Fan always on when charging (Spectre x360 8th gen)

[BasW]

Dear forum, 

10 days ago I recieved my new HP spectre x360. Actually, this is the second one. The first one had a loose trackpad and battery issues, but thats not what I want to talk about.

Everything seems to be very fine with this laptop, except for the fact that the fans are always running when charging. When unplugged, the fans never come on and it's very quiet.

A few minutes after the charger is plugged in though, the fans start running. I check task manager and HWmonitor everytime, and I find that even though the laptop is running at idle (1-5% cpu), the CPU is around 40-50C.

When the laptop is off the charger, it can also push 50C, but the fans won't kick in. Most of the time, its more at like 35C.

So the laptop is doing nothing but charging, but the fans make a lot of noise. I wouldn't go sit in the library at my university charging the laptop because everyone will be looking annoyed at me.

I've tried a couple of things:

- Putting the laptop in enery-efficient mode when plugged in. I don't do heavy work on the laptop, so it is still enough power, but I don't think this should be necessary on a laptop with this much capability. Putting it in energy-efficient mode does nothing for the fans though.

- Installing the latest BIOS from jan. 24th (I think). I also set some energy mode in the bios from 'performance' to 'balance'. Again, this did nothing for the fan noise. 

Again, the laptop does absolutely nothing, while that fans are still making a lot of noise. 

Youtube video, not very useful but just an indication of the problem: https://youtu.be/ba7WbGalAhQ

Hopefully someone can tell me what to do, I have until tuesdag feb. 13th to return it. 

Thanks in advance, greetings from the Netherlands.

Specs:

HP Spectre x360 13-ae001nd

Windows 10 64-bit

i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

[erajsalman]

Did you ever find a solution to this. The laptop works great until I plug it in and then it's like an airplane is taking off for no reason. 

[BasW01]

Unfortunately not. At the moment I'm very frustrated with this issue. Since December I've been trying to just get a working laptop for university, but now this is the second one that is just not what it's supposed to be.

HOW ON EARTH can a 1300€ brand new top-tier laptop have problems right out of the factory? Like, a loose trackpad and coil whine, what year is this HP? What is this quality control? If the laptop was like 700€ I'd maybe be able to deal with these problems, but I am not going to accept these or any problems for that matter for this price.

I am sending my second laptop back tomorrow, will try one more time with this laptop. I will post my thoughts on that one, I'm really, really hoping it won't have problems. If it does, I'm hopping on the MacBook train because I can't do this anymore. I really hate MacBooks, but if that's what needed to get a working machine than that is what it is.

Sorry for my rage, but personally I think I have all the right to be mad about such stupid problems.

[BasW01]

I see that I've accidentally replied with a different account , but this is the same person as the one that started this thread haha

[erajsalman]

I appreciate the response. It is frustrating. I don't understand how this problem is not more widely reported. My sister has the previous gen at it has the same problems. 

[EddyK]

Hi everyone,

I have noticed this behaviour on 2 HP Spectre x360s and my friend's Dell XPS 13. Sorry about just copy pasting my response on a similar post but this is my usual response to this type of complaint:

I've noticed that laptops containing the latest 8th gen Intel Processors (even from other companies such as Dell) really start their fans up when they're charging. 

I'm currently speculating this is because of the turbo boosting capabilities of the new 8th gen processors. Currently, the 8th gen processors have really low clock speeds and extremely high turbo boost speeds (Some are capable of even faster clock speeds than modern gaming processors). Turbo boosting is a unique feature of Intel processors where clock speeds are boosted where conditions allow.

In order for turbo boosting to work on laptops, there has to be minimal heat and a good amount of power. So when the latest laptops are plugged in, it seems that the notebooks turbo boost quite a bit and the fans are forced to spin quite a lot in order to sustain turbo boosting.

You could disable turbo boosting or consider underclocking your CPU. However, I would first resort to these proposed solutions:

You could either tone down your power plan and opt for more battery-saving power options. 

Also search Edit power plan > Change Advanced power settings > Processor Power Management > System Cooling Policy > Plugged in > then select passive.

You could also refer to Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility here however I don't recommend it if you don't know much about tweaking processor settings.

I haven't heard much about the previous generation experiencing this issue.

Regards,

kem579

[BasW01]

Hi kem579,

I read your response on the original post, and for myself I've tried a lot of things to solve this problem, even though I think this shouldn't be an issue for a brand new laptop and I shouldn't have to do these steps listed to get a decent working laptop.

Things I've tried:
- of course, power safe mode, even when plugged in. Bit ridiculous if you'd have to do this all the time, considering the amount of performance you can get out of this CPU.
- turn off turbo boosting by setting max CPU power to 99%
- turned BIOS power setting from performance to balance
- As you stated, cooling policy to passive mode, even though this didn't really work because at +-70C the fans would turn itself on, even when they shouldn't.
- I've read undervolting does not work for 8th Gens, they'd crash, and that's a bridge too far for me to try solve the problems.

I never stressed the CPU for a bit, the only things I do are Word, chrome and PowerPoint. As I've said, I'll post my findings about my third laptop of this kind when I receive it, and if they're negative it will be a MacBook next. Your comment about similar experiences with 8th gen machines doesn't make me that hopeful, but we'll see.

Kind regards

P.S. I noticed a lot of coil whine from the two speakers above the keyboard, when the keyboard backlight was on. I think it comes from interference between the keyboard lighting and the speakers, but others have suggested it comes from the screen. Have you experienced this with the laptops? It was very noticable, even with music on very low volume.

[EddyK]

.

[david_sanches]

I have notice that when we charge the cpu speed increase from 1.5GHz average to 3.7GHz or even more. That is the reason why fan quicks in. I dont know why thin happen when the computer doesnt need that amount of cpu speed at the charging time. 

Do you know if there ir a solution to this?

[EddyK]

Hello david_sanches,

The only thing I can recommend for now is to use Intel XTU or Extreme Tuning Utility and undervolt the CPU.

Intel XTU: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

There's a comprehensive guide on using Intel XTU and how to undervolt: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-XTU-Undervolting-Guide.272120.0.html

Regards,

Eddy