HP ENvy 13 2019 Thermal Throttling

[madfry]

Hi. 

I had the Envy x360 Ryzen 5 that I sold off because of the numerous problems. Still, because I liked the HP keyboard, and took a chance buying an HP Envy 13-aq0023tx. i7-8565U, NVIDIA MX250 IPS HD Screen. 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD.

Now, apparently HP still can't quite get things right, and the Envy 13 had one very big problem. That being the bad throttling issues. I know that yes, thing could throttle. But not this bad. 

1. Based on benchmark, (geekbench and passmark), the Envy 13 is around 30%-50% slower than laptops that uses the same processor. Using Intel Power Gadget, I found that there seems to be a hard limit of 65 degrees celcius, after which the CPU would drop the speed dramatically, slowing things down badly. 

2. HP Command Center, the app that supposedly is geared to set the performance level of the system has a bug. Three options are presented, HP Recommended, Performance and Comfort. There seems to be a bug with the Performance option in which the system actually performed worse if you set it to Performance, losing another 10% - 15% performance under that setting. 

3. The keyboard has a nice backlit. That time off too fast, so you still need to find the trackpad to reactivate the light. Is there an option to make sure it doesn't turn off?

Now, for all these issues, do I put my complaint here, or should I just go and bother the HP customer service?

[The_Fossette]

@madfry,

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

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

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

[madfry]

Update :- 

HP customer service has contacted me regarding the laptop. Unfortunately however, I still face the same problems, since the only solution that they could come up with was to update the drivers, which I have done repeatedly. The MX250 throttles every time it hits 62 degrees celcius, stuttering the games - even something like dota running at low settings. 

Another problem that I can see is the battery indicator getting stuck on 100% if you enable the battery time in BIOS. I have been using the laptop for nearly half hour, and the battery indicator in still is stuck on 100%. 

This needs a BIOS update to rectify the problems, based on my previous experiences with the same problem from HP. 

[madfry]

Unbelievable. 

I had another i5 based unit with the NVIDIA MX150 before this, a 15" Pavilion. It had a problem where games and performance suffer on AC power but worked fine under battery power. It required a BIOS update for it to work properly. 

So I tested the benchmarks again. HP 13-aq0023tx under battery, lo and behold, performance got better. Nearly 120 points improvement in CInebench for example. Stick the AC power in and all the stutter in games, rendering, benchmarks all came back. 

Guess have to wait for that BIOS update to be released again.
 

[Darro20]

Hi

I wanted to get this laptop and I was wondering if you had any luck fixing the throttling? How about the throttling when selecting different command center settings? Do you know if there was an bios update?

Thanks in advance

[Sam516]

I recently bought the same laptop and have the same problems...