New HP Spectre x360 - 13 2018 noisy fan

[nelio421]

Hi ! Please Can you let us know what was their answer! I'm having the same issue and  I didn't found any solution. 

On my laptop one fan is running at 5k rpm and the other at 100rpm. 

 thanks  

[emasty]

So I had to send in my unit for repair. They did want to add another cooling pad (for the ssd?) which they didn't install in the first hardware revisions. I accepted the repair even if I thought that it doesn't make too much sense as I still think the behavior is software related (frequency is increased when plugged in).

I received the laptop back...and as I expected, it didn't change. So no luck.

Until now, 2 bios versions came out. V33, which was only available for a week or so and V34 which is the current one. It got a little bit better, but still screwed up.

- The fan control allowed the laptop to get warmer, which is nice

- The silent profile in the HP Command center doesn't work at all any more! (don't use it). It makes the fan go on and never stop again (which is the opposite of what the profile should do)

- if you do a demanding task and the laptop should start the fans (e.g. encoding a video, compiling something, doing graphics work) the fan goes on on full speed (which is what it should do) but only runs there for a certain time (a few seconds). Then the fan throttles down to a lower frequency (because the laptop is still hot?) and never goes up again. Instead the processor is throttled down a lot.

So as a result, the fan still kicks in on low demanding tasks but does not cool down on high demanding tasks. Whoever develops and tests the system must really hate their job or the company.

The only upside in the new BIOS version is:

- the fan does start later than bevor, so that is an improvement

- it seems that the fan does not always kick in at the highest speed but at the lower speed, which is nice (and how it should be)

Still a very annoying laptop to use in a quiet environment. I would also definitely not recommend the unit to any student!

The settings I use to have it running a little bit more convenient:

- disable turbo completely, it makes everything worse

- run park control to park the not used cores. Seems to help a bit

- Run the laptop on Linux and manually use tlp in battery mode when plugged in. It forces the chipset to run the same profile as when unplugged which keeps the whole unit a loooot cooler.

Still my recommendation...DO NOT BUY THIS LAPTOP! And return it as long as you can!

The only thing I wonder is, if it only happens on the 4k unit, as reviews of the 1080p unit always say that the fan barely ever kicks in...?

Does everyone here use the 4k unit?

[nelio421]

I'm using the 4k unit here.

Since the last BIOS update it seems that the fans are running  differently (better I guess) than before  but I still  have no idea on why is that the fans run on massively different speeds from each other ( is it software or a faulty fan or any other electrical failure ?) one of HP representatives from the US ( I'm in the UK) said it's a hardware issue. I still can't get hold of any customer service here in the UK.  

[emasty]

Where do you get the fan speed from?

I also had a tool once that showed the RPM (don't know which one though) and it also showed a big gap between the fans. But about the same amount of air came out of the laptop in the back (educated guess 😉 )

My conclusion was that the shown information is just wrong. HP is very intransparent regarding the sensors and I am also not too sure if they can be accessed from the OS at all.

Same goes for the fan control. I think that only a "preference" on the fan behavior can be set. Not the exact fan speed. That is all taken care of by a chip.

Good to know that you are also using the 4k model. I think they might have a big issue with that one. The chipset might just not be ready for 4k. That would explain why the unit gets so extremely hot and laggy when doing something video related (like playing a 1080p video file or even smaller resolutions on YouTube). Even a low end laptop can play 1080p videos nowadays without any excessive heat. This unit not.