*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

A little update, guys!

I ordered a regular (non-backlit) keyboard and it's perfect. Almost zero flex or bumps. Feels more sturdy too.
And looking closer at both, my conclusion - the backlit KB is flawed, poor design and quality. It'll take some time for HP to elevate the quality to match the regular KB.

For those who are fine with the Backlit KB - Keep it, you're probably lucky or/and not too picky.

Those who see the bump in the upper left corner or suffer from flex - replace it with the regular one.

Those who are still in a debate (prior ordering) - I'd recommend the regular as well. Especially if you are coming ThinkPads or in general picky about KB's.
My 2 cents of course.

Will update the review shortly.
All in all with the regular KB, I think this system is just perfect.

 

Any linky to the one you bought?

 

HP Parts Store - Part N. 597582-001
Even though it says - with backlight - it's not The backlit KB is much more expensive.
I'm sure you could find one for less but I didn't wanna waste too much time for a few $.

 

Order placed! Total came to $2,938.21, including tax/2 day shipping. (Got 28% even without asking. )

Oh boy! Can't wait! Here are the stats again:

Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64 (MS Office Trial not included)
Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Processor
17.0-inch diagonal LED-backlit DreamColor
Webcam Integrated 2.0MP w/HP Skyroom
ATI FirePro M7820
12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2x2 from HP, 2x4 from NewEgg)
500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with Double Layer
Backlit - Full-sized keyboard
HP Integrated Module with Bluetooth® 2.1
Intel Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 (3x3)
56K v.92 high speed modem
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
200W HP Smart AC Adapter
8-Cell 73 Wh Li-Ion Battery (1 year warranty)
3 Year 9x5 Next Business Day On-Site w/Accidental Damage Protection
HP 230W Docking Station

 

BOOYA SHAKKA!!!

Intel x25-m 160GB G2
Two in RAID0 with 32KB strip.
4K Results seem a bit low though....

Windows 7 boots in 17 sec, including RAID screen pause.

I can't believe how quiet it is now.

 

@ThinkFr33ly:

Congratulations! Since you've ordered the backlit keyboard, please, give us some feedback.

I want to order the backlit keyboard because I need it.

Now, my rep has gone on holidays and he'll come back on 16th. I have enough time to think about 920XM vs. 840QM and Backlit kb vs. Normal kb. dilemmas LOL

@vasbinder:
Eric, I see the 840QM processor is already advertised in Spain. In fact, the webpage was updated today (I've checked it out). Do you have any info in this regard?

 

Congrats! So, there's no slowdown with the second SSD in the ultra-bay?
That's good news!

 

Should post that up on the Win 7 start up thread You'd be about 23rd place:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...ur-windows-7-boot-time-tweaks-allowed-40.html

 

I guess not.
4K results seem very low though. Also, when I used HD Tune, it only reached 190MB/s. Not sure why it scores so low in HD Tune.

- When idling, it's dead quiet. The fan shuts down completely.
- During web browsing and light work, the fan is whisper quiet and sometimes shuts down completely.
- CPU cores range between 44-48.
- GPU stays between 38-40.

These would never happen with the HDDs I had before.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting my CPU/GPU temps to drop the way they have. Much less, having the fan shut down completely.
When it does turn on, it sounds like it's spinning at the lowest setting possible... nice.

The laptop has been on for a while now and CPU and GPU are below 50 and 40 respectively.
Normally with the HDDs, the CPU/GPU would be at 59 and 51 respectively and the fan would be at least at medium speed, and spinning fast periodically.

Update: Temps have gone up a few degrees now, but still below the previous norm.

 

How do you open that window that shows the measured boot time?

 

A very interesting observation! I'll definitely keep an eye on the temps when switching to SSDs.
I also noticed that replacing the backlit keyboard with the regular one reduced a few degrees on both the CPU and GPU. Probably because of the bigger metal plate on the bottom of the reg.kb. acting as a HS. Dunno...

 

Well, they still have to draw power from the mobo.
LEDs are pretty efficient, but they still generate heat and there's quite a few of them in each keyboard.

 

Yes, I still do not believe that 8740W DC2 has 210 nits. 8730 DC had 300 nits. 210 should be very darker.

 

300nits is a huge blow to your retinas!

 

You guys do a clean wipe? I was thinking about it, but it seems like a lot of trouble. I really don't feel like spending hours installing drivers.

 

Actually, the stock HP image is pretty solid and light. I'd just back it up with something like Acronis True Image.

 

Very nice. My question is, do you think you'll save a lot of money if you opt for the lowest hard drive and buy an aftermarket 500gb hard drive from newegg?

 

It depends. My NEC 2490WUXi H-IPS monitor, a pro-grade monitor, considered one of the best monitors in the world, it has 400 nits of brightness, with a special low bright mode which can decrease brightness up to 50 nits. It's very comfortable even with normal brightness level at night. But backlight is CCFL, not RGB LED Edge like the DC2, so I guess with less backlight, the DC2 let pass more light through the panel. Let's say a 210 nit RGB LED Edge panel may be equivalent to a 250-270 nit normal CCFL panel? What do you think, guys?

 

Aikimox, I think you should report this issue to HP Support in order they fix it for new users. Thank you

 

Hadn't really thought of that. The cheapest drive they have is the 250GB version, which would have saved $150 retail - but post 28% discount that's really only $108 in savings.

There are plenty of good 7200RPM 500GB laptop drives for between $90 and $150. The best probably being the Segate Momentus, which runs about $140 on NewEgg.

So it's basically a wash, assuming the drive that comes from HP is of similar quality to the Momentus. Anybody know what 500GB drive ships from HP?

 

Will do. I'll post photos once it arrives... should be here on Friday the 13th.

 

Upgrades from the manufacturer are usually more expensive than buying the part yourself. You can buy a 500gb 7200rpm drive from Ewiz for $65.99 after coupon, which isn't even that great of a deal.

My question is why is HP Business so stingy with their base options? The base Envy 14 comes with 4gb of RAM and 320gb harddrive!

 

That's the 16MB cache version. I was talking about the 32MB version. Still, that's a pretty good deal overall.

Any any rate, many people (I'm one of them) would say that saving $50 isn't worth the hours it will talk to do a fresh install on a new disk. I suppose you could image your existing disk and move it over, but even that is probably a couple hours of work when all is said and done.

 

I have an 8740w, currently just running Windows 7, but the high-end computational analysis code I'm using is more stable in SuSE. So, I'm planning to probably create a dual boot, at least at first... or possibly just go straight to OpenSuSE 11.3 and wipe the Windows install. Does anyone have any advice on how to do this such that I can still recover the factory image if I want to later? Any other advice?

Cheers,
Tyson

 

It's nice having a built in microphone. I can talk with my buddy in games like Starcraft 2 without messing around with a headset.

 

Absolutely. I have been building computers since I was a kid and building a system from scratch is something I'm comfortable with. Besides I cheapened out even more by going with FreeDOS, instead of Windows 7 On the other hand I have no desire to change my own car's oil.

But if you are ever curious, there's a built-in Windows 7 backup tool, which works very well in imaging your harddrives for backup/restoration. It even properly imaged my SSD!

 

I think it was reported already but will do it as well.

Just make a partition/disk image with something like Acronis True Image and store it in a safe place. I'd try restoring from it to another drive just to see if the image is working before removing the current installation. Or, simply grab another HDD/SSD for Linux and store the stock drive in a safe place

 

I'm guessing HP is answering the expectation of larger volume buyers, corporations, having IT staff who tweek every machine from software to hardware before deploying it to the employees, who'd prefer the machine cost associated with the least amount of memory so they could add their own from the pool of mem chips they have at hand at greatly reduced per-unit cost. (?)

 

Update:
Temps are back to where they were with the HDDs. Maybe a couple degrees lower. So much for that I guess....
Fan still spins much lower than before, which is nice.

 

I may want to / need to go down the path of re-pasting my CPU (and by necessity, GPU too then). Core #0 and #2 are consistently a few degrees higher with similar CPU loading than the other cores, which isn't sitting well with me.

 

@ Rampage||
Hmm... Probably your ambient temp fluctuates.

To all Elitebook owners:

Does anyone know what program reports the CPU fan speeds correctly?
This is very important! If we could find such an application, the creator of HWinfo32 could possibly write a standalone tool for manually changing the fan speeds. This would open much more room for gaming as well as utilizing the full potential of the extreme processors.

 

How high are they?
That doesn't mean the paste is applied in a wrong way, could just be a different core utilization/affinity.

 

When applying all my PP work during export of 72 10 Meg RAWs into JPEG in Lightroom 3, where all Cores (and both threads per core) are showing evenly utilized at or near 100% by the several different monitoring tools I have running (Lightroom does a great job at keeping all the cores busy), core 0 and 2 had a high temp of 83, and the other two was I think 76 and 77 (was late last night and I didn't make a point to memorize the lower of the two for whatever reason). I'm too green to know if this could be hinting at a problem or not. But in addition, their transient temps were always higher over the course of hours.

 

You're perfectly fine! Don't even worry about it. Normal difference between the cores can reach 10-15C at max load. I have the same difference with my 840QM (6-7C) .
If you had one core @60C and another @85C - that would probably mean a poor paste application.
Don't even bother re-applying the paste. Keep in mind, to do so, you'll have to also re-apply it on the GPU (you can't remove the CPU heatsink without removing the GPU one first) and that's a lot of mess.
As I said, the difference in temps is most likely affected by more processes assigned to the cores that heat up more. You can play with process affinity in the task manger, but that would also be a waste of your time

 

And I would appreciate if you let us know what they said you about this regard, if they have fixed the backlit kb issue or not, because it's likely I order a 8740w on day 16 or near that date. However, the system will not arrive until september. Thank you very much

 

BTW, here's the latest screenie (after 7 hours of browsing with 10 tabs open and working with code) and same ambient temp of 26C.
Looks like there was some curing period for the paste (OCZ Freeze).
Now, to turn the laptop into a true gaming rig, we need to adjust the fan temp tables to trigger it to the max at lower temps. I'd say 60C - medium, 70C - max. This way you'll never see 80C on the CPU or GPU during load, even though it would make the system noticeably louder.

Better yet, if we could have two modes:

Idle - same tables as now ( 70C - medium fan speed, 85C - max)

Gaming/Load - 60C - medium, 70C - max fan speed.

What do you say, guys? If enough people get interested in this - we might convince HP or a third party software developer to help us. I'd even pay for such a feature.
It will surely increase the long term stability of the system by significantly lowering the peak/max load temps.
BTW, it will not affect the life span of the fan since it will hit the max speed during load anyway. Plus, it's very cheap to replace in any case

 

That's perfectly normal, it's most likely due to the placement of the thermistors, where some are closer to the heat source than others.

 

Aikimox, keep in mind I have no experience with cooling laptops, but this logic sounds fundamentally flawed to me. When the laptop is under 100% load, I would guess it is generating a very consistent amount of heat. When the fan kicks in, the airflow is capable of exhausting only so much air/heat at MAX speed. When the temp hits 85C and stays there with the fan running at max, this is because the system has reached a state of equilibrium (basically heat in equals heat out). Turning the fan on MAX at 70C will slow the approach of 85C temps, but it would not prevent the temp from getting back up to 85C. At least that's what I think would happen.

 

Thanx much folks.

 

That would surely hold true if the temp would stay at 85C at max load. Instead, what happens is that the fan kicks in @85C and lowers the temp to 70-75C, then switches to medium again and the temps climb back to 85C, and so on in cycles. If you force the fan to max out @70-75C - you'll never see 85
That's how it works in AW and Clevo gaming notebooks. My M17X will never let the CPU hit 80C as it will kick the fans to the max speed around 70C. For the GPU it's ~75C.

Also, since the fan speed is triggered by the CPU not the GPU temps, it's even more important. Both temps depend on the same fan but not every application utilizes them equally. The GPU can hit 85C while the CPU is below 80C and whoa - you're killing your video card.

 

Interesting. I don't suppose you have the data to make a graph showing CPU Utilization, CPU Temp and Fan RPM (all vs time)? I am just wondering if the temp falling from 85 to 70 with max fan is truly a function of fan rpm or if perhaps you were gaming and the CPU utilization was not consistent, allowing temps to drop so far partially because the load was decreased.

Again, I have no experience here, so I want you to prove it to me if you can. Plus I'm a sucker for nice graphs.

 

I tried using OCCT to make graphs for you, but it quits as soon as the CPU temp hits 80C, - it's too hot to continue according to them.. Can't blame them, BTW.

Will try Prime95.
You could run it too and see what temp the CPU stabilizes at. You'll see bigger difference between the max and the final stable temp with lower ambient/room temp.

 

Does anybody know the exact maker/model number of the 250GB or 500GB 7200RPM disks that ship from HP?

 

not sure but I guess it is Seagate (all my business HPs came with Seagates)

there is even a 750 available (or soon available) with 7200 rpm (only 16 MB cache) or a 500 GB with 7200 rpm with 32 MB cache and 4GB SSD-Cache

I think all should work

 

Cool. I hope it's the Momentus!

 

Hey guys !
Mine is still working like a charm, but I was wondering if by any chance someone tried to install the M7820 drivers from Dell, as they are newer by 3 months compared to those offered by HP.
I guess there is some sort of BIOS/constructor check, but who knows ?

 

I'll try those on another HDD later on. Good idea, BTW!

 

Has anyone seen this tool: SpeedFan? It's free and supposedly allows for manual fan control and control with personally adjusted temperature controls.

SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer

It might be what you are all looking for...

 

Mine came with a 250GB Western Digital Scorpio Black. Model #: WD2500BEKT.

I've used it in previous laptops, but latest version (4.41) doesn't detect fans in the 8740w.

____________________
Kaliatech 8740W | 620M | M7820 | 2x4GB | DC2 | Backlit Keys | 200GB OCZ Vertex II

 

I've decided to split the SSD RAID setup and now I'm using one in my laptop and the other on my desktop.

I found out something strange...
As you all know, W7 installation typically takes up 17-18GB and the x25-m 160GB SSDs have 148GB free space.

In my desktop it shows "131GB free of 148GB", after W7 install.
But in my 8740w, it shows " 122GB free of 148GB", after W7 install.
Where the heck is the other 9-10GB on my laptop?

And here's the kicker.... If I use the same SSD from the laptop on my desktop, and reinstall the OS, it shows "131GB free of 148GB", after W7 install.

That tells me it's not the SSD. Otherwise, the same would happen in the desktop.

I tried using HDDErase v3.3 to wipe it clean and start again, but there is a problem.
If I try it on the laptop, I get a message that says something like 'erase feature is not supported by the BIOS' and then it asks if I want to "override BIOS". I stopped there because I didn't want to mess with that and potentially brick my laptop , which has been trouble-free from the start.

If I try running HDDErase on my desktop, the program runs the way it should in the beginning (just like in the laptop), but in this case, on the screen where it's suppose to list the SSDs available for erasing, it never does. It just sits there, with the cursor blinking, but no progress. The SSD is recognized in the BIOS menu, so it can't be a bad connection.

Any thoughts?


Also, the windows Experience Index dropped from 7.7 to 5.9 after reinstalling the OS a couple of times (using single SSD every time).
However, the crystalmark benchmark actually showed and improvement, despite the OS installations.