HP Omen 15 2018 CPU thermal issues/fan noise solved!

[willjpower]

If you've been having issues with the new Omen 15 where the fan noise is noticeably loud at idle and any kind of CPU stress test will cause your temperatures to jump to 100 degrees and throttle, then this may be a solution for you. Additionally, this solution comes with no loss in performance (unlike some other solutions I've seen that suggest disable Intel Turbo-Boost).

Firstly, in order to identify whether you've had the same issue as me, download HWINFO64, hit run, click on sensors, and take a look at the current values under Core #0 Clock to Core #5 Clock whist the computer is idling. If they are around 3.9 GHz then you are suffering from the same issue.

What is happening is that the default Windows power profile that HP set is causing the CPU to almost permanently turbo boost to its maximum clock speed of 3.9 GHz, even whilst the PC is idling. This generates a large amount of excess heat, causing the fans to spin up, and the moment any kind of stress test is applied the temperatures will jump up to unsafe levels and the CPU will throttle.

The good news is that I believe I have found the solution, and now when I run the AIDA64 CPU stress test my temperatures never exceed 80 degrees at the default CPU power profile in BIOS. All you need to do is the following:

1. At the desktop, right click on the battery icon in the system tray and select power options, and then create power plan
2. If the option for Power saver is there, skip to step number 6. Otherwise, go to the next step
3. Head to this url and download PowerConfigurationPatch.exe. This is a fix released by Lenovo for the same issue and appeared to work on my laptop
4. Install the patch you just downloaded and restart your computer, just to be safe
5. Now right click on the battery icon in the system tray and select power options, and then create power plan as before. Now there should be the option for the Power saver profile
6. Select the Power saver profile, enter whatever name you want for the profile, and hit next and then create
7. The profile should have automatically applied, but if not you can select it again under power options
8. Finally, go back to HWINFO64 --> sensors and check your idle clock speeds. With any luck, they should be boosting as normal and idling at around the 0.9 GHz value. Your laptop should now be fine!

What annoys me the most is that this is such a rookie mistake by HP, and I'm amazed that no-one internally has already picked up on and rectified this issue. For a laptop that cost me well over £1000, silly little fixes like this are just completely unacceptable. At the very least, I hope this post has helped someone out there who is in the same position as me. Or even better yet, this finds its way to  HP engineers who quite frankly should be embarassed at themselves.

[Kempston]

There's no need to do this using Windows or that URL download, which effective just creates a power plan with the CPU running at 99%.

You're best using Throttlestop, this gives you full control over the boost wattage and you can also undervolt the CPU core and cache (depending on the quality of the CPU, anywhere between .120 and .140, I've got mine on the latter). Also, go into the BIOS and turn the wattage down on the CPU to 25w from the default if 45w. All this should result in a considerable reduction in temperature. Mine never runs over 75c.

[willjpower]

I'm not sure I totally agree with you, at least for my laptop anyway. Without any undervolting or wattage reduction, my CPU sits at 75c and 2.9GHz on an AIDA64 stress test and the new power profile.  Reducing the wattage to 25W sounds like it would hurt performance - what are your clock speeds under load and at idle?

As for the URL, I admit that I'm not 100% sure what it does, but after running it I noticed the ability to create additional power profiles such as Power saver. These profiles are not at 99% max CPU performance, which would disable turbo boost and lock the CPU to 2.2 GHz, but instead can turbo to 2.9 GHz under load as previously mentioned but idle correctly at 0.9 GHz. I can assure you that it didn't create a power plan at 99%.

[willjpower · Accepted solution]

A windows update on my machine has appeared to fix the default power profile, so it would appear this method is not actually necessary. I'm going to mark this as solved for now. I'll give the HP engineers the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[Schwem]

This is the exact thing I did as soon as my bios updated. Great advice. Lucky for me I already thought of this but others may nnot be a savvy. Before undervolting mine would stay a consistent 90-97c but now hovers around 80-82c while playing demanding games.  

[Filip94]

Hey! 

Your post really helped with my HP Omen, playing Watch Dogs 2 and was playing Battlefield V. I was hitting temperatures like 95 to 97 celsius. I installed the lenovo software and created a default power option like you said and it worked! It lovered temperatures do 60 to 65 in Watch Dogs 2 witch is incredible but it does not work while charging. As soon as i plug it in for charging it spikes back to 95 to 97. I print screened Intel Extreme Tuning monitoringOn hourlyOn 5 minutes

As you can see, as soon as i plug it in for charging it spikes back to 95+ and it starts to throttle. Is this solvable? Did i make a rookie mistake in power options. Thanks for your reply in advance. You re a great guy. 

[willjpower]

Hi! I've been playing around with settings on my laptop for a while now and I think I've got a setup that works well for me.

You'll need to download Throttlestop, tick the "Speed Shift - EPP" option and set the value to around 150 (this slightly favours lower clock speeds). Then click on FIVR, and change the values under "5 Cores Active" and "6 Cores Active" to 35. Whilst you're at it, you could play around with undervolting the core and cache (there are guides for this online, I've currently got mine set to a conservative -100mV). Finally, click on TPL and change the "Max" value under "Speed Shift" to 34.

The combined effect of these changes is to prevent the CPU from boosting beyond 3.4 GHz (which generates ridiculous amounts of heat for this chassis), and to make the CPU clocks more conservative under idle use (having them drop to around 0.9 GHz at idle). The undervolt will also help with thermals and potentially even performance, but if you are too aggressive then you run the risk of blue screening and making your Windows install corrupted/unstable, which is what happened to me (I had to reinstall Windows to fix this).

Give these changes a try, and if you need any more help just let me know 🙂

[MaPo31415]

Hello Willjpower!

I noticed that you had a problem with thermals and fans and you found a workaround for that.

Oddly enough, you pointed out a separate issue - abnormal CPU#0 and CPU#5 usage on idle.

This is a symptom of the very same issue many other HP user are having right now with their HP Omen laptops (15/17, this and previous gen), a well as my Zbook 17 G5.

If you could, please take a look at my thread here and tell me please whether you experience the same symptoms (ACPI.sys CPU usage on the System process during idle computer, can be checked in Process Explorer)

[Pringle_]

Hey guys!

I've had this Omen 15 for just over a year now and i've had really bad fan noises and overheating problems. I followed these instructions and to my surprise the problem is solved! i'm a 20 yo computing student which has tried various methods but something as simple as this just baffles me. I had to make an account just to say thank you! To anyone with the same problems I hope this fixes it. :)) 

~ Cory S