HP ENVY 17 (1050ea) overheats and shuts down.

[narevill]

Can anyone help,

My 2 month old HP ENVY 17 (1050ea) constantly overheats and shuts down. It is sitting on a wooden table with nothing blocking the airflow.

It has just been back to HP for repair, they replaced the Heatsink and fan and updated the BIOS (thou the bios appears to have no updates that affect the operating temperature). The machine will suddenly switch off and then on re-boot the bios displays the message 'System Temperature (90D)'.

On return from repair it seemed to be a little better, its system temperature was now peaking at about 77C rather than the mid 80s that it would peak at before repair. The first shutdown occured after about 20 minutes (running a simulation). After this it could be made to shut down after just a few minutes running prime95, then just web browsing will shut it down once it has been hot.

One of the service engineers suggested that I am expecting too much of the machine to run for any period at maximum power ( the 5 year old Dell that I am typing this on does not seem to mind!). It was also suggested that I need to purchase some sort of external cooling system to try and keep it working. So is there a way to manually underclock the processor ( and maybe GPU?) to keep it running?

Thanks for any help

Nigel

[jackielap]

Hi, I have been having the same issues in a way. I've had my HP ENVY for 2 weeks & received the blue screen of death 6 times, while it over heats on a flat surface. It freezes constantly and runs slow. I have been playing the Sims 3 for less than, and I can no longer play due to loading issues. I'm ready to send in my laptop and ask for a replacement, or I'll spend this kindof money on a macbook. I've never had problems like this before, its ridiculous. 

[Knute]

If you search the forum you will find that the Envy's have a real issue with overheating.  On many posts I have noted that the CPUs and GPUs of today are much more powerful than those from 5 years ago (like your Dell).  In a desktop they will run fine as the cooling system and airflow are much better.  However trying to cram something like that in such a tight space with poor airflow and a dinky little fan will not cut it, I think the solution lies within a revamped cooling system, whether or not that happens in the future who knows.

[narevill]

Well my Envy 17 (1050ea) is back from its second trip for repair, it lasted about 20 minutes before it suddenly shut down, same problem 'System Temperature (90D)', this time they replaced the Heatsink and Fan (again!). It does seem to be able to run a little longer running my simulator, but as soon as you give the CPU a full load it overheats and it switches off.  Its a shame , its a really nice machine (well it was for the first month)......

ah well back to my old Dell.....

[onighjoy]

I feel for you...i bought the envy 17 thinking it would be the most awesome machine...ever! yet mine can't play youtube and simple things like that wihout crashing often...and no real assistance from HP!!! complete con job

[narevill]

3rd time back, replaced system board and cpu, now the machine is back to the way it was for the first month, the fan is now fairly inactive when net surfing and does not randomly speed up as it tries to keep up with the amount of heat being produced.

This time they claim to have run the machine for 5 hrs before returning it!

I have now set the power management to 'on battery' to try and reduce the heat. I have also ordered a Zalman 3000 laptop cooler and will wait for this to arrive before attempting to run my flight simulator.

Keeping my fingers crossed 🙂

They still managed to crack the hard drive cover during the rebuild.... but at least it works.........for how long

[narevill · Accepted solution]

So far so good,
 
I have left the GPU 'power play'  on mains settings as "maximum battery life" (drops the GPU clock) as it seems to give good 60+ fps in my flight simulator even at 1920x1080.
 
I have run the cpu at full load for an hour using prime95.... and no sign of the machine shutting down.
 
The Zalman 3000 notebook cooler seems to really help when running at high power.
 
Clearly the old system board or cpu had become faulty as the fan behaviour is now completely different, it does not now suddenly go to max when the cpu/gpu are not really loaded. It’s a shame that HP took three goes to get it working again. In these situations where heat is causing problems they really should just not run the standard diagnostics, they are probably not going to show anything at all.
 
I have found that once you get past the first line idiots who answer the phones at HP service, the techs were quite good and helpful. It does seem though that despite the tech agreeing with me over the faults, getting the repair people to do the work properly was difficult.
 
They ended up replacing
 
system board
cpu
heatsink and fan
upper case (newer cases have apparently been modified to improve airflow)
lower case (as above)
 
Just pleased it now works

[tsobell]

My Envy17 is pretty new too.    Have found system lockup and freeze on occasion,  even when doing nothing particularly CPU intensive.    Yes, have used the compressed air fairly regularly    System still in all the default power modes.  Always have an inch or more of clearance under the laptop for air flow.

Its HOT to the touch up around the ESC key and down to touch pad.  Hot enough don't want to keep holding it there.    Ok on right 1/2 of machine.    Actually can be uncomfortable for left wrist when typing.

I am just speculating this shutdown is a heat issue.

What is the acceptable operating temperature for this laptop?   How can I measure and monitor?

Fan seems to work fine.  VERY quiet.   Is this only a one speed fan?    Don't think ever heard it kick in for a higher speed.   Is there some way to check and monitor?   A way to kick it up a notch?      Something in a BIOS setting?

Regards

Tom

[BigDogBDM]

My Envy 17 has run very hot from the start, which didn't surprise me.   I use it sitting on a large, 3/4" thick wooden cutting board.  Lately it has started to shut down occasionally due to overtemp.  Has HP modified the case to improve cooling?

[antiRev]

Just like everyone else, I've had issues with overheating (although luckily no shutdowns). I was getting BSOD but updating the graphics driver via the ATI website sorted that. I also remember seeing a message from Windows telling me that the CPU speed has been limited by firmware, which I suspect was one of the HP updates to reduce overheating issues.

I also installed CPUID HWMonitor to see what sort of temperatures were being hit and when I saw 90c while playing games I looked around for a laptop cooling system. The Cooler Master Notepal U2 (U3 is also an option) was perfect as it had two moveable fans which are now sitting under the far left hand side of the machine, although the part of the machine (I suspect the graphics card) under my left wrist still cooks my wrist while playing games.

I'm going to try setting my graphics card to "maximum battery life" to see if the speed drop and temperature drop is a good compromise.