How to Remove Screw Cover for HP Omen 17 Laptop (HP - 17-w151nr)

[chatie]

Hello, I have a HP Omen 17 Laptop (HP - 17-w151nr).  I am trying to figure out how to remove the six rubber screw covers to expose the screws to unscrew them and open my laptop to add a hard drive.  The difficulty that I am having is that the screw covers are flushed with the back of the laptop case and also tiny.  The screw covers are talked about on page 36 and diagrammed on page 37 in Laptop's Maintenance and Service Guide.  Is there a way to remove the screw covers without damaging them, like maybe using particular tool or method?  Or do I need to stab something pokie into the rubber screw covers and try to pull or dig them out (...not sure how big the rubber screw covers are going down within the case and how much digging out I would have to do)?  If I have to destroy screw covers to get to the screws, are there replacements sold by HP Store?

[erico · Accepted solution]

Use a jewelers screwdriver to gently remove the plugs.

Yes, HP does sell the plugs, but not via the online store.

Use HP PartSurfer to get the part number then search online for a vendor. YOUr noteboook's product number is W2N49UA.

http://partsurfer.hp.com/Search.aspx?type=PROD&SearchText=W2N49UA

See the  video at the following URL. Click on base enclosure to see how the enclosure is removed.

https://h20574.www2.hp.com/Media/B57DEF21-05A1-48F9-B546-0887EA40C972/gri_fru_frameset-en.htm

[chatie]

Thank you for your answers. Using your advice,  it worked.  I was able to remove the rubber screw covers to get to the screws.  I was surprised that the rubber screw covers came out intact with the very tiny screwdriver, because it felt like I was going to rip them and end up digging them out.  Took quite an effort, and my fingers are still sore from yesterday working on removing the rubber screw covers and removing the bottom laptop case to get to the hard drive bay.  Also, thank you for including the video link, because it had other video  links, such as about installing the hard drive itself, which helped me a lot to see how to use the hard drive brackets and the tiny hdd ribbon cable.  Done a lot of installing hard drives in desktop computers before, but it was first time ever  to open up a laptop and install a laptop hard drive.

[Yuliusz]

Do you have a video for replacing thermal paste for the GPU and CPU? 

[erico]

No.

There is an example of how it is done on a desktop PC at the following link.

https://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/mx-4.html

[Yuliusz]

Thank you for your reply. I know how to get it done on my PC. But getting it done on the omen 17 can be much more complicated, thus my problem remains. But thank you. It is not your fault if such a video doesn't exist. 

[erico]

It will be the same basic procedure with a notebook.

If I may ask, why did you remove it?

[Yuliusz]

I noticed that my GPU and CPU temp goes to almost 90 degrees celsius, using speedfan, when I play witcher 3. I was just wondering whether the thermal paste is already optimally applied. My HP omen is w273nr. I watched youtube and it seemed like sometimes thermal pastes are not applied properly on laptops.

Also, would you know why the fan on the right side averages around 250rpm while the one on the left are usually about 10 times that, even when I am playing Witcher 3? Is that normal?

[erico]

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@Yuliusz wrote:

I noticed that my GPU and CPU temp goes to almost 90 degrees celsius, using speedfan, when I play witcher 3. I was just wondering whether the thermal paste is already optimally applied. My HP omen is w273nr. I watched youtube and it seemed like sometimes thermal pastes are not applied properly on laptops.

Also, would you know why the fan on the right side averages around 250rpm while the one on the left are usually about 10 times that, even when I am playing Witcher 3? Is that normal?

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Re: " I watched youtube and it seemed like sometimes thermal pastes are not applied properly on laptops." What made you decide that from watching Youtube?

The fan on the right is probably for the GPU side of the systemboard and the left  for the processor.

The fans run based on an algorithm of DeltaT (change in temperature) that runs at a firmware level (BIOS). Check the available BIOS versions to do a search int eh forum and online to see what  results other owners are having.

90C is a tad too close to the shutdown tempwratuire of 100C. I like a bit more headroom as well. Do you use canned compressed air to clean the intake and exhaust ports periodically?

[Yuliusz]

The GPU is always about 10 C lower than the CPU Temp (Temp1 on speedfan). I just tried playing again and the CPU went over 90C. A bit worrying to say the least. Fan 2 actually went down to about 145RPM, while the CPU Fan goes up to 3300RPM. What on earth is going on o_0? Is something faulty here? I am guessing the right side fan is the 145RPM fan because it is not very noisy. Funny thing is, the GPU was still lower than the CPU temp by about 10-15C