*HP EliteBook 8460p Owners Lounge!*

I noticed south bridge chipset in my 8460p is Cougar Point B2 which is faulty and can cause HDD damage. I wonder whether anyone with B2 and complained to HP?

 

Source? I was looking forward to keep my 8460p for the 3 years of warranty. (I normaly upgrade every year)

 

From what I remember, the B2 bug only affects laptops with more than two SATA ports. Since we only have two, one for the hard drive and one for the disk drive, we should be fine. What software did you use to check the chipset? I used HWInfo32, and it reports I have a B3.

 

It's really funny. I checked it with HWInfo64 of 3.87 version and it showed B2, after loading latest 3.91 version HWInfo64 - it showed B3.

But in section "bus" I can see that all resources have "b2" title.

Weird.

 

When I first got my 8460p and checked with AIDA64, it was B2. After updating to the latest BIOS F22, it becamed B3.

HWInfo shows Cougar Point B3 but CPU-Z shows Rev04. I've checked the hardware IDs of the southbridge and everything shows Rev 04. Gigabyte SATA too checker also shows B2.

I've checked around and found out Rev 04 is B2, Rev 05 is B3. A Chinese site which shows pictures of a 8460p disassembled confirms the chipset is B3.

After checking many CPU-Z screenshots, there are many variations of stepping such as 04,05,B2,B3 and etc. The easiest way is to open up and check the chipset stepping directly.

According to Intel Storage utility the is 5 SATA ports available but at least 3 is available for use, one for hard drive, one for upgrade bay and another for E-SATA.

Two is SATA3 ports which should not be affected. If two internal ports are SATA3, then E-SATA port is the one affected. I bet most of the owners don't use this port but I have an external drive plugged
in to E-SATA.

 

Hi everyone,

I am thinking of purchasing the 8460p for Video Editing and eGPU gaming. I know that eGPU gaming works great with it, but I would like to ask 2 questions:

1> Is the version WITHOUT the AMD dGPU capable of being upgraded to quad core i7 CPU? (v. imp. for me)

2> Is it relatively easy to upgrade to 16 gb ram (8 x 8gb)?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. I plan on buying off ebay, where I have seen a few around the 600 to 750 USD mark. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. I hope the throttling issue has been resolved/is not present in the i5 version without AMD chip.

 

@2
It's totally easy to upgrade the RAM. There only a latch to release in order open the bottom cover of the notebook.

 

It won't throttle if you re-paste it. You might see mine on eBay, my user name is supersmartphones. I re-pasted it and the guide is in my sig. If you are considering purchasing in mine, I can list it here on NBR for less.

 

Thanks for the reply Mr. Mischief. You have a really good machine but I am looking for one sans the AMD gpu. I've read elsewhere that its just too much of a fuss getting it to work smoothly with the eGPU setup.

Anyways, what I have gathered from the little research that I have done is that the reason for throttling is insufficient cooling. If I throw in an i7 2820qm, will it not be much worse?

Or is the throttling only specific for those probooks with the AMD gpu's? Really curious. Only reason for preferring the 8460 over 4430s is eSATA. Need it for hooking up external drives and working with HD footage.

Thanks in advance.

 

The Intel only model will run cooler, so I don't think a 2820QM would run too hot.

 

I don't know anything about laptops.

I can pick up a new 8460P for $700 with i7-2620M with 14.0" diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare (1366 x 768).

I will be using this laptop to write reports, web browsing, and general use. I doubt I need this powerful machine but the price is amazing (private seller). Should I wait for the Samsung series 9 to come down or buy something on the lower end?

Are there different versions of the 8460p I should avoid?


I'm not type to settle for the low end but you opinion is greatly appreciated.

 

That's not bad, though you can find them on eBay with the 1600x900 screen and the AMD 6470M for around that price.

 

It's something VERY strange with this bios!
I just flashed it, and before that my OCZ Vertex 3 Max iops 120GB SSD scored well over 500MB sequential read speed. But with the latest bios, it only manages Sata 300 speed, under 300MB!

Any ideas! This is very anoying.

After flashing back to sp54772, everything is back to normal.

 

Anyone else having problems flashing to the latest BIOS?

I have an HP 8460p (i5 2520, running WinXP Pro SP3), currently at BIOS F.08. I downloaded the F.22 BIOS update and tried to run it from Windows. I got an unexpected error after entering my BIOS administrator password, and the update failed.

The error says:
The BIOS image is not compatible with this system.
Family of BIOS in ROM update: 68SCE
Family of BIOS in system: 68SCF

The system BIOS will not be updated.

According to the docs that come with the updater and on the HP site, the BIOS update applies to both 68SCE and 68SCF families.

Any ideas?

 

Remove your bios password and try it again.

 

I don't know if I can... Well, let me re-phrase that. I installed a self-encrypting drive and activated drivelock, which requires a BIOS password. I can't remove my BIOS password without disabling drivelock, which might render all the data on my self-encrypted drive unreadable. Not a chance I want to take.

 

On a separate note, I have been having no end of problems with a recent external hard drive that I am trying to connect to one of the left-side USB 3.0 ports on my HP 8460p.

For the past year, I have been using Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB hard drives, mounted in a Thermaltake BlacX5G SATA to USB 3.0 dock. The dock supports SATA III (6GB/sec) hard drives, but my Seagate 7200.12 1TB drives were maxed out at SATA II (3GB/sec). The Seagate drives have been working flawlessly. I recently purchased a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive with SATA III (6Gb/sec) support, but I can't get the drive to work reliably with the same dock using the USB 3.0 ports.

Specifically, I can sometimes format the drive under Windows XP (32-bit) SP3, but then it gives me all kinds of errors when I try to copy files. If I delete the partition and try to reformat the drive, it gives me an error saying the format operation could not be completed.

I thought the drive might be corrupted, but I ran a low-level format (using a different computer) under Windows XP and it was fine. I also ran the Western Digital Data Lifeguard extended diagnostics (which does a low, low-level format and maps out bad sectors), and the drive came out clean.

Has anyone else run into a problem running a SATA III drive via the USB 3.0 ports? I wonder if I have to throttle back my Western Digital to 3GB/sec using a jumper?

Any ideas?

 

After ghosting my drive, I eventually disabled the BIOS password and tried to run the F.22 BIOS updater again. Still no luck! Then, I went fishing inside the BIOS update folder, found the sp55676_F executable, extracted it, and ran the udpater. It recognized my BIOS chipset and performed the update without a hitch. Strange that I had to do this because I've never had problems running BIOS updaters before.

 

After upgrading to F.22 version of BIOS, my external SATA hard drive crashes my computer all the time. Have to hard reset the system. Great BIOS upgrade. Now I'll have to see if I can find the F.20 BIOS and downgrade...

 

The problem for that install was because it defaulted to using the 68SCE.CAB file in the directory and not the 68SCF.CAB file instead. This HP BIOS install isn't intelligent for whatever reason, seeing how this very SoftPaq is shared with the 6560b, which is part of the BIOS family 68SCE.

For future BIOS updates, should they continue to do this, you can either call the executable you ran, or run Command Prompt with administrative rights and run the command "HPQFlash.exe -f68SCF.CAB". This will force the setup to use the proper CAB file.

 

Has anyone successfully removed or deactivated the light behind the HP logo on the display?

I'd like to do so, as it is a silly, unnecessary drain upon the battery. It would be preferable to not have to remove it entirely if its cable could simply be unplugged, thus reducing risk of damage to the display or bezel during disassembly.

If there is interest I could post a photo series of my deactivation of the logo light.

Cheers,

8460w

 

Nevermind, I did it. It's very easy and should apply to the 8460p as well:

Power down your notebook and remove the battery.

Open the screen so that it is parallel with the keyboard deck. Remove the two rubber screw covers on the screen bezel, near each screen hinge. These are adhesive-backed, not plugs, so take care to maintain the adhesize. I used a spudger aka black stick.

Remove the two screws.

To remove the bezel, I placed an optical cloth on the screen near the top, and flexed the top part of the bezel out until the clips released. Work the clips out left and right towards the latches. Do the same on the left and right part of the bezel, flexing it up and away from the screen slightly til you free the tabs. Do the bottom last. You may now remove the bezel.

To the left of the right-hand hinge is a white connector. This provides power to the HP logo light. It is identifiable by the fact that it is only two wires. Simply disonnect this connector and place the two ends in the space behind the bezel. You now no longer have power to that idiotic light.

Reverse the instructions for re-assembly!

 

Thanks for the instructions!

But I don't think any 8460p has a illuminated logo. At least not my model.

 

My 8460p also doesn't have illuminated logo. I wonder where is the exact location? Any pictures?

 

Hi,

the fan of my 8460p (ATI/AMD, i7, SSD) is running all the time and increasing the speed very often, also the CPU usage under W7 climbs just up to 10% during that situations. Specially that changing sound of the fan an the hot air blowing directly to my right hand is driving me nuts.

Any ideas/hints of how this can be controlled? Throttling the CPU or something?

Thanks
Heinz

 

Odd, maybe it's just the 8460w. The logo I refer to is the circular HP logo in the dead center of the screen's lid.

 

And you have no specific runaway process or anything? I would check that and/or update to the latest BIOS first.

Another thing I noticed when I upgraded to a 2630QM was that the CPU and GPU paste were pretty crappy, especially the pad on the GPU. I replaced both applications with Arctic Silver and, even though I was going from a dual-core to a quad-core, I found that my full load temperature dropped by 20 degrees celsius. Worth doing, IMO.

 

I did not find any runaway process and i updated the BIOS to F22. The fan is always rotating, even when i´m just in the BIOS setup. When the system is under small load (15-20% CPU usage when surfing a website with flash animations) sometimes the fan is rotating faster (very disturbing) for a few minutes until it´s slowing down again.

Thanks for the hint with the Arctic Silver. Did you use pads or is it paste?

 

It's a thin paste that comes in a tube. You could probably also use standard silicone heat sink compound with 95% equal results.

Have you experimented with the BIOS setting 'fan always ON while on AC power?'

Also, are you using the OEM Windows install with the HP drivers or did you do your own custom install?

Furthermore, this sort of behaviour is to be expected if the laptop is on your lap or a blanket in bed - blocking the intake or exhaust for the fan.

 

Thanks! I will try the silver paste.

The "fan always ON ..." setting is disabled in the BIOS.

I did a custom W7 Enterprise 64bit installation with all the (latest) HP drivers. The laptop stands on a normal desk or table all the time.

Can you recommend a program to monitor the temperature, and what are the idle temperatures of your system?

Thanks
Heinz

 

I use Linux (Debian, kernel 3.2.7) so the temperature is monitored by the kernel itself. I think Windows people tend to like SpeedFan for temperature monitoring. It can control fans too, depending on how your BIOS does or does not make that faculty available. For mobile, though, I would let the BIOS control the fan as it sees fit, probably.

At idle my temperature (CPU=2630QM) is about 38C, in 18C ambient environment. Right now it is at 45C in same ambient, but I am running bit torrent with 25+ open torrents, have a second external display connected where I'm watching a long youtube video, and just finished burning two CD's. I have hyperthreading enabled in the BIOS. I've found that disabling this can lower temps, though that happens because your CPU is having more empty pipelines and not working at peak. This is more noticeable when doing something intensive like compiling a large software project (5+ minutes at 100% CPU).

Hope that helps!

 

Also, Linux has been having a hard time lately with power management, etc, so your CPU temperature numbers in Windows should theoretically be better than mine.

 

I've resized partitions on 500 GB internal hdd and now F8 Windows Restore and F11 HP RECOVERY options do not work.

Be careful with disk management.

 

Hello,

I'm a Sony VAIO lover but I now need machine that means business.

It needs to be powerful machine capable of running an ERP System (SAP, Oracle etc) with Server, Databases, Virtual machines etc....all in all powerful application that are resource intensive.

I'm about to or am considering the HP Elitebook 8460P range but want to know does this model/range have the ability to upgrade Memory to 16GB/32GB. Minimum 16GB (two slots of 8GB DDR3 RAM) or in an ideal world 32GB, so I guess would need four slots since 16GB sticks don't exist I believe.

So in summary my question is if I buy a HP Elitebook 8460P can I upgrade the memory to a minimum of 16GB?

I highly appreciate your response and thanks again for your expert opinions.

 

A maximum of 16 GB can be installed.

 

Hi there!

For those that wonder, if your bios is locked you can still change the hard drive in the laptop and boot from it without having to enter the bios password.

 

I installed an OEM 2670QM into my 8460P. Temperature rose around 5-10C during idle at around 55C. I notice Turbo is not working and my CPU is stuck at 2.2Ghz. I don't think temperature is problem. Is there any settings I need to change for quad core CPU in BIOS?

 

Hi,

New member here with a 8460w, I7 2630QM. Wondering if anyone has moved to the newer bios, F20+ and had any issues with Turbo-boost being disabled. I see that the 8560 folks are having problems with the newer Bios. I have F3 and Turbo works fine.

I have some direct connections to HP through work and we are about an 80 percent all HP shop, Net Admin here.

I like the laptop, I also have an 8730w which has been a great desktop replacement and spends most of its life in the docking station.

The screen on the 8460p/w isn't that bad in my opinion, I didn't expect it to be high contrast, its a matte, 1600 X 900.

I ran passmark burn in and it failed on temps according to them, around 93-94C , did the cpu/gpu paste(Thanks for the guide) and temps are about 5 degrees lower on CPU, arctic 5, pulled the thermal pad from GPU and it seems to run cooler as well.

I ordered a Panasonic UJ-260 BluRay Burner off flea-bay, did this mod on the 8730W with a UJ 240, Panasonic makes the best laptop bluray players and burners in my opinion. HP has software to play BluRay on the download site for our laptops, around 120 for the drive.

I also ordered a Samsung 256GB SSD and I want to take advantage of SATA 3, hence the reason I am asking about the bios updates, it looks like I need to move to F22 to get that but I don't want to lose Turbo-boost, I am wondering if this is more of an issue on the Dual Cores and not an issue on the Quads.

 

I've not seen many 8460w owners here and indeed Turbo is disabled for F20 and above. I upgraded to 2670QM on my 8460p and found out Turbo doesn't work. I have tested both F20 and F22.

I suggest you stick to your current BIOS until everything is fixed. Once you upgraded to F20, you can never downgrade to anything lower. HP took a few steps backwards and I hope their engineers are working on a fix for these problems.

Another advice on SATA3. F22 disabled SATA3 and I can confirm that. F20 works fine with SATA3 though.

 

Thanks for the info, I will install the SSD with the old bios and see what happens.
I'd rather have turbo than SATA 3, hopefully they will fix the latest bios rev to allow Turbo and SATA 3, F20 is the "better" of the two bios, I might make a call to our HP rep and see if he can give me some info on the next bios update.

 

Please tell them to fix bugs instead of creating more for the next update. I agree turbo is very important since stock clocks are low on quads and they rely on turbo on single threaded apps. I wonder what is your idle temps? Mine was around 45C with dual core 2540M and rose to 55C with quad. SATA2 will bottleneck your SSD especially if you are planning to get Samsung 830.

 

I am going to send an email out today. My temps are lower than that on the quad, did you use a good thermal paste? I know it below 40c at idle for both cpu and gpu, cpu-z reporting.

The Sammy is on the way, I will test speeds on the F03 bios to see if SATA 3 is really not enabled on this bios version.

 

This is the response I got, can you open an official support and get me the ticket number, I am not going to upgrade my bios yet... I don't trust HP to fix this lol. I will push it through if we get a ticket number.

I spoke to our chief technical consultant and he has not heard of this issue. We need to file an official support request so we can get a ticket number. Once we have the ticket number I can escalate to our higher support staff. If you have any questions about filing a claim please let me know. Once you have the ticket number please send it to me and I will run it up the flagpole.

 

I'm not sure how to file a claim. I've requested for support through HP Chat and the engineers doesn't have a single clue on what problem I'm facing. They suggest me to send the laptop to Service Center and I think that's is a waste of time.

i7 Quads are not officially supported by my model even though it shares the same components as 8460w. There isn't many owners with Quad core here so I think this problem is quite isolated and I think HP doesn't bother to check unless it's a major problem. Some 8560p owners is facing the same problem too.

 

For business notebook users, please use the HP business support case manager for prompt response:

https://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/scm/submitCase

 

Thanks. I have created a case report and the number is 4638702589.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know there is special support for business notebook owners.

 

OK I forwarded it to my HP rep, I told him its the same issue from a user that pm'd me, I also got the ssd today and I am doing the install on f03 bios... Now my HP contact is for the Federal sales side so he might say something, hopefully your upgrade thing was left out of the conversation when you placed the ticket...

 

Just installed the Samsung 256GB SSD on f03 bios,getting SATA III, WOWZA. I have been working with Intel 320's and the previous 470's. I built an HP Z800 with 96gb of ram 30k list machine, a monster workstation with dual x5690's for a user with 7 300GB Intel SSD's on an LSI controller Raid 0 and this drive smokes compared to the others I have dealt with, esp for being one drive in a laptop.

This thing is hitting its stride on ATTO Direct I/O, 32K to 8192K, 415MB Reads, 540MB Writes ONE DRIVE!

When I run ATTO with Direct I/O not selected I am getting insane numbers, 3500MB Writes and Reads as high as 3750MB!!!!

Its on sale at newegg for 299 and I would jump on it.
SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256B/WW 2.5 Inch 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

$299.99
With Promo Code: EMCYTZT1302

Free Shipping!


Here is the crystal disk scores after latest firmware/optimization, fresh install of win 7 its a new drive.

Seq Read 459.7
Seq Write 415.4

512K Read 308.3
Write 382.4
4k Read 21.41
Write 44.17
4 QD32 Read 305.2
Write 150.9
I am def on SATA III with these numbers on a bone stock 8460W with amd 3900, I7 2630QM with 8GIG HP Ram plugged in on balanced, no tweaks at all, just Sammy Opti after win 7 install.These numbers are VERY good.

 

Nice scores for that, you could remove the optical drive and buy a generic caddy for secondary storage. I have a Sandforce 50GB SSD and 500GB 7200rpm and the notebook is silky smooth. I would say any SSD would change the usage experience of your notebook.

You could try to update to BIOS F20. SATA3 still works but Turbo Boost will be disabled. After updating to F20 you could not downgrade anymore.

After posting the case, I received a call from a HP engineer and these are the things they told me.
- SATA3 is not supported for models sold in my region(Japan).
- Turbo Boost is not supported for models sold in my region(Japan).
I wonder if HP engineers are qualified to answer technical questions. I bet they dont even know what is Turbo Boost and SATA3. Anyway I have sent my laptop for inspection and hopefully they could rectify the problem.

Since you have direct connection with HP reps, I suggest you to forward this problem to the BIOS department since it's BIOS related problem.

 

I am not too confident they will address your issue directly, I forwarded it and referenced the other thread that talks about TB being disabled on 8560's, I will probably get some sh/t about it but I don't care. I think I saw someone with an 8750w say a newer bios, f24 fixed turbo issue he had, might have to wait for that for our laptops.

256Gb is enough I have a storage server(z800) that streams my media, i wanted the better performance that a bigger drive provided. I am staying on f03 until I know a fix, like I said I don't trust hp to fix this, but they probably will, when is the question.

I thought about the second bay for the previous 500gb drive but I ordered a bluray burner so thats what is going in that bay a panasonic uj260

QUOTE=wyemarn;8379365]Nice scores for that, you could remove the optical drive and buy a generic caddy for secondary storage. I have a Sandforce 50GB SSD and 500GB 7200rpm and the notebook is silky smooth. I would say any SSD would change the usage experience of your notebook.

You could try to update to BIOS F20. SATA3 still works but Turbo Boost will be disabled. After updating to F20 you could not downgrade anymore.

After posting the case, I received a call from a HP engineer and these are the things they told me.
- SATA3 is not supported for models sold in my region(Japan).
- Turbo Boost is not supported for models sold in my region(Japan).
I wonder if HP engineers are qualified to answer technical questions. I bet they dont even know what is Turbo Boost and SATA3. Anyway I have sent my laptop for inspection and hopefully they could rectify the problem.

Since you have direct connection with HP reps, I suggest you to forward this problem to the BIOS department since it's BIOS related problem.[/QUOTE]