*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

Ok, so I delayed the re-pasting for a few days and ordered a new keyboard instead, for experiments. Hopefully, I can mod it to fit flush and solve the giving in problem in the upper left part.

Do we have someone with a non-backlit kb experiencing the bump issue?

 

After trying the shortcut, I went straight to the actual launcher. Everything under Settings is gray and the boxes cannot be checked. Other programs allow these options, but for whatever reason AutoCAD LT 2011 will not.

 

Have you tried deleting/disabling the custom shortcut you created before for the same purpose?
Maybe you can't have two different things controlling that feature at the same time.

You should be able to use the shortcut that was originally created on the desktop when the program was first installed.
No need to go into program files folder.

 

The custom shortcut I made has nothing to do with AutoCAD, it is a shortcut to Windows Personalization to change themes.

I pinned AutoCAD to the taskbar and that shortcut doesn't allow you the same right-click options. I made a new desktop shortcut...no luck...deleted that and went to app folder...no luck. I don't know, should I stand on one foot?

 

Sure, it might help....

Strange that only AutoCAD has that problem....
Stick with the setup you already have then.

 

Oh yeah, I tried it with other programs (see my post with the picture again) and those Settings were available. So it is only with AutoCAD LT 2011. I guess I'm out of luck until the AutoDesk gods take mercy on me. Of course they're probably busy trying to figure out which fixes they should save as "features" for AutoCAD LT 2012 so they have enough marketing material to justify the next version.

EDIT:

Well, once I had a chance to start working again, I noticed that Aero is required to be ON for this other program I use to magnify and displace the cursor coordinates (which I manually input into another progam about 85% of the time I'm using AutoCAD). So, in other words, your solution was the one I needed, but I'm out of luck until AutoDesk updates. Until then, I'm back to jittery measurements.

 

Maybe it's just the LT (gimped) version..... you get what you pay for. :laugh:

 

Yeah, $1,000 is chump change. I held onto AutoCAD 2005 (full version) for over 5 years and used 3DOrbit 20-30 times (on one project) in that time. So I decided to give LT a try so I could afford to update in a few years. If I continue to feel AutoDesk is halfassing LT, I'll jump to AccelliCAD next time (or go against my morals and find a "free" version of AutoCAD).

 

I called HP business & no-one even knew what an IPS panel was much less if the non-dreamcolor was also an IPS. I talked to sales & tech support.

Does anyone know?

 

The non-DC screen is not IPS.

 

well tyvm. it's an upsidedown world when the company selling the product knows less than the consumers.

 

Unfortunately most of the hired help (the ones you'll talk to) of all these big companies don't know squat about what they're selling and sometimes don't even know how to speak well.

 

Guys, I'm very indecisive... My rep does offer me the 920XM again as the closest processor to the 840QM, not available in my country yet.

I want to order this thing right now, because assembly & customization takes up to 1 month (no kidding), and my rep told me it's likely the 840QM won't be available until september (then, I would have to wait up to october, or even more, to get the thing ).

But I'm not sure if it's the right decision. It seems my rep will offer me a good discount, even with the 920XM, but I'm afraid of power consumption and heat of this processor. I don't know even if the 8740w has the proper cooling to drive this CPU under high loads. I know the 920XM appears in the service manual and in the quick specs, but the USA configurator doesn't offer it for some reason... and the same is applicable to many countries... I don't want to order the 920XM if HP has not guaranteed its proper operating, naturally.

Thanks

 

By the way, the DC2 panel has ~5 frames of lag, equating to ~0.0833 seconds of input lag. TN panels in decent laptops and good computer monitors have less than 1 frame of lag, or less than 0.0167 seconds of lag. For top-tier play of fighting games and the very top tier of shooting games, 83ms of lag is unacceptable. For everyone else, it's very hard to notice.

I'll have to test it on SF4 just to be sure, but my current test shows 5 frames of lag. On SF4 there should be something like 11 frames of lag because the game has inherent lag. I'll be honest, I didn't notice the lag in Age of Conan, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Counter Strike: Source, or L4D2, but I did notice it in Step Mania. I play the hardest songs on the keyboard to keep my step-reading ability up, and I was getting destroyed by songs I normally beat easily. I wanted to chalk that up to being rusty, but it makes sense that there's 5 frames of lag.

 

Unless you are running your notebook often on battery and care about battery life the power consumption shouldn't be an issue. IMO the heat sinks will be sufficient to keep the 920XM cooled.

 

Yes, battery life is not a concern for me, because I'm going to use the 8740w as a desktop replacement 90% of time (plugged with the AC adapter). I was afraid of using the laptop in my lap due to possibilities of burning myself...

@Koshinn: Are you absolutely sure the DC2 has 5 frames of lag?? It does not make any sense. My NEC 2490WUXi IPS monitor has about 2.5 frames of lag and it has several image processing circuits (the more the processing, the worse the lag). The HP LP2480zx monitor it has about 2 frames of lag average and, according to Greg Staten, the DC2 uses the same engine

 

I did tests. I'll test again soon to be certain.

 

Definitely you should order the 920XM, so you can be the first to tell us how it does.

I think if they're offering it they are guaranteeing it also. I will say that my 8740w with the 820/7820 runs very cool so I think there is plenty of thermal room for a more powerful cpu/gpu. But, of course, we won't know for sure till you report back.

 

I'm not entirely convinced in the cooling yet.
My 840QM hits 70C occasionally during browsing, watching videos, etc.
In games I've seen up to 86C. Not too cool if you ask me.
I'm still going to re-paste the CPU (the GPU temps are perfectly fine)
But with the stock paste I'd say - forget 920XM. Buy the cheapest option and then fish for the 840QM on eBay. Or, if the rep is offering a nice price for the 920 - go for it, check the temps and if you can't lower them - sell the CPU and buy a weaker one + you save some cash towards a SSD

 

I think HP may just skip the 920xm and go straight for the 940xm.
Probably around the same time as the new Fermi quadros roll around.
Get your fire extinguishers ready.


If you think about it, the competition already has a leg up since they have the 920 and soon they'll offer the 940.

Yielding to the competition is not good for their image.

 

Hello Everyone:

I am just going through my quotations for this notebook to replace my Acer Ferrari 5000 AMD Turion TL-60 based rig. Very pleased with the Ferrari 5000 as have had it for 3 years and the only issue has been the batteries and I have dragged this poor thing all over hell's creation. The only downsides to the Ferrari 5000:
5400 rpm internal drive,
No esata but then this rig is 3.5 years old,
No back lit keyboard, again, this rig is 3.5 years only,
800MHz hyper transport link. 1000Mhz here would have made all the difference.

I run gentoo Linux on my Ferrari as it gives me more control over the machine than Windoze. I run windoze XP in a KVM session for outlook, Autocad, excel and word. I do lots of pasting of Acad documents as -files into MS word and find that OOwriter just can't handle these kinds of documents which is why I'm sticking with word at the moment.

Onto the 8740W. I originally wanted to get a phenom II based laptop but unfortunately NONE of the units on offer by anyone has a display that can compete with my current ATI X1600 at 1050 x 1600, 15.6". I'm 46 and my eyes are going for so I need a good display and due to this issue, the phenom II based machines are out. Pity, I was looking forward to a quadcore TDP 35W 1800 MHz hyper transport based system but that's life.

Over to the i7...the only worrying thing for me is the TDP of 45W. My TL-60 has a TDP of 35W and I found it a bit worrying...I live in Singapore so if I'm in the office with air-conditioning I let the laptop run with the full frequency selections, 800, 1600, 1800 and 2000. If I'm at home with no air-con I tell linux to limit the max freq to 1600M. To be honest there isn't much difference in performance between 2000M and 1600M, OO compile times differ only about 10 minutes between the two (4.5 hours) which means the limiting factor is the disk, not the CPU. Also, am running 4G of ram on the ferrari.

The battle for my heart for an i7 based notebook came down to 3 contestants:
Dell M6500,
Accer 8943,
HP 8740.

The Dell M6500 was my first choice but they stopped offering the ATI graphics optiion. I like the new Xorg radeon driver and since AMD has opened up the spec sheets for the ATI graphics parts t the open source community, the Xorg drivers are almost as good as the ATI proprietary ones and in some ways superior. With the Xorg drivers when you update SW the graphics doesn't break like it does with the proprietary drivers. For this reason, Nvidia does not interest me.

Ok, down to the Acer and the HP then. Acer makes good HW, I can attest to that. Much better than Dell for sure, however; you cannot pre-configure Acer laptops...they have what they have, that's it. Your choice is limited to what Acer thinks you want. So they were out.

HP then.

The absolute only downside I can find to the 8740W is the lack of an esatap port. The esata port appears to be just that, an esata port and not the dual USB-esata that combines power with the sata interface. The esatap spec allows you to have a drive enclosure with a 3.5" drive (12V) which opens up the 1T-2T backup possibilities. USB 2 is shocking for backups and not even worth looking at. There are USB 3 ports but they are 5V only so you're limited to 2.5" disks of 640G max. I backup using dd or ddrescue and depending on your drive size, USB 2 could take 6-8 hours whereas esata 90 minutes. The requirement for the external PSU due to the lack of the esatap support just makes things 'slightly' more difficult/messy.

Has anyone brought one of these rigs up on linux yet?
Interested to hear how its going. The internal parts appear to be well supported.

I'm looking at a 16G solution with the 256M SSD and 500G 7200 rpm second drive with external CD. I seldom use the CD anyway. I'm looking forward to running NILFS2 on the ssd as there are some tech reports that show it just screams on SSds that should be interesting and would love to hear if anyone has tried that yet.

Cheers,
john

 

Post deleted

 

There are USB 3.0 enclosures that house the new 1TB hard disks. I ordered this set from newegg but haven't received them yet. Be sure to order the ram and ssd from a retailer rather than from HP as you can save quite a bit. In my opinion, go for the HP and don't look back

 

Important announcement!

HP indeed uses thermal paste on GPU memory chips!
This is terrible!
Look:



Paste is on the PCB, circuits, etc. There was even a sticker on 2 chips and they put the paste over it

That's how it should look (after cleaning the chips, HS and applying Bergquist pads):



Another note: Looks like we need 0.8-1.0mm pads (and I only have the 1.5mm) to make a good contact...
So my system is disassembled and waiting for the new pads. To dangerous to turn it on...

Remember: 0.8-1.0mm, not thicker, or the GPU core will not have a good contact with the heatsink!

 

I am looking to puchase my first University laptop to graudate in 2 years, but I may decide to go for Sony Vaio after seeing that pictures with bad thermal paste. I don't want to risk opening the case to clean it up.

Unless, the 8540w doesn't have this problem. However, it's hard to believe that your laptop could be worth $4,000.

 

1mm ? is it not that the gpu is on the same level as the memory ? Is it not better to get something like 0.16mm ?

 

I must apologize for being too rushy. It looks like there's no big problem in using paste on memory chips after all.
The problem might arise when using a conductive and bleeding material. In fact, with the cooling design of 8740w, there's no way to use thermal pads effectively.
So, I reverted to using OCZ Freeze on the memory chips as well.
Will see how it goes.

In my case, when the core is flush with the HS, there's still a gap between the mem chips and the HS.
Honestly, I think there's no point of even trying pads anymore. They will never provide the same level of cooling the paste does.
And even with paste the GPU MEM/IO sensor hits above 80C in games.

 

I was thinking about going with an Envy 17, but given all the build quality issued discussed in the owner's thread, I've decided that the 8740w is probably a better choice.

I've read this thread for the better part of an hour, but it can be hard to keep track of the known issues.

Can somebody summarize them for me? Is the 4 DIMM crashing issue still happening? Anything else?

Edit: Found the Problems Roster.

I'm a bit hesitant to take a $3000+ plunge if this machine is going to crash. I was planning on getting 8GB of ram (4 DIMMS). Perhaps I can get HP to upgrade me to 2x4GB DIMMS.

 

No issues for me so far. The only small problem is the little bump on the backlit keyboard. I ordered a regular one, will tell you how it goes.
Meanwhile re-pasting the CPU&GPU did lower the temps by 5-7C on the CPU and 4-5C on the GPU.

Here's a new 3Dmark06 run (same ambient)

 

I could have told you that....
You really think HP is going to risk damaging a bunch of GPUs by using thermal paste if they thought it was not appropriate?
You jump to conclusions too quickly.
You remind me of the guy from "Office Space" who came up with the "jump to conclusions" game.... LOL :laugh:

On another note;
I just got my 1mm thick thermal pads.

Hey Aikimox,
Do you see any improvement between AS-5 and OCZ Freeze?

 

I was very tired and frustrated yesterday (barely had 15hrs of sleep in 7 days), so yeah...jumped to conclusions.
But at least I apologized
One thing that bothers me with their design is that in order to re-paste the CPU you must remove the GPU HS. Double work.

Since you got pads - could you give them a try?

 

I am having the thoughts about getting an 8740 instead of an envy 17, but am also having concerns as well. After getting an envy 15 that was dead on arrival, and then getting excited about the envy 17 only to read all the horror stories, I started looking at other options like the m6500 and 8740w, basically anything w/ a 1920x1080+ screen resolution and overall good quailty. But I am worried because the 8740 is still made by the same company that is making the envies.

I mean, I have not read too many problems in this thread, but the problems I have read about with crashing, fan problems and keyboard bump are very worrisome.

Is the build quality, cooling, etc. general overall quality really that much different/better on the Elitebooks vs. all other HP laptops?

 

No. But I see that OCZ is very easy to apply and especially important - remove. So I'm ordering a few more tubes.

 

So far - yes. The review is in my sig. Look at the performance & noise and heat sections.
I'm very impressed with how quiet and cool the system is.
Can even play Crysis without risking to kill your GPU.

 

My CPU temps are same as yours. My GPU is lower.


Yeah, AS-5 is a bit messy. Plus it's also conductive.
I forget...is the Freeze conductive?

Also, how do you get HWiNFO32 to display all the extra sensor info?
Mine doesn't show Fan RPM or the extra temp readings for the GPU.

 

Can you run 3dmark06 and post a screenie along with the room temp? Mine is 25.5C now, BTW.

OCZ has very low conductivity. Almost none. So it's fairly safe.

Nvidia cards don't have extra sensors, so it's impossible to know the memory temps.
FOr fan readings, try the latest version. It only appeared 1-2 days ago.

 

Yeah, I figured ATI probably had extra sensors.

I was just looking at the "current" temp column...

 

Oh, the current was right after the test, before the temp drop. Here's the current during the office mode:

 

GPU is the same as yours (49-50).
My CPU cores are high though (55-58).
I'll try reapplying later on.

How did you apply paste to the CPU and GPU?
For the CPU, a put a thin line in the middle and spread it evenly on the whole surface.
For the GPU, I put a small spot in the middle and spread evenly also.
I put a little bit on both heatsinks also....

Also, I thought the bergquist pads were double-sided.
Are you sure the pink side is suppose face the HS?
Typically when I see thermal pads, they're stuck to the HS and not the chips.

I was thinking of cutting one continuous strip, instead of four individual pads...

 

An HP employee said this issue was fixed in the factories already. While this was not an official release from HP, the experiences of users on this form support this claim as they do not have the crashing issues that myself and a few other early-ish adopters have.

FYI to everyone, I've been pushing hard on several fronts to get my machine replaced. Looks like I'm stuck waiting for the in-field fix to finish testing.

 

Well, it might be easy to get an exagerrated sense of problems with people here pouring over every tiny detail, but I would say they're actually pretty minimal. The crashing issue (which is a serious one) really does seem to have been resolved by HP --- AFAIK none of the units that have shipped over the last month or so have suffered from it. The fan-on-medium-after-resuming-from-sleep issue is still there, but isn't such a big deal IMO and is supposed to be fixed in an upcoming BIOS. The keyboard bump is there, but I guess you can always order a non-backlit keyboard to avoid it.

I would say definitely yes. I haven't used an envy, for example, but I was pretty disappointed by the overall built-quality when I looked at some in a store --- I was expecting a lot more. IMO the elitebooks are in a different league.

Edit: I should add one other problem which is a bit annoying. Sometimes the 8740w boots to a black screen and you have to reboot (following m80, I use win_key/tab/tab enter to shutdown from the keyboard) to get the screen back. This hadn't happened to me in a while, so I though maybe it'd gone away, but of course right after making this post it happened again.

 

So is there a real benefit/necessity to change the thermal paste in light of what lethial learned and shared?

This coming from someone who never games (or plays something like Spore when he does, which I'm assuming doesn't count ) so only knows different thermal pastes can provide better or worse thermal transfer, but knows zilch about the players and degrees of payoff.

 

Do coupons for Elitebooks turn up now and then? I see some people have snagged 28% off by calling a rep directly.

The config I want is $3800 retail. (i7 840, 8GB, 500GB HHD, DC, etc.). 28% gets me down to ~$2700 + tax/shipping. That's still a lot of money for a laptop!

Last time I spent that kind of money I got the Precision m4400... and I hate that thing with the strength of 1000 suns.

 

There is a perpetual coupon on their website when you go to configure, but at 18%, it is well worth working with a rep. I watched 8540w prices closely late last year hoping they might want to dump the C2Q chips at some point. That discount never went over 24%, but I never called to ask a rep. But the point here is that HP doesn't use any coupons for Elitebooks other than those posted on their CTO page. But you get way better deals by using a rep, so they are rather pointless.

$2,700 is a lot. You can cut that down a ways by ordering your own RAM, the 4GB on 2D isn't bad from HP, then get 2 more. Otherwise just get 2GB and buy 2x4GB...some users here have found compatible 4GB sticks for right around $100 each. It looks like you must have the ATI in that config, so your next thing is CPU. Dropping to 740QM is a substantial savings. If money is tight, I think this downgrade makes sense, the difference in performance is probably 5-8% when maxed out, and absolutely nothing the when doing basic computing. I would try to hold onto DC2 though, I'm a little annoyed with my viewing angles (though they aren't any worse than other non-ips laptops). It's still expensive, but you'll have to give up DC2 to make a real change.

 

What is the perpetual coupon? Also, I'm a college student and I would like to have a i7 720 or better with ATI FirePro for close to $1750 (which is my range). Is there a college discount for it also?

 

I was told by my rep that there was no college thing that would stack with the discount he was giving me, which was very good; with the extra "inconvenience" discount for the long wait, mine came in at $2k and a few cents. (I took min RAM and disk, so with third-party upgrades it was quite a bit more.)

I haven't read the 20-some pages of posts since I was last here, but I'll confirm the various reports of crashing being fixed; I was fine under stress and multiple sleep/wake cycles with no crashes or fan issues (although as I run it, it has fan going much of the time when plugged in; rarely when on battery for various other tests). On the stock 2GB I was able to run it out of memory a few times and Win7 handled it pretty gracefully.

My AC power/battery light was DOA, but I'm not risking sending it in to fix such a minor issue.

I just replaced the stock 2GB with 4x4GB, still no crashes or fan problems, and it's gone through multiple sleep/wake cycles.

Will soon put in the SSD and install Win7 clean. [I considered just copying the drive, since the junk that comes installed isn't bad (although there was a surprising amount of occupied disk, given that no significant applications were installed), but I want to see the install process.]

Are there any Linux-related questions left? There were when I was last here, and I'll be dual-booting on the new drive. Tell me what to do if you want a test.

 

Coupon looks like this. It has been there since launch of the 8740w.

$1750 is tough. There are no school discounts b/c this is business machine. Some schools might sell them cheaper than HP, but I haven't heard of any (Dell and Lenovo seem to be more common for schools).

Looks like $1812 is the best you can do for quad-core. Only way I can see $1750 is going to a dual-core model. Or you order one more expensive and hope they have some major delay and give you extra discounts.

 

Probably not. I managed to reduce 6-7C on the CPU and 5C on the GPU.
The difference will only become important if inserting an extreme CPU and OC'ing it, benching, stressing, etc.
So keep it as it is, unless you have really high temps.
Idle in 50s and load in 80s is acceptable.

 

Just reconfigured with a i7 740 and 2x2GB RAM.

That brought it down to $3,457 retail. Assuming 28% off (which I assume is a BIG if), that gets me down to $2489. Add a single stick of Crucial 4GB for $160, and I'm at $2649.

Better... but not a huge savings.

I might have to hold off until these beasts get a bit cheaper. $2500 (including tax/shipping) was my limit when I was looking at the Envy 17.

 

For the CPU I put 2 small drops of OCZ in the middle 1cm apart along the crystal length and then just screwed the HS back.
For the GPU core I used AS-5 and did a "spreading" method. For the memory chips I used OCZ and put a considerable amount/heap in the middle of each chip. I never apply TIM on the HS, instead let the HS spread the compound during the mounting and tightening the screws.

Regarding the pads - dunno. It's a surprise for me as well.
I thought, the pads should be adhesive on both sides.

Cutting a strip should be a great idea, IMHO.