!All Omen 30L Intel Based Owners, Very Important, If You Are Looking To Upgrade Your Memory!

[hwsense]

CAUTION! 

All Omen 30L Intel Z490/10th Gen processors owners, here is some very valuable information if you decided to configure your new Omen 30L with only 8GB or ram with the idea to add your own ram kits later and save some money.

There are several threads with customers with that exact same issue that I am having, we spent a lot of money on the new 30L and opted out of the very expensive ram that HP is offering with the idea to upgrade by ourselves, after all the Omen is marketed towards enthusiast that are expected to do a lot of upgrades and changes on their own, unfortunately we all found out the hard way that the memory upgrade is almost impossible, unless we buy a very expensive ram from HP directly ($158 for a single 8GB HyperX Fury RGB, excluding shipping and tax!!!), naturally most people would try to find a way to get their own ram in, but the way HP has done it, is only ram modules approved by them and with specific identification numbers are accepted to be recognized by the Omen Command Center in order to get control over the overclocking abilities and RGB lightning control.

After spending days with HP support, sales, parts sales, community and testing myself, I found a solution, a very easy one for everyone that wants to throw their own ram kit and activate their Intel XMP profile! Mind you first that HP's Bios is locked and there are no controls over XMP profiles, also you are still not going to be able to control the RGB, which to me is a less of a problem.

OK, on to the solution, all you need to do is go ahead and install Intel's own - Extreme Tuning Utility, or also known as Intel XTU, it can be found directly on Intel's website, use your Google skills and it will come up right away. Step by step below:

- All you need to do after installing it is to run it

- Go to the memory section

- If your memory kit supports Intel XMP, you will see the profiles there 

- Select the proper profile (in my case XMP1 3200mhz, CL16/18/18 for HyperX Fury RGB)

- Accept the selection and reboot your computer

- After the reboot you will have your memory's XMP profile activated and running at the proper speed.

- If you want, you can go ahead and uninstall the Intel XTU, and the profile will still be active and working (fully tested, that's what I did myself)

- At the end enjoy your freshly upgraded Omen 30L with the XMP and timings that are intended by the manufacturer for your memory!

A few side notes:

The ram provided by HP doesn't use XMP, even if you overclock it via HP OCC, it only used JDEC and timings that are not even close to the XMP, for example my 8GB stick is rated at 18/21/21 at 1.2 volts, but after Overlocking with HP OCC, the timings are running at 22/22/22/52 and JDEC profile - all that easily verifiable with CPU-Z.

After using the Intel XTU and activating the XMP profile of the new or the old (stock) ram, everything works as intended by Kingston with the proper timings, again verified by CPU-Z

That is it, I hope that I saved all of you a lot of headaches and countless hours of testing.

Also HP I saved you a lot of money, as I am sure most people will be frustrated with this major flaw and return their computers to you without even wasting their time. 

Word of advise to HP, just give a simple slider for the people that buy your otherwise beautiful new Omen series, that would enable or disable the XMP profile, it will be just enough, we can all avoid future problems this way.

And final words for people that consider configuring and buying their own Omen 30L - make sure to select the type and amount of memory that you need, yes it would be a little bit more expensive, but this way you can avoid all of the above, don't make the same mistake as me or all the other customers that decided to save some money!

[old_geekster]

@hwsense

I have to add a word of CAUTION to what you have said.  Intel XTU can be very destructive in the hands of members who are not that tech savvy.  I have been an Overclocker for many years and I fried a HP Omen motherboard with it.  This is the major reason that HP recommends only using their OCC to overclock.  It has perameters built-in that will hopeful keep this from happening.  You have to remember when you are posting on these Forums that it is run by HP.  Making recommendations that can be destructive is not a good idea!

[hwsense]

Well if HP let people upgrade the RAM with their own memory, all that could have been avoided and people don't have to go around in circles to find a way to run any memory other then the one sold by HP at its intended speeds.

OCC is extremely simple but flawed software (but in it's core is based on XTU, anyone that will extract the HP SDK can see it inside), overclocking your memory on JDEC and not XMP just doesn't make any sense, but the biggest thing that doesn't make any sense is to market a product for gamers and enthusiasts and prevent them from upgrading the memory, one of the simplest upgrades that anyone can do. In addition, whats going to happen in a year or two when even people with plenty of memory decide to upgrade, but HP stop selling this $158 per 8gb memory on their parts site? Force them to upgrade to a new computer? 

I  have also been in computers for almost 30 years now and have been an HP customer for more then 15, that's the first time I see something like this, a simple slider switch for XMP in the bios would have saved us a lot of headaches.

Truly more people need to be aware of this, and as I advised when configuring their Omen 30L's, they should just get the max memory that they need or can afford, otherwise there will be more and more threads here and more and more returns to HP, for otherwise a very good product. 

[Pickyme]

Yeah and save us the time from buying HyperX rams from the Hypex direct and later finding out that it would only run at 2400mhz because thats the P&N JEDEC default setting... like seriously just allow XMP since it is a form and function of the chipset. 

[hwsense]

I know right? Locking up the memory upgrade in this way has to be one of the worst engineering decisions that I have ever seen! 

[Pickyme]

Actually... i think we can legally term it as fraud.

This is what officially is advertise. they used the word XMP... when in fact XMP is not enabled and you can't use the bios to set it. 

- Up to 64 GB HyperX® DDR4-3200 XMP RGB SDRAM

[hwsense]

Unfortunately I don't think that this will hold in court, they are just simply stating the capabilities of the ram and not specific on how or will it achieve it. But we might have a case about them locking the memory upgrade to a memory only sold by them, now that is a bad practice and anti consumer move and downright an extortion to force you customers to only buy memory form you. Whats next, GPU, CPU, Storage...?

Me personally, I just want to rise awareness and make sure more people know about this and if they decide to order and buy, at least get the maximum memory that they need, or move on to something else.

If HP still wanted to do it this way, they should have included a disclaimer on the memory selection part of the configuration, that aftermarket memory will not going to be able to benefit fully of its XMP profile.  

[Riddle_Decipher]

@hwsense I understand your concern and I will bring your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP.

Although, I'll need some private information from you in order to create a case for you.

Please look for a private message requesting additional information. 

Keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers, case details, etc...).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Community's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accept as solution" on my public post, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community. 

[Pickyme]

If u check in CPUID HP proprietary ram are with JEDEC #12/13/14 i think and its "overclocked" for 3200mhz in the JEDEC profiles which is why  when you get the OEM hyperx which is with the official DDR4 specs of 2400mhz/2666mhz you can only get that speed. 

this is the datasheet for HP's HYPERX ram

https://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/HX432C18FBK2_32.pdf

And yeah its "discontinued" because its never sold in the open market. hehee...

[hwsense]

Yes I know, I just wonder why would they choose to use JEDEC with super slow timings, instead of XMP profiles?