Spectre x360 15-df0126ng fan control and noise

[Pilot7]

Another owner of the df model with the 8750h mentioned it on the reddit channel spectrex360.

Maybe you can IM them and ask for more details.

Unfortunately I don't have the df model so I can't really test it myself.

[ThetaRho]

Finally, the first real improvement.

With BIOS F.31 the unit is much more quiet, the fans do not start under light desktop loads, neither on mains nor on battery.

The new thermal settings seem to allow more heat, so the laptop is hotter.

Unfortunately light means "really light". So watching FHD video still requires active cooling sometimes. For short periods 

the whining fan noise is back, although it remains on the lowest fan stage for now.  Still, for a quiet living room it is too much.

HP should improve their embedded controller to have a very low fan setting for light loads (like my Elitebook).

So the F.31 BIOS makes the situation better, but cannot resolve the cooling system acoustic issues.

[HeimerHeimer]

Hey all,

So I can't speak for the 15" inch as that also has a discrete GPU but as for the 13" one the main culprits here are Intel SpeedStep and Turbo boost kicking in/up even for background tasks that we don't care about. 

You can disable this by forcing the frequency scaling to a lower number. This means a slower computer but modern CPU's are so fast that you won't notice a difference for surfing and watching movies. The good thing is that this can be managed in the power options so you can easily switch back to "high power mode" whenever you need to.

Steps

1. Create a custom power plan in "Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options"

2. Click change plan settings and change advanced power settings

3. Change System cooling policy to "Passive" and change "Maximum processor state" to a lower number, like 80%

 

4. If for some unfathomable reason Microsoft has removed these options from you as well, you can luckily add them with the following regedits and then repeat the steps above.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/107953-add-remove-system-cooling-policy-power-options-windows.ht...

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/107967-add-remove-maximum-processor-state-power-options-windows-...

(Special thanks to Shawn Brink)

5. Enjoy your silent HP Spectre x360 13"!

Johnny

[GunterO]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it is indeed related to an USB-C dock, or when you connect an external screen.

But unfortunately, these laptops don't have this "Turbo Boost" option in the BIOS setup.

The BIOS of this overcharged laptop is very spartan.

In another thread, we are requesting for an option to keep the keyboard back lights on for >15sec but HP is just ignoring it's customers...

[ThetaRho]

Hi,

a short summary after one year of ownership.

HP brought out BIOS updates that seem to shift the fan stage thresholds to higher temperatures.

So under low load, the device remains silent for a longer time but gets quite hot.

They did not manage to implement a continuous fan control output though,

so that the fan is very audible at its lowest stage.

As already mentioned, the problem is less the noise level, but the acoustic profile.

As a contrast, this is much better with my business Zbook which has a nearly inaudible fan stage that seems just to prevent heat accumulation under low load. Why not have this on a high-end Spectre as well? I really cannot follow their logic ...

[emasty]

Hi,

I would also like to add a short summary after 1 year of usage of the Spectre 13" early 2019.

• Running the laptop on battery still works very good
• Running the device on power was extremely annoying until EFI/BIOS update 34.A
• The temperature is now allowed to go up a bit without the fan kicking in all the time
• Temperature with light tasks is around 45-60° C and the device temperature is (most of the times) comfortable to the touch
• The EFI/BIOS update was a HUGE improvement
• But disabling the Turbo is still required! (can be done with 3rd party tools or in windows with performance settings as HeimerHeimer explained)
• Using the tool ParkControl also helped in my case to keep the device cool
• The speed step settings for the device/processor is still crazy. The CPU jumps to full frequency with very light tasks. Therefore, disabling Turbo is required
• The cooling and power control of the device is still completely broken
• If the device is under load and the fans have to cool for too long (I would say approx. 30 sec.) the cooling system "gives up". As a result, the processor is scaled down to a point where the processor doesn't produce a lot of heat anymore. It is scaled down so much, that the fans also ramp down to the point where they switch off completely. This is all the case while processor is still under 100% load! Which is totally crap.
• Sometimes, the device boots up but the cooling control seems to crash. As a result fans turn on when the processor reached approx. 55° C and will never turn off again. A complete shutdown helps in this case (the device has to completely power off. Reboot does not work)
• HP Command Center does not work at all! (can someone confirm that?)
• Switching to "Silent" will start the fans under nearly all conditions. Switching back to "recommended" will also turn the fans off (shouldn't it be the opposite?)
• The profiles "comfort" and "performance" also do not work. They should switch on the fan and lower the frequency (comfort) or increase the frequency (power)...but both doesn't work.

So, the quality of the thermal and frequency control of the device is in my opinion still extremely broken. But with BIOS F34 it is finally possible to use the device relatively silent under low loads .

I have never seen such a bad quality before...will definitely be my first and last HP product.

(besides that, the touchpad is sometimes broken, two speakers are broken, one fan is rattling and the device has to go to repair for the second time...for a 2000€ device...)

[emasty]

Ha, niice...it seems that HP deleted the message of Jure-Jancigaj because he named a different company.

I will still post my reply to the answer if the performance dropped a lot with the BIOS updates:

In my case, I cannot feel a huge difference in all-day performance with turbo switched off. The processor is powerful enough for that. But talking about high demands, the device is...well...get a different one.

Luckily, I use the 13" device not as a desktop replacement. I mainly do programming, graphics (vector and pixel graphics, raw development) and browsing/reading. The main factors for me are a silent device (coding doesn't use a lot of CPU, compiling could), with an accurate and pleasing to look display and a lot of RAM.

But I can understand your point. The fan kicks in pretty fast in my case, but longer demanding tasks are not possible due to the self down-regulating bug the cooling has as described in my last post (circle of performance death). I once tried to edit a 1080p, 30fps video which should be easy for the device specs. But...it is horrible. Especially seeing that while e.g. converting or rendering a video, the device gets hot...cooling switches on (totally fine)...warm...cooling ramps down...cool...cooling switches off - while it is still processing the video file at 100% CPU utilization is...it is really disturbing. And it makes you angry...the kind of helpless-angry. And if you then...5min later open Firefox/Chrome/Edge, load a basic website and the fan goes nuts...I was just speechless...and I still am. Don't get me wrong. I am totally fine, if the device cools heavily under high demand...but not under low load.

To be honest, as a programmer, I believe that implementing that broken and weird logic is harder than to just do it right.

My feeling is, with every BIOS update, they try to cure the symptoms, instead of fixing the real issues.

Same happened to me. The aesthetics of the x360 is astonishing, also the keyboard, the 4k display, form-factor and ports are amazing. But the controls-software sucks so horribly. I guess HP outsourced the development to a third world country with many, but also many bad programmers (you can see indications in the BIOS updates).

But I have to say, the German HP support team is the best I've ever experienced of any company. They are really skilled, very friendly and try to help as much as they can. Call you back to ask if it helped, try to find new solutions. But...they are also just helpless and depend on proper software...and probably don't have any real connection to the dev team. 

[emasty]

Oh, and a short note. DO NOT UPDATE TO BIOS 40 if you want to have the possibility for a silent, plugged in device!

Again, the device is not able to lower the frequency to 0.8GHz when plugged in which results in frequent cooling even in idle! It will always stay above 1.1 GHz. Nice HP...I thought, that bug was gone...

[Jure-Jancigaj]

Thanks for sharing Emasty. It sounds really great that you have had a great experience with the support team. As well I can understand that the fact that you are using it for not so heavy workloads you appreciate the update. I would assume that you are running either an i5 or i7 the 15W right? 

I always think that different use cases deserve a choice and the my main pain point here was at first not the actual performance but it was strange that I bothered if the laptop even has fans. I migrated from a 12'  laptop as it was a little too small and the change of my work suggested that I need to migrate through the office for at least 1h per day and I really like to have all my stuff there when I need it. That is as well the reason that I decided to buy the 45W version as I knew that performance for some VMs and software testing would be needed and paid the premium for the mightier CPU as well. 

My experience with the support in Slovenia was just so so. First I opened a chat with HP to tell them about the problem. First drivers updates and as an IT person at work I always try to have the latest version (would be better that I wouldn't change the BIOS once I received the laptop), then they wanted to initiate a pickup. After some time they provided me with the answer that I'm in Slovenia (as usual for any service) and I need to give it to a local service unit that works with HP. When I found one that doesn't cover only business line of HP products and when I said "Just so you know the issue with the display with the privacy filter is there but you will probably not be able to reproduce it but the laptop turns off randomly and it's pretty much too hot" then I got the usual response like a child "You know you have the 45W version and it can't run on normal temps" Okay sure that is why under battery power and with short CPU spikes the CPU runs under 1GHz. 

Will as well hold my mouth further and won't talk with the other options I should more seriously consider but where I think we can all agree to is that the PC is looking awesome with the aluminum body, pen support as well as a really really good keyboard for HP but please don't let me talk about the last BIOS updates or the HP support center or any additional software that I have installed even when doing a clean Windows install. 

A funny fact is that if the laptop is running Linux (Ubuntu) the fans are working and I get around 20% higher clocks when doing a quick benchmark. At least I have some hope that HP will give us an option to revert the changes done in the last BIOSes for the fans as downgrade is not possible because of the Spectre & Meltdown fixes. 

[Jure-Jancigaj]

For the BIOS version already on it :). If I weren't the service would definitely update it to the latest and greatest one but I haven't seen any difference for me (only had it installed 1 day and then I have given the HP to the service center).