Re: I need help with choosing a gaming laptop

@puzzlezaddict i see. I had no idea what's the difference between those graphic cards. So if you have to make a decision between Lenovo Legion, HP Pavilion, and HP Omen which one would you consider getting?

@EmpressShadow7  If it were just for Sims 3 and 4, I'd choose the cheapest option with any of these graphics cards but be willing to pay up to $100 USD extra for a Legion.  This is partly subjective: good cooling matters to me, but above a certain point, I'd just buy a cooling pad or fan and save some money instead.

However, if you play more demanding games than Sims 4, you may want something more powerful than a 3050 ti.  Without knowing what those games are, I can't say whether you'd get a benefit from a faster card and up to what point it would make a difference.  It also depends on your own preferences: even a 2060 can run almost any AAA game on ultra settings, but probably not at 144 fps.  If you're fine with 60 frames per second, you don't need to spend nearly as much money as if you want to push fps over 100.  Or you could just turn down a couple graphics settings to high; this is also a perfectly reasonable approach, and depending on which settings you change, you might not even notice.

The point is, this is about your personal preferences and how much money you're willing to spend to cater to them.  What I would do with my own money is not necessarily the right answer for you.

@puzzlezaddict hey there. So i finally got a gaming laptop (Hp Omen, same specs in my original post) and honestly i don't know if it is worth all the money i spent on it.

Right of the bat when i used it for the first time, i noticed that the cpu temperature goes to 60c° even though i wasn't really doing anything and the fans start working when it reaches 60c°and boy those fans are SO loud!

It's supposed to run the sims 3 perfectly right? I mean nvidia rtx 2070, i7, 16g. But when i launched the game, it became prettyyy warm in 2 to 3 mins (i haven't even done anything! My household literally just loaded) and the fans went crazy!

Is this normal? Is there something i could do to fix this? I read about something called 'undervolting' but i don't know how to do it. Or is there something wrong with it and i should return it?

@EmpressShadow7  CPU temps of 60º C are not only normal, they're really good while you're playing.  Anything below 90º isn't even worth noticing, at least not on a gaming laptop.  The GPU will start to throttle a bit above 70º, but that's not a dangerous temperature either.  The fans can be loud, but I'd think you'd prefer to play with headphones anyway given how unimpressive most laptop speakers are.  I can't tell you for sure that there's nothing wrong with this laptop, but what you're describing isn't a problem at all.

One thing you should definitely do when playing Sims 3 is manually limit the in-game framerates.  Your 2070 is capable of generating wildly high fps if allowed, much higher than your screen can display, which increases its workload for no reason.

The in-game fps limiter doesn't work, but you can use the built-in Nvidia Control Panel instead.  Right-click on your desktop and select the CP, then Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings, select ts3.exe (for an Origin install) or ts3w.exe (for a disc or Steam install) from the list, scroll down to Max Frame Rate, and set it to 144, which I believe is the refresh rate of your screen.  (You should double-check, but it would be ridiculous for this model to have a 60 Hz screen.)  Enabling vertical sync will help with stutter and other graphics glitches you might see, but the setting only works in fullscreen mode.

You can do the same for Sims 4 if you want, using ts4_x64.exe for the settings.  Or you can use the global settings section to apply settings to all games.  Sims 4 does have a vertical sync setting, like almost all newer games, but there's no way to limit fps in windowed mode.

@puzzlezaddict it actually hit 60c° (69 sometimes) when i was just watching youtube and the fans kicked in. Sometimes it goes to 79c° then 50c° randomly. The cpu says only 2% or 4% is used but then the temperature is 60/70. I tested an easy to run game i bought from steam and it went to 70/79 and the fans turned on and started to spin faster gradually. The laptop (especially the space above the keyboard) started to get warm even though i had my cooling pad on. The fans start working randomly too every now and then and when i check the cpu temperature it's usually between 53 to 63. When i turned it off the battery was 100% charged and when i turned it on in the morning it was 83%

I made sure to update everything that needs to be updated.

I don't know if all of the things i mentioned are normal or not as this is the first "serious" gaming laptop i owned so i'm just really anxious and worried that something is wrong since it was so expensive.

@EmpressShadow7  YouTube can be a lot more demanding than you might imagine; I sometimes have my fans kick in when I have a video up but paused.  And again, any CPU temperature below 90º during gameplay is not worth worrying about.  An easy-to-run game might still require significant resources from the processor, especially if you don't manually cap fps: more frames per second means draw calls for the CPU.

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@EmpressShadow7 wrote:

When i turned it off the battery was 100% charged and when i turned it on in the morning it was 83%

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This, however, is not normal.  Did you in fact shut down the laptop, or did you simply shut its lid?  Either way, the battery should not behave like that, but the first would be worse: a laptop that's shut down shouldn't be drawing any power at all, so the battery shouldn't decline by more than a percentage point or so.  Shutting the lid is also supposed to conserve energy, but how much would depend to some degree on the laptop's internal power settings and what you had running in the background.

@puzzlezaddict the laptop was turned off completely when that happened. I called the store i got it from and they said the system needs an update and that's what i did: updated the system, charged it 100% and went to sleep. Today i turned it on before going out and the battery was 98% and now (two hours later) it's 97% so i guess the system update fixed it?

About the sims 3, i kind of set the game on the highest settings possible and checked all the options that can be checked and put the fps to 144hz because i thought a gaming laptop should be able to handle that. Obviously i was wrong. So aside from limiting the fps, could you please tell me what to do with the other settings to play with high graphics, no lagging/crashing but stop the laptop from becoming too hot/fans going crazy fast.

@EmpressShadow7  Did you actually confirm in-game that the fps was locked to 144?  Sims 3's fps limiter doesn't work; you need to use an outside tool.  If the Nvidia Control Panel settings aren't working, you can try this instead:

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/84-d3doverrider/?changelog=32

It works with DX9 games like Sims 3, forcing vertical sync when the Control Panel setting doesn't take.  If you play in windowed mode though, you'll need another tool, for example RivaTuner Statistics Server, which does need to be running while you play.

You can also choose to cap fps at 72 rather than 144 if you want; many people can't tell the difference, and that would be a significantly lower workload for the CPU and GPU.  It shouldn't be necessary in terms of performance, but it would help with temperatures.

The fans are supposed to run at high speeds while you're gaming.  That's not only normal but a good thing.  If the fans are too loud, sorry to say it, but that's part of having an Omen.  Some laptop brands have louder fans than others, depending on the laptop chassis and how much the manufacturer wants to spend on the feature.

@puzzlezaddict i'll try limiting the fps and let you know if it helps. I did for the sims 4 and i'm not really noticing any difference. Is it normal though that the keyboard, the area above it between the lid and the middle of the keyboard, the air vents on the back and the sides get prettyyyy warm within minutes of launching the game (sims 3 and 4) even with the fans and the cooling pad on? the cpu and gpu temps are always in the green when this happens (70c° 87c°)

Do you think i should get a better cooling pad? Mine has five fans and i use the highest speed but it doesn't make a difference.

I could live with the fans noise i guess since it's normal but i'm still worried the heat is not and i got a defective laptop.

Also i'm sorry for the million questions. I tried asking my friends but they have no idea about what's normal for gaming laptops.

@EmpressShadow7  It's normal for the keyboard and surrounding areas to get quite hot to the touch.  After all, the CPU and GPU are right underneath.  This review is for the previous generation's Omen, but it should give you an idea of what normal temperatures look like:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Omen-17-Laptop-Review-High-end-gaming-with-some-small-limitations.432964.0.html

In the Temperature section, you'll see photos from a thermal camera and some absolute readings for each location.  Even though this isn't your exact model, the two are likely very similar in this area.  High-end laptops are often too hot to comfortably touch in certain areas, the reasoning being (probably) that people running demanding games are probably using a mouse anyway, perhaps with the fingers of their other hand resting on the WASD keys.

The iternal temps you've described do not suggest that the laptop is defective.  I couldn't tell you for sure without some stress testing, but if the laptop had a major issue, as opposed to some minor tuning irregularity, you'd have seen evidence by now.

More questions are fine, but I hope that at some point, you let yourself relax and play.  This laptop is under warranty for a while, hopefully at least a year, so in the unlikely event that something does happen, you should be covered.  So there's not much point in worrying about it.

@puzzlezaddict the warranty is six months so everything is good for now. Something that happend this morning though is the constant buzzing noise only when playing games. When i quit the game the noise is gone. I googled it and it's something called coil whine. I don't really know how to fix it and i can still hear it with my headphones on. Any suggestions?

I already limited the fps to 144 using nvidia cp

@EmpressShadow7  Coil whine is due to coils within the graphics card vibrating rapidly enough that we can actually hear the results.  It typically only happens at high framerates, not 144 but in the 200-300 fps range or higher.  So you shouldn't be hearing it unless the Control Panel setting isn't taking.

It's also not a great sign for your laptop.  I mean it's not immediately dangerous, but if the coils are frequently under enough stress to whine, they could eventually break.  (This might take a couple years, but it's impossible to predict.)  And because their job is essentially to help steady the power being input to the GPU before it reaches the chip itself, they need to be in working order to protect the card.

@puzzlezaddict well nothing i can do to fix this i guess. I'll contact the store tomorrow and see what they can do. I can't play anything on it the noise is driving me crazy.