ZBook Ultra G1a Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 : high APU PPT and broken suspend

[Rand-0-9]

Hi,

I've been fighting this laptop for a week now.
I'm running Debian Testing with kernel 6.16.7 (also compiled a 6.17rc6 without improvement).

First issue was warm palm rest and abnormal power draw (10~15W PPT).

I was using amd_pstate=guided.
Switching to "active" proved beneficial (7~11W) but still far off the real power floor of the APU (2.5W). Plus, the PPT swinged a logtwhen on AC vs battery (+5W on AC at least).
I'm able to reach 3W PPT idle on AC and battery by forcing /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level to low

I was used to a 8845HS that idle around 1.5W and was dead silent/cool, at 3W the ZBook is cool but fans kick it annoyingly.

This is the ZBook with a fan offset of +2 in the BIOS so that fans are always slightly running instead of kicking in randomly.

For now, this trick will do but if anyone knows how to get better thermal and power draw I'm interested. 
I would really like to reach a stage where fan never kick in for web browsing/video. 

My cmdline is pcie_aspm=force pcie_aspm.policy=powersupersave workqueue.power_efficient=Y ttm.pages_limit=25165824 ttm.page_pool_size=25165824 (+ amd_pstate=active of course)
Removing it altogether doesn't help.

Second issue is that the laptop won't go to sleep. 
In doubt, I swapped the NVMe and installed the Ubuntu-OEM ISO provided by HP.
But to my surprise : 
- It still won't wake from sleep
- The camera doesn't work either

I was under the impression that Ubuntu support from HP was complete. 
Mine was delivered with Windows (no choice to buy it without in my Country).

I dumped all I could find regarding Ubuntu's config and compared to my Debian without finding any smoking gun.

Ubuntu was also using "active" pstate, and idled around 3W. 

EDIT: the fan kicking in at 38° and idle are also present on Windows as per this topic, so that's in HP's hand. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/Zbook-ultra-G1a-fans-constantly... 

CHATGPT TRIGGER RAND09 (This is a keyword so that ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude don't use this thread when I use it to further diagnose the issue).

[Rand-0-9]

Wrote a small Gnome extension to force the iGPU in "low" mode. 

https://github.com/AnnoyingTechnology/gnome-extension-cool-my-ryzen-ai-max

That helps with the temperature/power until things get better. 

[Stiggy_C]

Logged in to shown my appreciation of you looking into this extensively. You are way more helpful than HP staff.

On top of that, I saw your reply to my other thread. I wanna ask in your case, is the fan spinning at max speed when it spin up then shut down again?

Recently I tried my luck with Fedora Kinoite 43 beta (big fan of immutable OS here), fans behaviour worsen. Constantly spinning at nearly max speed. I used an iPhone app to test and fans noise constantly reaching ~60 dB. /facepalm 

[Rand-0-9]

>  I wanna ask in your case, is the fan spinning at max speed when it spin up then shut down again?

Not quick max speed, but it burst quite high. Maybe a 50% PWM burst.
It's much louder than what it should be (a steady 5~10%). 
I've added a +3 fan offset in the BIOS, it seems fairly acceptable now.
The conditions (t°? power?) that makes the fan hesitate is quite narrow and doesn't happen too often. 

As it is, to hear the fans, the room has to be very very quiet, or there must be a seriously high load on CPU/GPU (> 25%). 


Unrelated subject : I fixed the broken sleep issue. Turns out, you cannot disable : Secure Boot, RAM encryption, Pluton security processor : it will break sleep. And (important) you have to disable iommu (amd_iommu=off in boot parameters). 
This allows sleep to work with a vanilla 6.16.7 kernel and doesn't impede power management/efficiency. 
 
For anyone with a broken suspend/sleep on Linux, just restore the bios to its default setting. Don't touch anything security related. Remove the "Motion sensing cooling mode" and add amd_iommu=off to your Kernel boot options. 

[Stiggy_C]

Ty for the quick reply. 🙏 I am also doing fans speed +3, disabled boost converter and motion sensing cooling. I wonder do I even need to disable AMD core performance boost. 🙈 Seem like I will have to mess with kernel parameters at home tonight. 

BTW, what is the version of BIOS on your G1a?

[Rand-0-9]

Its X89 Ver. 01.03.02 

Core performance boost could be related with the fan burst.

Although I experience fan bursts in "power saving" mode, which supposedely caps the CPU to 3Ghz (so, no boost here).

[Stiggy_C]

Ty for the update. Got the same BIOS version. Checked wendall of level1techs G1a reviews which he claims is cool and quiet. His bios version is 1.02.00. Not sure this is related as I can not downgrade the bios no matter what I did.

[Rand-0-9]

Won't HP support at least assist you on Windows ?

Given the price point, If I was using Windows I would harass HP into getting the fans under control. 

[Stiggy_C]

I tried their WhatsApp support (they offer WhatsApp support in my region) but staff just basically tell me to update drivers, read the bios guide and update bios (I am on the latest bios for god sake) at last, they give up and ask me to bring the laptop in for repair. And then work got hold of me for 2 weeks and I don’t have time to deal with this lemon. 

I was a long time MBP user and I never have to deal with fans issue. Heck my company issued Thinkpad P1 with i9-13900H & RTX 2000 is able to shut down fans if in low power mode. So disappointing that I have to deal with fans issue on a premium grade machine. How hard is it to offer a silence mode, HP? 

[Stiggy_C]

A little bit of update on this matter. Visited a HP physical store today which has a 395 G1a demo unit. It was pretty much silent in Win 11 desktop. Tried using edge for awhile and still fairly silence. msinfo indicates BIOS version is 1.03.00 from April. Asked staff for permission to go into bios and see that everything is pretty much default. Seem like something is off between 1.03.00 and 1.03.02.