HP Omen 17 - CPU temperatures up to 100 °C during gaming

[TzortzisG]

Klosch, there is no such thing as a "dumb question" on this forum, even if your questions were kind of easy to answer. But actually these are good questions. Ambient temperature is very important. Also, the CPU and GPU affect each other's performance because they share the laptop's maximum power and thermal limits. Sometimes by limiting the CPU a bit, you actually get better FPS because the GPU isn't throttled (especially with high ambient temps). You need to do some testing on your machine. Take a look at this post for example: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/High-CPU-temperature-while-gami... 

[klosch]

Thanks again.

Im still troubleshooting... and Im thinking about one thing:

Todays room temperature is around 22C - this is quite normal, there were similar temperatures before with no FPS drops / problems.

But while testing BF2042 the CPU still throttles, which leads to ~85-95 FPS. Before my average FPS in this game was >115.

Yesterdays ambient temperature was ~26C and I had the same FPS as today, which lets me assume that the reason for the FPS drop might not be the room temperature.

I remember that I installed a BIOS update (F.15) on the 30th of May. Due to vacation I did not play any games on the laptop after the update. My assumption now is that maybe the new BIOS is not working properly. I reinstalled the F.15 but nothing changed. I downladed and tried to install the F.14 version, unfortunatelly it is not possible to install the F.14. Is there a possibility to downgrade the BIOS again?

[TzortzisG]

Hi!

If true, this is bad news. HP has started using EC limits on its gaming laptops with BIOS updates, probably due to the fact that the temps were getting completely out of hand. I haven't seen reports on any OMENs yet, but it's a known issue with the VIctus line. It's possible that the May update is the first for your series, Theoretically you can downgrade BIOS, IF HP hasn't locked this ability. They usually write something like "NOTE: Due to the enhanced security features included in this update, the BIOS cannot be downgraded to an earlier version after this package is installed" on the update file's info. Even though I see nothing of the sort on the May update we're talking about, when users with the same problem tried to downgrade their Victus laptops, we discovered that the ability had been locked/removed.

To properly test your laptop and see what exactly is going on, I suggest you visit the throttlestop forum I linked to previously. But from what you've told me, this seems to be the case. What the EC limit did on the Victus line was shave some of the highest multipliers (6) off of Turbo Boost. So this would totally explain the FPS drop you're seeing...... This is a recent thread about the VIctus EC throttling method: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/BIOS-F-12-VICTUS-16-problem/m-....

[klosch]

If thats the case it would be at least a questionable decision by HP from a customers perspective...

I limited the CPU Power in the Windows settings to 95% but no notable effect.

So, I tried to downgrade the BIOS yesterday by performing the following steps:

1) Shutdown the computer.

2) Hold down the Windows and B button together while the computer is still turned off. 3) Turn on the computer and continue to hold the Windows and B button until a BIOS Recovery screen appears.

4) Follow on-screen instructions and click on OK

Unfortunately it instantly re-installed the current version of the BIOS without giving any options. So it seems you are right: the possibilty to downgrade might be blocked. I havent found any other possibilty to downgrade yet.

What I will do next is trying a more powerful cooling pad today. Maybe that will cool down the cpu and prevent the throttling. If that wont help I will contact the HP support and let them check the laptop. Loosing like 30 FPS in average all of a sudden seems not acceptable for me when its not a overheating-by-design or typical-laptop-during-summerdays problem. Just an example: After doing some research, people are having like 140+ FPS in D4 with same laptop specs while I have 100-110 FPS on average. The CPU does not reach the 100C while running D4...

If you guys have other ideas please let me know 🙂

[TzortzisG]

 If you tried downgrading with a USB stick and it re-flashed current version, it must have done so from storage. Therefore, you have to open the laptop and remove your SSD before flashing. You mentioned a carepack, so......it's kind of a gray area there.

 Try the program I've attached below (it's portable-don't worry) so that you can see what your CPU's max freq is.

   *or any kind of monitoring software for that matter (hwinfo, Cpu-Z, etc)....

  **you did use a USB, right? Win+B alone just recovers the current BIOS from disk -to downgrade you have to run the softpaq with the correct Bios version and choose the make USB option (if available). Then use the USB disk with the Win+B keypress. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Wrong-Bios-Version/m-p/8495236#... 

https://youtu.be/t3S3KgcT-Ao 

[klosch]

Hey 🙂

sorry for my late answer, I was quite busy the last days.

What I can confirm is that a good cooling pad is absolutely essential for a gaming laptop. With a more premium one, I see like 10-20 °C lesser temperature on the CPU. I am still doubting that its a ambient temperature issue, the cooling pad seems to confirm that.

Yeah, well, I did not use a USB to downgrade - only Win+B. I thought there will be (more) options (like restore to factory settings - nope).

I use HWmonitor for checking on the temperatures and now that I plugged in a monitor I can also check for the freqs during gaming. What I can see is that during Diablo 4 the freqs never go higher than ~3,2 Ghz (the I7 should go up to like 4,6 Ghz in boost mode). The temperatures are around 60 °C, which is not that high tbh. For BF2042 I observe even lower freqs and higher temps (which is related for sure). While having like 80-90 °C the freqs are below ~2,2-3,0 GHz.

After browsing a little bit throug these forums I found some other discussions with similar observations:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Omen-17-ck1000-2022-performance...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Omen-17-ck1000-performance-drop...

I see the same warning in the event viewer. "The speed of processor 'xx' in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 'xxxxxx' seconds since the last report."

Now I am finguring out my next steps ...

[TzortzisG]

Although the Event viewer warning isn't really indicative of anything, those threads about the F11 BIOS are actual proof that the Omens have also been dealt with the same EC throttling updates. It's more than likely that you directly updated to the F15 version, and this is why you didn't have any issues with speed previously. Anyways, unless you return to an older BIOS version, your CPU for all intents and purposes has a much lower max frequency (3.2 seems a bit low though -even for EC throttling).