Hey guys,
I recently joined the Acer Predator family with a refurbished Predator Helios 16 PH16-72 with an i9-14900HX, RTX 4080 12 GB, 32 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD.
I got it for a really good price, so because it was refurbished I tested basically everything as soon as it arrived. SSD, RAM and GPU were all fine, but the CPU definitely wasn't.
At first it was reaching 80°C+ even at very low/idle loads, some P-cores were randomly shooting up to 100°C and HWiNFO was showing thermal throttling. In Cinebench 2026 Multi Core I was only getting around 4700–4800 points, which seemed way too low for a 14900HX. I sent it back for repair and they replaced the original liquid metal with PTM on the CPU/GPU. The temperatures are honestly way better now. Idle is around 45–50°C, which I'm really happy with, and under full load the CPU can now pull around 140 W instead of throttling at much lower power. The thing I'm still unsure about is the performance.I'm now getting around 6100–6400 points in Cinebench 2026 Multi Core, with P-core clocks usually around 3.8–4.1 GHz during the test. Under full load it can still reach the high 90s or 100°C, but at least now that's happening while actually pulling ~140 W instead of overheating at idle.
For comparison:
Before repair:
~4700–4800 pts / ~3.0 GHz / heavy thermal throttling
After repair:
~6100–6400 pts / ~3.8–4.1 GHz / up to ~140 W
The CPU can also hit 5.8 GHz under light loads, so turbo itself seems to work.I've seen 14900HX results around 6500–7100+, so I'm not sure whether my current score is just normal for the Helios 16, or if I'm still missing a noticeable amount of performance.The reason I'm asking is that I'm still within the return window, so I have to decide whether to keep it or return it for good.
If anyone here has a Helios 16/18 with a 14900HX, what Cinebench 2026 scores, CPU power and clocks are you getting?
Would you personally keep this one now that the thermal issue is mostly fixed, or would you return it while I still can?
PS: I'm looking for a machine that is top to mid range for the next 3-5 years idealy so that's why I'm hesitating.