Zbook 17 G6 randomly crashing

[Stoyanov]

Thank you!

Does your "HP Support Assistant" correctly display the number of battery cells?

[pevsonic]

Just ran it for you and I get : 

• Warranty Type: 3
• Cycle count: 6 / 1000
• Manufacturer: 333-1C-26-A
• Battery Age: 0 Year, 5 Months
• Serial Number: 01501 2019/08/28
• Temperature: 23 °C
• Design Capacity: 8310 mAh
• Full Charge Capacity: 8015 mAh (96%)
• Remaining Capacity: 3729 mAh
• Current: -4106 mA

• Terminal Voltage: 10527 mV
• Design Voltage: 11550 mV
• Cell Voltage 1: 0 mV
• Cell Voltage 2: 3555 mV
• Cell Voltage 3: 3484 mV
• Cell Voltage 4: 3468 mV
• Status: C0
• AC Power: No
• CT Number: 6GWTA08WYCP37K
• Failure ID: OK

[pevsonic]

As far as I can tell this is the only battery for the machine, a 95Wh battery. I think it's just HP support assistant being rubbish. I don't trust it at all TBH as the only time I let it update drivers on the machine it bricked windows...!

[Stoyanov]

Thank you very much!
The results are surprisingly similar.

[RogerAndOut1]

Hello guys!
I think that neither on battery alone, not on the AC adapter alone the performance is kept at top level,
and when in Win this is throttled in its settings, this can be overridden (and so in Linux of course), making system
unstable (pure theory).

If I benchmark my Z17G6/Xeon 2286M without battery in Win10, it performs around 60% of multi-core speed
measured if battery+AC is present.
There is setting sowewhere in BIOS called 'Boost converter' (you can google something like 'boost converter hp bios')

is related to providing CPU power from battery even on AC power (mb limits of some voltage converters from AC/battery,
not sure about it).

I'm from nearby topic -- I take off battery from my ZBook when going from office every day because otherwise
it has bug of fans blowing max speed until battery dies, for 2 months, ahah. 

Besides that, I must be honest -- while this, ehm, piece is not a laptop because of the issue above for me, when it is turned on, it is rock stable, no matter what -- compiling C++ code make -j 16 in host or virtual machine, running 3 virtual machines at once with different golang, js building, visual studio on host machine, playing smoothed video that uses GPU+CPU, staying
on (no sleep, just on) sometime for 5 days a week in office -- not a single glitch/bsod etc.

[RogerAndOut1]

Oh, and this is my battery info

• Warranty Type: 3
• Cycle count: 8 / 1000
• Manufacturer: 333-1C-26-A
• Battery Age: 0 Year, 7 Months
• Serial Number: 00668 2019/07/06
• Temperature: 33 °C
• Design Capacity: 8310 mAh
• Full Charge Capacity: 8008 mAh (96%)
• Remaining Capacity: 6327 mAh
• Current: 0 mA

• Terminal Voltage: 12294 mV
• Design Voltage: 11550 mV
• Cell Voltage 1: 0 mV
• Cell Voltage 2: 4099 mV
• Cell Voltage 3: 4101 mV
• Cell Voltage 4: 4095 mV
• Status: C0
• AC Power: Yes
• CT Number: 6GWTA08WYCH0TW
• Failure ID: OK

[Stoyanov]

I can confirm that my laptop also works super stable and reliable when on adapter (3D rendering, C ++ programming).

[pevsonic]

My ZBook 17 G3 certainly is that solid - has happily achieved weeks / months of uptime running linux which is why I went for the G6. Sadly it’s not even close for me which is why I’m still using the G3... 

[Stoyanov]

Hello guys,
I have good news for you. I found the "culprit" that causes the sudden shutdowns on my laptop. This is the "Intel Turbo Boost" CPU mode. When I turn it off, the processor runs at a frequency not exceeding the base (for my i9-9880H CPU it is 2.30GHz), but in this way the machine is completely stable. Today, I did a lot of laptop testing when running on a low battery (<20%) with "Turbo Boost" off. I'm happy to let you know that I don't have a single crash. What's more: The machine successfully passes the 3DMark test, even at 13% battery power. Of course, I cannot expect to have peak performance, but for everyday tasks (office applications, web browsing, image processing, software development, movie watching, music, communications) I can again rely on hard stability. Agree that with a laptop powered by a battery it is not appropriate to do too heavy calculations.
So, how can you stop "Turbo Boost" mode on your laptop when it's on battery power?
You can read the following link:

https://www.geeks3d.com/20170213/how-to-disable-intel-turbo-boost-technology-on-a-notebook/#_24

I have tried the three ways described in points 2.1, 2.2 and 2.4 in the article and can confirm that they work. For me the problem is solved. I sincerely hope this is helpful to you too!

[pevsonic]

Well... erm... yes, that does avoid the crashes, but reduces performance massively - to the point where the machine for me at least, is no faster than the older ZBook 17 G3 I bought it to replace!

Also for me, the way you detail in the article is no use to me sadly as Linux is my operating system - also, even though I had to install windows in order for HP to run tests, that option is missing in the control panel in windows on my machine. There were also some other options present that interestingly vanished after windows update installed some "HP Components"...!