Hp envy 13 (8th gen) mx150

Hi
Anyone know what the temp limit of the mx150 is? I hear it's either 60c something (i think this is the default though), 72c (through bios update?) or 92c (changing thermal profile?).
Just wondering if anyone had experience with the laptop and could comment on cooling?
Just out of interest, does gpu z update the current temp field to any of these temps?

Thanks

 

To be completely honest, I have one (AH1033TX Whiskey Lake i7 + 16GB RAM + MX150) and I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that for now, all I'm getting from the MX150 is middling performance no matter what settings I give it...

And no, its NOT overheating either. This thing barely gets hot to begin with. Something else is holding it back and IDK what it is.

One thing that comes to mind though is that I'm running it through a Type-C PD power supply (the Innergie 60C) right now so it might be just that. Will plug a "proper" (as in through the actual jack) 65W adapter in later and we can see if that changes things.

Hopefully it does or else I'll be pretty disappointed in this thing.

That said, the Thermal Power Profile setting actually DOES make a difference even with the PD power supply. Have been testing FC: New Dawn and with the "Performance" profile, I don't get pesky stutters or freezes while playing... even if performance is pretty crap.

 

Oh wow. That was exactly it lol. Apparently "Performance Mode" and PD/Type-C Power doesn't go all that well together.

Plugging in my original HP 65W AC plug and selecting the "Performance" Thermal Profile seems to be getting me a cool 3-4x increase in 3DMark11 performance. To be exact, it's 856 (PD) vs 3526 (AC) 3DM11 Performance Graphics Score. Something tells me the MX150 doesn't even run in PD mode coz that 800ish score smells awfully Intel 620-ish TBH.

I'm thinking that with proper AC power and the "Performance" profile selected, it really does throttle at only 90c-ish, as I'm not getting any stuttering or freezes in any of my games.

With that, this thing is FINALLY worth the money. It's still just the "gimped" MX150 though, but eyyy, the Envy's TINY so it's an understandable compromise. At least I can play AC7, FC: New Dawn and FO4 with better than potato performance now lol.

Unfotunately this would also mean this little thing can be pretty throttled down on battery (as the "Performance" profile works on AC ONLY), but I expected as much so no biggie. I also have an Innergie ICE 65W universal adapter and that seems to be working fine so this seems to work with "universal" AC adapters as well.

Not entirely sure if it's related, but I'm also running on the 417.01 nVidia drivers that someone mentioned had better performance over the rest (it sure ran AC7 smoother than 419.xx). PhysX is being run off the CPU just to keep heat loads more stable, and BIOS has also been updated to the latest F12 version (or so the HP site says, from the in-box F7).

As an end note, I have a feeling I'm gonna have to keep those tiny vent holes pretty clean in the future if I wanna keep things this way moving forward, as the Envy 13 seems to LOVE good ventilation.

 

Ok thanks for that. Would you recommend the laptop?

Just wondering, is there any overheating with the performance profile active?

Without the performance profile, were you still getting the stutters after the new bios was updated? What kind of throttling was there, did it go from 60fps to 20fps, then back to 60fps again? I heard the new bios resolved the issues but that was for the pavilion laptops so I'm not sure if the envy got that.

Thanks, just wanted to know what to expect if I buy it lol.

 

So far, I've been though hours of FC: New Dawn in AC/PerfMode with no overheating. AC7 did crash once, but that was in the menu and I think its more my undervolt than an overheat crash.

And throttling? I got zero, zilch. New Dawn, AC7... everything ran steady with no dips, and it did this consistently for a decent amount of time too - at least under AC/PerfMode, as I said before.

But AC/PerfMode Off? I need to retest with the new BIOS and AC hooked up, but as I've said before, on PD and the old BIOS it could barely reach 30fps with New Dawn with everything set to the lowest and renderscale set to 0.5... With Perf mode off back then it was dipping to single digits every other second. To be honest, it was badddddd.

Gimmie a few hours and I'll try checking out AC / Perfmode Off with muh games and we can see how bad it gets.

 

Ok thanks, please let us know how the ac / perf mode off goes once you test? Fingers crossed there are no frame drops with the new bios!
With the perf mode off, will you be trying it with the recommended (I think it's called recommended anyway) setting in the command center?

 

Unfortunately, bad news.

FC: ND (at least) is almost unplayable with the "Recommended" settings, even with proper AC power. In this case, it actually does render 720p/Renderscale 1 as it should (unlike with PD power where I had to drop to 0.5 for it to even run anywhere near acceptably) but you only get like 3-5 seconds of "PerfMode" smoothness before everything gets throttled and the frames drop into the infinite abyss for a sec, then back to a few secs of smoothness returning before to the dark pit of FPS doom.

And this is with the Envy on a bloody cooling pad mind you.

So yeah, it's pretty much AC power for "heavy" games or bust. TBH I expected as much, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I probably need to find a 65w capable 19v "laptop" powerbank for days where I need to game/edit 4k untethered (maybe one of those RavPower plug PBs), but honestly I'm really only planning to use the unit for light duties off the grid so it's not exactly a priority.

But yeah, sorry dude I had to be the destroyer of hopes. Maybe something lighter then FC:ND would do fine under "RecMode", but that throttling is something vicious.

 

Ok thanks, that's a shame about recommended settings. It's good that there's a bit of a work around with performance mode though.

 

True, at the very least I have a competently mobile lappy with a decent battery life for normal "work"; yet capable of decently gaming / editing the heavy stuff once I get close to a plug... or a plug-powerbank.

Next best thing would probably be the a tad bigger (and less solid) MSI PS42 but I wonder if that one (at least the MX150 version) does full power on batteries either.

 

Actually, I just found some light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently, turning Turbo Boost off (through ThrottleStop) is enough to be able to make FC:ND run smoothly on "RecMode", no matter on AC OR on battery (and under the same settings as with AC PerfMode). It feels ever so slightly slower then on ACPM, but at least I didn't have to go 0.5 renderscale to get it even remotely playable (as before).

Not sure how I feel about having to forcibly neuter my i7s to 1.8Ghz with Turbo off for on battery gaming but eyyy, at least I'm gonna get extra battery life as a result. Kept one "optional" TS profile just in the (probably rare) case I'm gonna need Turbo on battery anyway.

 

That's interesting with the turbo boost, maybe it saves battery as well?

With turbo on, can I ask what temps you getting with gaming and non gaming? I am assuming non gaming doesn't come anywhere close to 70s?
The throttle behaviour may not be thermal throttled, do you know how it's throttling on recommended mode?

 

I've been doing some more testing on this and yeah, apparently the 65c-ish limit on "RecMode" and 95c-ish limit on "PerfMode AC" is pretty much true.

Why, because it IS thermal throttling - as can be seen that with Turbo Boost off, it hovers well around the limit temp (65-ish) - which also probably means it can take the slightest bit of Turbo (maybe 20) but I don't think it's gonna be worth the pain to tweak the Turbo Multiplier for an extra 0.2Ghz of clockspeed over the Turbo-less standard.

Though arguably, as you have correctly pointed out, running with Turbo On for normal work loads might be doable without any clear signs of throttling... Turbo Off actually seems to net me a consistent 1h+ increase in battery life for only a slight decrease in perceived smoothness so yeahhh.

Comparatively, on AC + PerfMode I'm getting sustained loads near 95c, with slight stutters unless I disable BDProchot (which probably makes the as-hot MX150 pre-signal the Proc making the proc throttle anyway in anticipation as it comes near the 95c limit - which it DOESN'T do when it's off = means we get to hit that limit).

Didn't feel all that comfortable pushing the thing to so close to the bounds of its temp envelope with BDProchot off (especially with that poor single fan), so I went and fiddled around with the Turbo Clock multipliers. And yeah, lowering things a bit I definitely get a whole lot better balanced, less heaty Turbo while on AC-PerfMode.

Which means a lot smoother unthrottled ramp ups without having to turn off BDProchot to get rid of throttling (or turning to Turbo off completely).

Which pretty much means that, clearly, temps are the limiting factor here, and the Envy simply can't cope with the heat from a fully Turbo-ing WL-U i7 without the extra sinking available with PerfMode's harder working fans (which even if we could force, would be a huge load on the battery anyway).

Which I'll pretty much chalk up to the price to pay for having so much power stuffed up something so compact - considering that without heat Mods, the MateBook X Pro isn't doing all that well either.

I guess if better ungimped CPU/GPU performance is what you're looking for, then something like the slightly bulkier PS42 and it's twin fans (and better cooling) might be a wiser bet (despite the single channel RAM).

 

That's what really held me back from the MSI PS42. Single channel ram. Not really a big deal in some cases, but there were enough cases to make it a sticking point. Lack of USB-C charging on that model, too.

 

Same case here. Nearly went the PS42 way myself but the larger size, single-channel RAM and DAT JELLO chassis drove me away.

So I decided to open a whole other can of HP branded worms lol.

 

BTW, if anybody was wondering - manually tweaking Turbo levels to a slightly lower range (though TS) ALSO works to make the Envy 13t run games on battery without throttling - as long as I keep stuff running below 75c-ish...

So at least I'm getting a liiiiiitle bit of Turbo even on batteries. Difference between Turbo-Off and Limited-Turbo (and Full-Turbo PerfMode) is pretty obvious when comparing New Dawn load times so yeah it does make a difference.

And yeah even through the throttling and all the Envy is actually doing fine with even The Division 2 and Sekiro right now - which is pretty nice considering the sheet thermals and clocked down GPU.

I wonder how the upcoming "2019" Envy 13 would fare in comparison with its MX250MQ and LPDDR4. Battery life claims look outrageous but eyyy, who knows.

 

I'm unsure if the envy 13 will have a mx250 gpu which is kinda unfortunate. As far as I can tell only the envy 17 will have it which IMO is too big and I think mobility will suffer with it.
Unless they plan to release it further on down the line, when though, is anybodys guess.

 

I actually had access to HP's product site for the "2019" E13 April refresh that looks pretty legit because it even came with an updated product video/images/descriptions with the "proper" new microSD slot placement on the opposite side AND the new webcam disconnect switch (but the site is kinda hidden and is pretty hard to Google up).

If the content from that site is to be believed, the 2019 E13 WILL supposedly ship with a MX250 variant, perhaps unsurprisingly as that's what the new MBPX and UX3xx models are gonna ship with too.

Though I've got to wonder how much extra heat the 250 (MQ or otherwise) would generate at full clocks coz the current cooling config of the E13 can't even deal with the WL-U/MX150 without tuning the Turbo down and there seems to be little (if any) hardware changes to the "2019" model in terms of temp management.

Also that site is my source of the "outrageous battery life" comment (claims the battery will last nearly twice as long as the "2018" WL-U E13). A bit of a bummer if true (more battery life is always good), but my current unit does do a respectable 5-6h on surfing loads so I'm not too salty.