HP OMEN 15 and 17 owners lounge

Your GPU temps were always that high? 2060 shouldn't run that hot, but (again, I don't know your model) in the 2019 models HP used two different fansinks depending on the tier CPU/GPU combo, dividing line being below i7/2070. If you have a weaker fansink you're stuck with the other techniques to make the best of it.
Both MX4 and Kryonaut worked extremely well on my 2080. The Kryonaut gave a few degrees cooler GPU temps and what's currently on it. The Nvidia die is a huge contact patch so honestly any quality paste will be better than dried out OEM, it's that skinny Intel one that's really tricky.
If it's your first time, download and have a read of the service manual for your model to familiarize yourself. HP is one of the few manufacturers that makes it available to us. It's easiest to find via support, use your product number, manuals, Maintenance and Service Guide. HP uses soft screws so make sure you have a decent toolkit.

 

Mine should be a 2018. For reference, i found this guide https://it.ifixit.com/Guida/HP+OMEN++15-dc0030nr+Thermal+Paste+Replacement/112630
It's not the exact same laptop (different code, very likely to have different configuration) but visually everything is the same

 

Looks good, if you're up for it. You have a warmer GPU and cooler CPU than me because that design has a dedicated CPU heat pipe, the 2019 models don't (both are shared with GPU). You are certainly fine just waiting to see if it gets hotter over time, as long are your GPU isn't throttling and slowing your games (use Afterburner to monitor).
If you do tackle it, just be mindful that the two halves are held together by only that one heatpipe--don't stress or bend it. The very first thing to do as you remove it is flip it over and account for all the pads--in case they ripped, got caught, assess if you can reuse them. It's generally fine if they tear in half, stick on the chips, or stick to the heatsink. It's not fine if they get lost or irrecoverably mangled. Replacing them as well will make the project more complicated.

 

I seem to be lucky then, I don't have any issues with a 28 second throttle timer; just have Omen set to performance mode (auto fans); UV setup, and maximum power set via TS to 100W; CPU never seems to go above ~89W even when fully loaded, and doesn't seem to throttle due to power under a long load.

It WAS getting rather toasty playing certain games or running certain loads though that do tax 8+ threads though so I literally in the last couple of days turned the all core turbo down by 2 bins (rest are left as standard). Knocks me from 4GHz all core to 3.8GHz when all 16 threads are loaded but a rather substantial 10 degrees plus off the CPU temps under all core load, whilst still turboing as standard when less cores/threads are in use.

Given the shared heatsink on the CPU/GPU and that my GPU is running OC'd I figured that 1/2 bins was a reasonable compromise; only losing a few percent of total CPU power but gaining a considerable extra amount of room away from the throttle temps .

Still toasty but mid to late 80s maximum temp detected running a TS bench 960M load across the 16 threads down from 98 degrees max temp is a noticeable improvement, and should enable the system to run longer and maintain peak clocks longer with no/fewer throttle spikes or similar, especially with weather due to get warmer over the next few months. Given how Nvidia's turbo clocks work as well; dropping those degrees off the heatsink load may even help the GPU maintain a slightly higher clock average when I'm not hitting the power cap also.
(Albeit I'm maybe not helping myself there as I have the VRAM overclocked as well).

 

Similar to what I did, but for gaming I did all the core multiples to 38. The problem in this machine when the GPU already has the pipes at 75 C isn't 8 cores going to 4.1, it's 1 or 2 cores going up to 4.7. That's a very small hotspot, and the temp is read as the hottest core. That's nowhere near a 90W load, and I haven't seen any game hit even half that.
I'm a little annoyed that I just bought a 4K monitor for more real estate. With Gsync, the 3080 would idle at 300 to drive the 1080p I had been using with base temps around 39, now it's 1000 MHz and 30 something watts, and 47. That gives me even less CPU headroom. I'll try some demanding games and see what it costs me. Worst comes to worst I can turn the monitor off while gaming, although that's where I keep afterburner graphs.

 

To be fair most of what I tend to play seems to use enough cores to bring the clocks down low enough that doesn't happen for me, but a simple cap of the 1/2 core count turbo to ~4.5 would likely resolve that; and likely with VERY minimal overall performance loss, as those last two turbo bins (4.7/4.8) only activate up to around ~50 degrees from what I remember. I normal gaming usage, ~4.1-4.4 seems far more regular.

I hope by the time I come to upgrade HP see fit to give the successors less in the way of shared heatpipes; still not complaining, for the price I paid, this laptop was way better than anything else on the market with equivalent warranty or specs; and it still ploughs through everything I've thrown at it; it also throttles far LESS than many equivalent era Intel laptops I've seen; the chips are just becoming irrationally hot under load and almost impossible to cool well at full performance.

Ultimately the cooling in this laptop is decent, as seen by the fact it can keep the 2080 at a very reasonable temperature even overclocked, the issue is probably not even the fact it doesn't have as many heatpipes on the CPU, but because they are shared, when both are under load, the heat from the CPU/GPU impact the cooling of the other.

I suspect a 2080/6 core CPU with this cooling solution would be absolutely fine, it just struggles to handle that much voltage pumped into one or two CPUs (at high clocks) or the entire CPU core running full load and heat generation; its not like the cooling solution in this thing is insubstantial or that other laptops also don't have similar struggles with keeping the i9s at bay (and many of them worse than this). Dropping those clocks slightly also brings down the voltages required to keep them stable/feed those clocks, so you get a double whammy of lower voltages being applied, and lower clocks in the first place.

 

Agree with you 100%, and when asked by HP to give some feedback that was #1. This is a GT competitor for half the price, and I bought it because it had all the ports and expandability of my old MSI GT sans the optical bay. I want the next one better cooled, and not slimmer, less ports, more portable, dumbed down, anything less than the full turbo profile on the CPU, and unlike this one able to do that with GPU under full TDP.
I've wondered how the 10th gen people fare, since that i9 is 105W not 90W when reaching the full turbo profile. If HP sent them out the door with the same 90W limit, higher and they overheat, or something else. Don't see a lot of them on here asking about CPU temps. Or am I stupid and they didn't do a i9-10???H and just the i7?

 

I seem to remember there was an i9/2080 Super based 10880H series laptop; albeit it's not showing as available right now on the UK store; probably as they are clearing stock now ahead of the launch of the laptops with 3*** series graphics. Will be interested to see if they remain Intel or go AMD for this OMEN generation.

A 5900HX/32GB DDR4 3200/3080 150W TGP 17" with improved cooling for the CPU would be an absolute beast; and due to economy of scale; at least in the UK, they always seem to be one of the best value options. Been very happy with BOTH my Omen 17s for the price; and whilst they aren't PERFECT, compared to some other gaming laptops I've tried, they ARE reliable and just work, and don't have any major quirks or issues, which is worth something for me as much as I like tinkering, I do JUST want to game without headaches due to wierd glitches or compatibility bugs etc.

Personally I'll be waiting until next gen though before considering an upgrade; the laptop 3080s aren't enough of an upgrade for me due to the power constraints vs power requirements of Ampere; Nvidia (or AMDs) next generation should be considerably more power efficient, and thus be a more worthy upgrade in the laptop chassis. The full TGP 3070 is about the same performance as my 2080, so the 3080 realistically is going to be ~20% faster... just not worth it.

More likely to just try flashing the 180-200W 2080 VBIOS; combined that with my VRAM overclock and the UVOC curve on my 2080, it should continue to perform pretty well for some time yet! Given it sounds like some people with it are seeing a 5-10% game performance improvement, it wouldnt be that far from the ballpark of the 3080 anyway, except for the occasional VRAM/RT related bottlenecks.

Update:
Small point, I noticed the other day if I leave the Speedshift at 128 default settings (vs the 32 I'm using), the CPU will weight HARD towards 3.6GHz, as though there is a BIOS clock target on default settings.

Given the fact I want my CPU to clock hard when needed, and I ideally want it to do more than 3.6GHz, rather than a hard lock, what I have instead opted to do is stay at SS 32, knock a few bins off all my turbo considerations (-3 from memory) and have just stuck the 190W vbios on. (the 180W seemed less stable for some reason)

General gaming performance (which is usually GPU bound) is better than ever and thanks to the turbo bin alterations, CPU temps are about the same as stock VBIOS. (so yes it does still get hot), but better than going for the 3.6GHz lock, albeit that ran considerably cooler

Thanks to the increased power budget of 190W, my GPU is turboing higher than ever on its old UVOC curve; during a FireStrike run it never seems to drop below 1800MHz, and is often closer to 1900-2000MHz depending on the test/scene

I would have tried the 200W VBIOS, but realistically due to the shared heatpipes, I knew I'd have to make more concessions in terms of CPU performance doing that, so stuck with this compromise of marginal CPU reduction, with an extra 100-200MHz on the GPU.

Much as those temps are tempting (ignore the pun), CPU clock speed is important for high refresh rate/high framerate, so figured docking some turbo bins but otherwise allowing full turbo, rather than allowing the CPU to float at 3.6GHz almost locked at a cooler temp, was a better concession; and this way if I decide to aim for lower temps, I can just knock a little more turbo bin off

PLUS I can still switch to max fans if I encounter any issues in summer.

 

I agree, it'd been 10 years since my last HP laptop (two in a row that cooked themselves) and I was pretty dubious for the price, but the build quality is better than expected and aside from some quirks it runs really well.
I enjoy reading how other people handle this machine, as I've tried several strategies which all work well enough--at the end of the day it's up to the user and HP has left this reasonably unlocked enough for us to play with.
The only thing keeping me from the vBIOS mod is losing the mini displayport--if you come across any way to preserve that please let me know.
I gave up on Speedshift after doing some tests and discovering that it really didn't decrease the idling watts. Since the 2080 is always on with gsync, baseline CPU temps will never be below 40 C so I kind of lost track of what I was even chasing.
The notebook fan control ramp has helped immeasurably, no need for max fan when it does it promptly when it should now, which means really no need for OGH other than the keyboard lighting. Even light studio obviates that but I have it disabled since it's a pretty needy background process.
With 90W available all the time, background tasks are a real nuisance so scouring windows telemetry, compatability, the egregious Chrome and Edge updaters in task scheduler and services has really flattened my idle lines.
You may know this and be able to help me out: I have no issues cleaning it up to the point where it reliably hits 4.8 GHz single core during normal use. I have never been able to get it to hit 4100 MHz all core benchmark. It will go 89W 4.0 GHz all day at around 80C provided the GPU is idle. Any ideas? It's not the wattage, because I can undervolt it a bit and achieve the same with about 83 W. There are no limit flags in Throttlestop.
As far as the next model, I'd also like to see separate cooling as it really corners the CPU headroom having its base temp equal to the GPU. Driving an external 4K has now lost me almost another 10 C. I'd like to get an OLED option, maybe a QHD (the 4K I have is beautiful but kind of a waste at 175% scaling), better audio out options (my MSI had a optical spdif with the weird 3.5mm), an additional USB C. And a more unlocked BIOS. Oh, and most importantly, a numlock light, inexplicably absent on mine.
After finishing Death Stranding I've taken a break from gaming, just waiting for something as good to get me hooked again. Any recommendations? I'm an immersive sim guy.

 

From what I've noticed it seems to be thread count related. If 8 threads/tasks are in use, then I would see 4100MHz, but as soon as it hits 8c/16th, then it drops an extra 100MHz, a bit like an AVX offset.
Apologies for the delay, I'd been running some tests in the background and updating the above post as I went, and completely missed your response

I just dropped to -4 turbo bins, just to allow a bit more CPU temp headroom so typically in game I'm 3.7-3.9+ GHz sometimes higher. Not much in it compared to yours Managed to hit just over 28K GPU score in firestrike though, so the GPU itself is definately enjoying the extra power and frankly the extra GPU performance and reduced chances of throttling should be worth more than a few hundred MHz CPU.

Unfortunately I haven't found a way to preserve the mini-DP other than buying a USB-C to Mini-DP adaptor; I do have a monitor connected to MiniDP but don't use it often at all, so next time I think I'm going to need it, I'll likely just pickup the necessary adaptor.

Immersive sim-wise, I've not tried it, but Valheim seems very popular!


Update:
Try -4 turbo bins on 1-4 cores active via TS, -3 turbo bins on 5/6 cores active, and -2 on 7/8 cores active.

Seems to net me better overall performance compared to say setting a static 3.8GHz when gaming as you mentioned. Lowest I've seen it drop when benching is 3.8GHz as per your gaming lock, but typically higher, and keeping temps from hitting throttle point. As you say the voltage/frequency spikes on low core usage are the hardest things to deal with, this seems to tame those to an extent, as the CPU is restricted to 4.4GHz, whilst not going as far as restricting to 3.6-3.8GHz max.

Turbo ratio limit should look like this
1 Core active - 44
2 Cores active - 44
3 cores active - 43
4 cores active - 42
5 cores active -42
6 cores active -41
7 cores active -41
8 cores active - 39

 

After reasonable success without too much CPU throttling with the above I am now trying this, slightly less aggressive reduction (-3 on 1-4 cores active, -2 on 5-8 cores):
Turbo ratio limit:
1 Core active - 45
2 Cores active - 45
3 cores active - 44
4 cores active - 43
5 cores active -43
6 cores active -42
7 cores active -41
8 cores active - 39


The all core doesn't really seem to be the problem, its those low core count high clock speed/high voltage spikes, so going to give this a shot

I might tinker with this further, maybe push 1-2 core back down to 44, but then 3-6 cores back up to 44, 7 to 42 and leave 8 core as 40/39. All a balance of heat vs CPU, especially now with GPU load at 190W.

This CPU is GOING to get hot, up to PROCHOT most likely, but ideally I want it to run as high as it can as much as it can

Not much else I can do the machine apart from lowering ambient temperature, physical case modifications (which would screw warranty) or better thermal paste (its MX4 atm, so Kryonaut or LM, but both of these have potential longevity issues).

 

The 14nm architecture is exponentially inefficient to get those max turbo speeds. The -H as opposed to the desktop processors are basically the same thing, except the base frequency is much lower to keep the profile at the 45W package profile (2.3 on the i9). All we want is the same profile as the desktop chip which is burned in to it, and it does work fine in this machine provided it's properly repasted and not concurrent with full GPU load. So you haven't repasted yours yet? I couldn't wait.
It always breaks my heart to see so many people disable turbo to get this under control, like amputating an arm for a gangrenous pinkie. I'm curious why you're looking for a one-size fits all throttlestop profile, does it PROCHOT during regular work or just when the GPU is loaded, and you're trying to get max clocks during gaming for FPS purposes? Since the 4K is 60Hz and gsync I'm not in need of these 144+ framerates so I'm not chasing that, and the 2080 will drop due to game complexity before CPU limits it. I've got Performance, which is the max for the chip and runs fine for benchmarking, windows work, etc, and the game profile. I've added yours and will give it a try next time I game.
Your revision should work well, after dealing with a non-flat heatsink and working around it, the 2X4 die has proven to be extremely problematic. I honestly think they'd get better results with a IHS on these, soldered like the new ones and why our 50% more powerful Nvidia chips stay at 70 C. That pinprick of 20+ watts once it gets above 4 GHz needs someplace to go immediately. I've achieved the same functionality with a copper shim, floating in kryonaut to compensate for the uneven heatsink contact. It's lasted a year so far.

 

I've gone to MX4, but not Kryonaut with its pump out issues, or Liquid Metal with its...many...issues, especially as I have a multi year extended warranty and I want the machine as simple as possible to return to stock if necessary.

As you say, I really don't want to go as far as disabling turbo, or locking it down to a 3.6/3.8GHz all core, as you're right, that defeats the point of having such a powerful machine and hurts me a little inside, I don't mind docking a few bins just to allow extra leeway for the extra heat produced by 40W extra on the GPU though

Typically my machine only protchots when its under extreme stress test, or heavy GPU and CPU load, for day to day general usage its absolutely fine, but I've always been the sort of person who prefers a one-size-fits-all, 24/7 overclock over going for 'race' runs that are unstable; but I also want to extract as much performance as possible from the machine, and reducing all the Turbo levels to say 4GHz seems unnecessary, I am trying to see where I can find a nice balance!

At the moment I actually am trying out the 1-2 core set to 45, 3-6 core set to 44, 7 to 42 and 8 set to 40, I reckon this is somewhere around the sweet spot, although this may be a little aggressive. I'm working to find that balance between doesn't throttle or throttle often, and maximum power though, because once I am there; I will literally just leave it there; I really want to find a nice balance between throttling and maximum performance for games though; max on CPU AND GPU.

Up until recently I'd never docked the CPU performance at all, I'd simply unlocked the power limits to 90-100w, upped the turbo time limits to infinite, and then undervolted to allow it to sit there more of the time, but with the extra heat generated by the 190W VBIOS (GPU now goes up to mid-late 70s and clocks higher), I had to take a more pragmatic look at the CPU.

Realistically the difference between 4.7-4.8 being rarely triggered, and being locked down to 4.4/4,5 over 1-2 cores is fairly low, but the difference on locking down to say 3.6/3.8 for any number of cores...that's more substantial. And unnecessary unless I was chasing optimal temperatures.

As it is, I want to find the best balance with my machine and GPU/CPU for maximum performance, and minimal throttling. My office gets quite warm in summer, so now the weather is starting to get warmer again (and my MX4 has had a few months to cure), its a good time to find a balance.


Plus it gives me a chance to update my signature performance figures haha!

 

Small additional point I forgot to mention - ENABLE Hardware Accelerated Graphics Scheduling in Windows 10.
It doesn't make much of a difference performance wise, either good OR bad at the moment but in some circumstances this reduces CPU load considerably (5-20%) due to the amount of work Nvidia tends to do in the GPU driver; which in turn helps reduce heat output from the CPU, and helps with that heat/performance equilibrium

For that reason alone, its worth enabling just to help with the heat balancing.

If you watch the side beside here, you can see sometimes the CPU usage is all but equal, but other times its noticeably lower with HAGS on.
Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling ON vs OFF Windows 10 2004 - RTX 2070 Super 10 Games 1080p 1440p - YouTube

Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling OFF vs ON - RTX 3060 Ti + Ryzen 5 5600X 10 Games 1080p 1440p 4k - YouTube

This all being said though, I found a new worst case scenario for heat generation for the machine, and it made me change my settings somewhat.

FFXV Benchmark.

Not only does this benchmark (and I assume the game) push very high GPU load, it also pushes (70-80% at some points!) high CPU load...literally loading all 8 cores and 16 threads, and pushing wattages higher than any I'd seen before in a 3d load or any othe game, 50-60W+ at points. Combined with the 190W VBIOS, this was too much heat load for the heatsink array to handle, even on MX4 and with the CPU undervolted, so I've tweaked the ratios down again (I'd rather prevent 100 C in a worst case real world load as then everything else will run better/cooler)

This load still pushes the CPU into the mid-high 90s at points, but following the tweak it at least IS getting VERY hot, but not enough to throttle heavily below my settings.

My settings are now
1 cores - 45 (-3)
2 core - 45 (-3)
3 core - 44 (-3)
4 core - 44 (-2)
5 core - 44 (-2)
6 core - 43 (-1)
7 core - 40 (-3)
8 core - 37 (-4)

If I stepped back to the 180W VBIOS or back to the stock 150W VBIOS, I'd probably be able to push this back up again. I am going to give the 180W VBIOS a shot again with the same settings and seeing how much difference that 10W load on the GPU actually makes in terms of performance.

 

Ok, well I stepped back to the 180W vbios, and the difference in temperatures was small but noticeable (about 4 degrees on both CPU and GPU).
With the same CPU settings above, this pushed my temperatures noticeably back towards the mid 80s and much more comfortably so...BUT...it also meant I could tweak the CPU settings a bit more GPU clock speeds did drop a bit, but still noticeably higher than stock.

This allowed me to change my CPU settings to:
1 cores - 45 (-3)
2 core - 45 (-3)
3 core - 44 (-3)
4 core - 44 (-2)
5 core - 44 (-2)
6 core - 44 (0)
7 core - 41 (-2)
8 core - 38 (-3)

At least in the FFXV benchmark this actually allowed me to net slightly better performance vs the previous higher GPU wattage, lower CPU performance (13444 vs 13706). Temperatures still extremely hot, I saw 98 degrees peak and Throttlestop registered 100, but crucially I believe this was for a split second, and I did not see any noticeable clock speed drops compared to my earlier more aggressive turbo settings, CPU was running 3.7-3.8 GHz (as expected given the core/thread load) throughout the entire test; in tandem, the higher benchmark score with this 180W VBIOS and higher CPU performance suggests that this balance was at least better for this benchmark which weights heavily on both, so ultimately is more balanced overall

I will give this a run around the benchmark circuit, see how I do on others that are less CPU focused, and decide whether I need to go back to my prior settings which were more conservative on 6-8 cores, but run cooler, or whether I will go with this

****

Based on what I am seeing, I think the 2019 Omen 17 CPU cooling was obviously designed around the 6 core variants/45W sustained loads, with slightly lower peak turbo frequencies, and lower core counts, and NOT the 60W+ requirements of the I9 under full load; especially when combined with the 150W+ 2080 TGP.
It desperately wants JUST A BIT more surface area, non-shared heatpipes, or an extra heatpipe on the CPU to move that heat away from the small die area that bit quicker, and it sounds like they MIGHT have resolved that on the 2020 Omens onwards.

All being said, much as I'm having to tweak this machine for better all around performance/better balance, I have to say I think given the money I paid for this machine, I genuinely couldn't have gotten anything better for anywhere near this amount of money. Now that I've applied a bit of love, tinkering and the 180/190W VBIOS, I am genuinely seeing desktop 2080 region performance from the thing, and better than 2070 Super desktop cards in many tests (albeit maybe not a super clocked one).

I will say whilst I've gained performance from the 180W/190W VBIOS, its definitely NOT equivalent to the additional 20-30% extra power I am feeding then GPU over default VBIOS, so I suspect HP actually made a rather good choice there at 150W, it does seem like it was probably the optimal balance between performance and heat (and still WAY higher than any MaxQ nonsense), especially in trying to balance the i9 CPUs. It is possible maybe my reasonably high VRAM OC (to 15.6Gbps, desktop 2080 Super levels) is leeching a bit of power from the GPU core but at least in my testing the extra RAM performance is better than leaving the VRAM at stock. Maybe my GPU clocks aren't as high as they could be if I optimised that, but the extra 30W the 180W VBIOS gives should definitely make up for that, with my GPU clocks now not dropping below 1800MHz, and regularly at the high end, or in the 1900s or even 2000s.

HP are very close to making some truly exceptional machines. I also wish they'd come set to performance mode vs standard out of the box or offer more user configurable options (such as TGP/boost/RAM speed), as I've noted some reviewers miss this performance toggle and then lampoon them for more restricted CPU performance compared to those with unlocked wattage (which is then fixed by setting the machine back to performance mode) and means they probably lose sales they rightly should have won.

It feels like with a little extra focus, and not even much extra cost, HP will be amongst the best options in this field. They are very close to providing something that rivals any of the other gaming laptop manufacturers release in UK/Europe, at a noticeably lower cost; if I was Dell (Alienware) or MSI, I would be scared, as HP only needs to resolve a few minor issues (and improve the speaker configuration) to be on top of them, at a much lower cost.

 

For what its worth, in the FFXV benchmark, at 1080p I get around 13500-13750 or so on standard, and up to around 10850 on high. By contrast every video of the 2070 Super DESKTOP card I am seeing on the net is getting around 9000, so this is a CLEAR 10-15% faster than a desktop 2070 Super, and definitely in desktop 2080 territory.

I also just watched a video of an R7 3700X and RTX 2080 Gigabyte Turbo OC desktop card (basically a slightly OC stock model) getting 10555, a very equivalent system with a slightly OC desktop 2080 and 8c/16th CPU, almost IDENTICAL to my score; so we are DEFINATELY in RAW high end desktop territory, even if our CPU and GPU have now been succeeded in the desktop space. With the much more limited offerings in the laptop space, we should be good for another year or two, even on high settings.

There are other videos with the likes of one of the Aorus Xtreme super high end 2080s getting about another 5-10% (11800), but bare in mind those were around £1000 at the time we bought this laptop...

FFXV benchmarks original stats available put a 2080 stock at high as around 9750 points, a Titan V at 10664 (so about the speed of my laptop...yay) and a stock 2080Ti as 11135.

We are getting THAT close. Ultimately if I was able to run this CPU at full speed, and get away with the 200W VBIOS, at the same time (for example maybe in a AC 21 degrees controller room over the 25 approx with hotspots of this room), this really would be all over an equivalent desktop.

It also really highlights to me that given how cutdown the mobile 3080 is (its basically a slightly cut 3070 desktop due to Ampere's power requirements) that there really isn't a great upgrade for this laptop available yet...STILL, a year and a half almost later.

AMD is pulling further and further ahead in the CPU market, so the 5900HX for example looks like a good step forward there from the 9880H, both in power consumption, more performance and also probably a little cooler, but GPU-wise, we've maybe only got ~10% more performance and more VRAM this gen on the 3080, which is quite disappointing given its essentially two revisions forward if you count the 2080 Super. The desktop 3070 is basically a 2080TI in performance, and the mobile 3080 isn't even quite to that level, so if I'm only about 10-15% off that 2080ti, then that comparison carries pretty neatly.

We're are essentially waiting for Nvidia 4000 mobile series or for AMD to bring high end RDNA2/3 to mobile for anything really worthwhile to upgrade to; right now there is legitimately NOTHING worth throwing 2K+ at, there IS no real upgrade path, as we've barely moved forward in two Nvidia mobile GPU generations.

 

Well just for the sheer lols, I decided to set fans to max, remove all the CPU turbo bin reductions, and put the 200W VBIOS on (with my pre-existing UVOC curve, +800 VRAM, and the -.120 I have on the CPU).
CPU DEFINATELY throttled on FFXV bench! Daaaang. Shame the heat output is too great to run this setup normally hah
BUT got an end score of 11402! That is HUGE for a laptop of this era, and not that far from that Aorus Xtreme desktop GPU OR a stock 2080Ti. Bearing in mind how much power and cooling those have, these laptop 2080 Max P chips are definitely decent bins!

Also ran the 3Dmark suite and got:
Firestrike - 22907! - GPU score - 28595, CPU score - 20875, combined -9766
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/25136128
UPDATE: IF THIS WAS USING A VERIFIED DRIVER, I WOULD HAVE BEEN THE WORLD RECORD HOLDER FOR A 9880H/2080 Mobile GPU. I BEAT THE VERIFIED NUMBER 1 by ~100 points.
Search (3dmark.com)

Timespy - 10940. Gpu score - 11322, cpu score 9186
Night Raid - 48078, GPU score 101480, CPU score 12074


Goes without saying this is pretty insane levels of performance from a laptop, especially one that although big is by far NOT the biggest or chunkiest of the gaming laptop breed. I am genuinely wondering now if its worth upgrading the MX4 in the laptop to something else slightly better (that isn't LM).

The benchmarker in me is genuinely thrilled as that Firestrike is possibly a record for this CPU/GPU combo as Firestrike's result screen told me the best score for my config was 22800~.

 

Hey all! New member of the Omen club here Picked up a factory refurb 15" 2020 model (ek-0013) from Microcenter a few days ago; I was originally out to score a deal on an open-box Zephyrus G14 or M15 but Best Buy sux and I couldn't find one in-stock for a good price. I'm glad I ended up with this machine instead because I'm super enthused about it so far. Specs-
10750H
16GB
RTX 2060
512GB+32GB
1080P 300hz

I knew that being a refurb there would be some mechanical issues, and there were, but I mostly got them fixed. Trackpad was loose and rattley but I shimmed the retainer on the front (sadly there's no adjustment set screw like on Macbooks) and it's absolutely perfect now. The CPU side fan has an intermittent rattle at low RPM which I'm not sure what to think about... dunno whether it's just rattling against other components and needs to be dampened, or if the bearings are bad and it needs to be replaced. Leaning towards the former since it sounds different (more of a rattle than a grind) than when I've had confirmed fan failures on other machines and it goes away at other speeds. It's pretty annoying but fixable. The storage was also questionable... I hadn't used an Optane setup before, let alone the H10 c-c-c-c-ombo drive and was pretty disappointed. Some things maybe seemed snappier than a regular NVMe but overall there was a lot of random lags and stutters that I couldn't explain- sometimes it actually felt like using a spinning HDD where the system would zone out while loading a program or opening an Explorer window. And on top of that the Intel RST driver was using like 2-10% CPU constantly which was enough to do weird things to CPU Turbo. So I said heck that and put a fresh install of Windows on a proper NVMe in the second M.2 slot (an Inland 512GB with DRAM & E12 controller that I pulled from my old laptop). Performance is better, idle CPU use is lower. I separated out the Optane and NAND on the H10 in BIOS and I'm using the NAND portion as a secondary storage disk for things that don't mind being on a slower SSD. The Optane I guess I'll use for a scratch disk or something lol, idk.

The biggest issue though was terrible throttling on the CPU. Initially I couldn't go above ~3.2Ghz single-core or ~2.8Ghz all-core because temps on individual cores would usually jump right up to 97* PROCHOT and even if I could keep them in the mid-90s with max fan and an (unstable) -100mV undervolt the PL1 would creep down to around 27W and limit clocks. This was especially baffling because the GPU was running perfectly, like around 60* even in 100W "Performance" mode. I know that this is basically the worst CPU to have to cool combined with the easiest GPU to cool but something seemed off with just how poorly the CPU was running so I decided to jump right to repasting. I wish I'd taken a photo of the next part because uh wow. I pulled off the heatsink to find... someone else's questionable Liquid Metal job! I was completely baffled for a moment while my brain processed what I was seeing. To this mystery previous owner's credit, they did take all the precautions to discourage metal creep with tape "moats" around the CPU & GPU. But on the other hand, this is what did them in because they made a terrible mistake. Again, wish I'd taken photos but I was just so gobsmacked all I could think about was cleaning up and avoiding getting droplets of gallium or whatever under a BGA. So picture an Intel mobile CPU. There's that metal frame around the edge, right? That spreads the mechanical load so the heatsink isn't only pressing on the die? The well-intentioned doink who did the liquid metal covered that frame with with electrical tape to keep the LM in. The end result being that the f**king CPU wasn't even making direct contact with the the heatsink. The only way it was getting any cooling at all was because the LM was sort of filling in the electrical tape-width gap. I cleaned and repasted both CPU and GPU and got much, much better thermal results. The GPU got a few degrees warmer which I knew would happen going from LM to MX-4 but it's still staying real cool. The CPU difference though is night-and-day and I'm no longer cursing Intel's name. With a bit o' Throttlestop magic I can get the 10750 to stay at its max 4.3Ghz all-core indefinitely, pulling about 70W and staying below 90*C which is going to be great for content creation stuff where the GPU isn't heavily loaded and I can put all my power & thermal budget into the CPU. At these settings, CPUz bench got 532 ST / 3802 MT... like holy crap wow. That's DOUBLE what I get on the OC'd FX-8320 in my desktop! I'm still figuring out tuning for gaming but early results are promising; I think I'll be able to get 3.6-4Ghz with the GPU loaded but I have noticed that if I go too hard on the CPU & GPU at the same time the system kicks the GPU from 100W down to 80W which I can't have (gotta go fast).

Speaking of the GPU, it's amazing. I have less to say about it other than it's running real nice. In 100W mode stock clocks were around 1650-1700Mhz and with an OC in Afterburner I'm getting ~1790-1845Mhz which seems phenomenal to me for a laptop. Memory seems ok OC'd to 13GT/s, might push it further might not. Haven't done much actual benchmarking yet, just stress testing and playing Cyberpunk (which counts as stress testing, I promise!) but I have a feeling I'm gonna get real close to the overclocked Vega 64 in my desktop I just really, really, really wish there was a way to control the GPU TBP manually with Afterburner or something. It would be nice to have, for example, a 100W profile for xtreme gaming, a 60W profile for less intense games, and like a 30W profile for things that need more GPU than the Intel 630 but not the full powah of a TU106. Nice chip though and runs cool (~70*ish) thanks to the suuuppper low thermal density one gets when running a 445mm^2 die at 100W.

So yep. Pleased with my new machine despite the tweaking needed out-of-box (or is it because the out-of-box tweaking has yielded such good results? ) I'll post some benchmarks when I have the CPU & GPU perf really dialed in.

Oh, and the display is fantastic! Nice contrast and color reproduction and I'm finding that 300hz is almost as good as having Adaptive Sync for ability to run at low framerates (30-50fps) with Vsync but without the extreme lag that happens when running Vsync @ low FPS on a 60hz panel. Extremely good times.

Team Omen w00t

 

I came to the conclusion that the H10 has no business in a laptop. The optane module itself gets much hotter than the QLC half, and it just doesn't run right without a heatsink. I got a M01 i3-9100 for $120 refurbished to drive my TV, obviously not getting a video card for it anytime soon, but even in that well ventilated case the H10 removed from my Omen didn't fare well until I got a beefy heatsink on it. It still spikes up to 60C during backups and such. Such a weird thing they pushed out the door with no use-case engineering. The Omen 17 has the most awful heatsink bracket I've ever seen, since the modules don't lie flat on the H10 I don't think it ever made good contact.

 

I noticed the heat too... also got over 60* temps on the Optane running CrystalDiskMark. I read about the heatsink issues and I think mine are making good contact cause the NAND portion of the H10 and the SSD I added are staying reasonably cool. All those IOPS on the Optane just drive the controller real hard I guess

 

I've also put a ton of 660ps or whatever their QLC drives are in friends' computers and they run great for general use. Cool, too. My D:\ game SSD is a 2TB Rocket Q which doesn't run nearly as cool but it's snappy enough for loading up games and has been trouble-free. I honestly can't say the Optane cache versus conventional SLC cache is any faster for a QLC drive. My takeaway from the whole thing is why would I want any of the work usually handled by a controller being put as additional load on my CPU? It's just a whole 'nother layer of complication and points of failure.

 

right, like handle the caching in the drive controller, or the CPU memory controller, or the PCH, really anything but the RST software RAID driver.

 

I just had my laptop cleaned and repasted with TFX... in idle, it usually did even 40°, now it's sitting at les than 30° with no undervolt.
For gaming benchmarks i'll wait a little to have it cure, but the premises are good

 

The thermal compound HP uses is very stable and doesn't seem to degrade much even with a few years of HARD use, but absolute garbage in terms of heat transmission. Even old faithful MX4 is way better temperature wise.

 

Same settings, same undervolt, fallout 76 passed from a good 85° celsius to both cpu and gpu to a max of 61.
It's bonkers. I can now hear my thoughts without the fans at max speed.

 

Some more tuning progress...

I decided to try out the 115W vBIOS and my GPU clocks are through the roof! Getting about 1800-1900Mhz in Quake 2 RTX and Time Spy (and my TS score went up to 7240) and seeing around 2Ghz(!) sustained in Cyberpunk. GPU TBP limit stays at max now (no more dropping to 80W) but it's an even more delicate balance to keep the CPU running well. Even in Performance Mode with max fans the CPU PL1 will drop to 25W pretty quickly if CPU & GPU usage is both high. That's still enough for 3300Mhz with all cores loaded though which is acceptable. I made some Afterburner profiles with locked GPU vCore and if I keep the TBP under 100W that way the CPU will stay at 55W or higher PL1 (about 35-45W actual) at 4Ghz indefinitely. I'm still struggling to understand what exactly are the triggers for the firmware to lower the CPU PL1 but it seems like some combination of CPU power, CPU temp, CPU clock, fan speed, performance mode, charger capacity, charger temp, battery draw, and maybe VRM temp.

With the 200W charger I've calculated about 10W battery drain @ 115W GPU/25W CPU (if HWINFO is reading the battery data correctly) and the charger gets warm but not uncomfortably hot. The battery usage isn't too severe, didn't seem to cause any issues over several hours of continuous gaming but its obviously not ideal. I have a 230W zBook charger but it uses the larger 7.4mm plug so I ordered some adapter, the L kind, not the dongle kind so hopefully the current carrying capacity is ok. Got extra so I can cut one open and see how safe it looks. Hopefully it works, having that extra 30W might let me push the CPU clocks up to 4Ghz all-core with 115W GPU and still not have battery drain, then I'd really be in PC tuner heaven lol

 

Does anyone here have the Omen 15 with Realtek Wifi Card ? What RTL is ?
I want to buy the Ryzen one, but in my country the Ryzen + RTX 2060 is using Realtek Wifi Card, i'm afraid about the performance of the card, and HP is well known too block non factory defaults card. And does anyone had experience changing to intel card ?

 

Gutted, my laptop has finally been hit with Plundervolt, I can see the offset in Throttlestop is +0000 Is it possible to rollback bios to fix this?

 

Well we can't help you if you don't tell us the model of you notebook....

 

HP OMEN 15-dc1045na

 

i was curious about doing something similar on my 2060 (even if i never did anything similar), but in a lesser, tamer way, just to avoid overstressing the pc and the charger and maybe ending up recreating the heat problem i just solved by repasting it.
Are there options or there's just the 115W one?

 

Just exchanged Asus G14 for the BB model (i7 RTX 3070) and made the usual ThrottleStop adjustments.

One thing I noticed is that the fan on very frequently; its cooling is pretty aggressive even when idle. Noticed that there is an option on the bios for a "fan always on", so I decided to check that off as I don't need the fans kicking in sub 50.

It still seems pretty aggressive. Hopefully this is normal.
here are my config just in case I did something wrong.

 

Check your omen control center profile.
In mine (a 2018) confort keeps it cooler but noisier, for instance

 

Sorry for the late reply!
AFAIK the only b00sted BIOS is the 115W one. If the stock TDP isn't enough but the whole 115W is too much, you could install then 115W BIOS and do some experimenting in Afterburner to find correlations between power consumption and certain points on the V/F curve, and then lock GPU clock to a point that fits your thermal/acoustic profile.

 

Hey all, so I just cleaned the laptop again, repaste it about a month ago and still have serious issues with it. The gpu runs really hot, like 80-81° on load in games like AC and red dead redemption 2. The cpu is fine, with undervolt + coolpad it sits at arround 75/76 ° on load in most games, boosting 3.5 ghz. The gpu is the real issue here, I undervolted the gpu to boost at 1.700Mhz clockspead at 800v, it's stable, without undervolt on gpu it gets even hotter. While I am playing the profile is on performance so it won't power throttle, cause the cpu needs to draw more power and fans are at maximum. I'm at a loss here, after the cleaning and the repaste it was really cool, one month passed and it gets hot as hell, cam't even play games or keep my hand on the keyboard of how hot it is. Any suggestions on what might cause it?
Thanks

P.s. the laptop is Omen 17-2019 variant, with i7 9750h and rtx 2070.

 

Maybe the heatsink is dysfunctional and doesn't transfer the heat properly-

 

That`s wierd, can it be replaced in case it`s a hardware problem ?

 

This is quite strange, same year but i9-2080 model which I believe has the exact same fansink, so you should be under capacity. What compound did you use? Did you use enough? The Nvidia die is much bigger.
Many of these were mismade, so the heatsink sat flat on the GPU but not the CPU. But most stories are of high CPU temps and paste jobs opening up. I wonder if you have the same issue in reverse. Are you tightening the CPU first and then the GPU, per the numbers?
How are your fans? They both run the same speed in this thing, there shouldn't be any tonality or sound any different. Airflow out the side by the card reader okay, and warm?
Did it get this way or like this out of the box? Are you using it on a flat surface or cooling pad?
I'd suggest you also repost this in the vBIOS mod thread as it's this specific machine, and a lot of people who have taken it apart many times. Also running the RTX at 190W with no temp issues. That thread gave me the hint to fix my CPU temps (OP clued me in to the heatsink issue).
Even when it's running right there's a hotspot between the trackpad and keyboard, and area above the pipes is always quite warm. But my GPU doesn't get over low 70s running anything at 4K.

 

Nice... but i'm not going to do it, cpu temps are creeping up (again, after i repasted with tfx. Have to underclock it to 3 ghz...) and adding heat with the gpu would make things worse.
Probably going to sell the laptop in 3-4 months and replace it with a msi or anything that isn't a omen, to be honest. I now understand the "space heater" memes

 

Hey, thanks for the reply, so let's begin. I am using arctic mx 5 and I spread it over the die as even as I could, the paste is a bit thicker than I expected it to be, yesterday I ordered from amazon the thermalright tfx, I am going to test that one today and see how it goes for about a month or so. I am tightning the screws as the numbers are shown, everything seems to be in place but I am not an expert. The fans when I play demanding games are maxed out, I assume they work corectly, haven't noticed any change in tonality or change in air flow from right to left or backside. The air on the sides is quite hot and the surface of the laptop on the upper side down to middle is really hot, on rivatuner osd it shows 80-81° for the gpu and arround 76 for the cpu, but you can't hold your hand on the surface for more than 5 seconds. When it came out of the box this laptop had the best cooling, for 6 months I played all the games maxed out with an undervolt on throttlestop , constantly hitting 4.1-4.2 Ghz and temps arround 72° on cpu and 67-68° on gpu. After the bios update, windows update to the latest version and OGH updates, it all went bad. Problems with the tpl 1 and tpl 2, thermal throttling, cores not hitting more than 3.9 Ghz, cpu spiked up to 90°. I had a cooling pad since the first time I bought the laptop, I knew laptops were hot so went ahead and purchased one. I will repaste today with the thermalright and see if that fixes the issue, I should know in about 2/3 weeks or so. I have no idea what might cause this, even wtih the undervolts on both gpu and cpu, it still runs very hot on the gpu side. I didn't have these issues before, about 6 months ago, the gpu would clock at 1.800mhz and temps were in low 70.

 

I started writing a long thing for you, and then forgot to ask a very basic question. Is this the new or old style 17 from 2019? Can you post your product number, which is in HP Sysinfo by pressing FN-ESC? Or just a link to a listing of a similar model? Or just a pic of it? Also go to page 1 of the vbios mod thread, is that big picture exactly what your motherboard looks like?

 

The new one from 2019 , Product name : OMEN by HP Laptop 17-cb0xxx, Product number : 7DT12EA#ABU

Motherboard looks exactly like that one

 

Let's try this, I've got my usual Afterburner graph running as well as GPU-Z on the Sensors tab on my external monitor, and Nvidia Gsync Pendulum demo running on the 4K panel with nosync (60Hz). GPU-Z is reporting 150W Board Power Draw, and GPU Chip Power Draw 120W. GPU temp is flat at 70C, CPU isn't doing much at 10W and solid 65C (GPU is heating it up).
I'll close that and run CPU-Z and let the temps level. My 2080 idles at 35W which is a lot, because it's driving 2 4K screens, around 50C, CPU around 51C depending on what everything else is doing.
I'm running a 16 core stress on the CPU. CPU power is 85W (I've got a little undervolt, otherwise it'd be 90W which is the performance PL in this thing on the i9), it runs continuously, CPU temp level at 90C.

Can you repeat something similar so we see how your system is behaving? With the newer version of OGH the CPU power may drop down to 45W after 28 sec, that's why I disabled it. But since your issue is GPU temps, I'm interested in what the first exercise reveals. Most games run about 35W on the CPU, a GPU demo type thing isn't as demanding so we want to see how many watts your GPU is running at 100% utilization, and what the resultant temperature is.

 

I made a video, let me post it so I can show you.
The first video is about 6 months ago , have a look at the temps , clock speeds and all that, this was done with undervolt on cpu, no gpu undervolt and fans profile was on default.


The second one I did this morning , this one has an undervolt on gpu as well


the third one is what you asked me to do with the pendulum demo



I repasted the laptop today, did an undervolt on the gpu , it sits at 1.500 mhz clock speed and 0.795 v, seems stable and runs about anything , no temp problems for now on games , temps are at mid 60`s on the gpu and low 70`s on the cpu with performance tab on and default fans. lets`s see how much this new paste lasts the last one I used, lasted for about one and half month , today when I opened the laptop the cpu was covered in it all thru but the gpu since it`s a bigger die , was all dried out and had areas where the paste didnt cover.

 

Thanks for the last video, you def seem to have a 115W vBIOS, no way in hell should your GPU temps be over 70C unless something is up. Lemme go find the link for the other thread I had on reddit about repasting this machine. MX4 just only held for a month, twice. If your heatsink plate doesn't sit flat on both chips, there's no way to deal with it other than a more viscous thermal compound, or adding a shim on one side or the other. I did CPU side.

 

Well now I repaste it with thermalright tfx, very hard to apply that one, it kept getting strong really fast. But I do hope it will last a bit longer than the mx4.

 

Well after a week I can honestly say things are not better. Still hot, in the 80° in rdr2, but can't hold my hand for 5 seconds on the keyboard so I think is much more than that. Anyone has an ideea at what point does the rtx 2070 start throttling and at what point it starts melting? Don't wanna ruin the laptop just yet. Any help appreciated and suggestions.

 

I don't know what else to tell you, I don't have the exact same configuration but it's extremely unusual in this machine for the GPU to ever be higher than the CPU. Since you said that the picture matches, you have the same heatsink that can handle the i9/2080 somewhat fine (CPU not so much) and you're running 30W less on the GPU.
The good news is it's not a critical temperature, it's just unusually high. I think 95C is limit on Nvidia but they will throttle approaching that so I don't know if you're taking a performance hit.

 

Well, I will try to look for a betrer paste and try again, see if that works. Maybe the paste is not very good and it needs something better. Thanks for the reply.

 

Kryonaut was worth the money for me.