unless you manually disable those (in the form of windows updates)
using wushowhide utility.

PS: Electricity just went out some time ago, and the laptop shows 4h 24min left
with 74% battery.

Edit: Added some more battery life tips.

Edit2: Fixed formatting

Edit3: A clarification - Although the temps mentioned for Metro are while playing
on external monitor, all Superposition 4K and RDR2 benchmark tests were done on
internal display

Update: Switched to using MSI GE76's 130W 3060 vBIOS since the Sager one was
reporting wrong power draw, leading to clockspeed getting locked at 300mhz.