HP OMEN 880-011 CPU upgrade, new MB or no?

Do-more

So last Christmas I bought my son a HP OMEN 880-011 i5-7400 8GB GTX 1060 (3GB).

Full specs here.

At the time he was only using it for Minecraft and YouTube and all was fine.

Now he is playing Fortnite and Battlefield 1 and he has problems with stuttering with the latter which is likely to get worse with Battlefield V.

On Battlefield 1 the CPU just sits at 100% and the RAM usage is at 7.4GB which if I understand right is effectively max'd out.

So I figure on upgrading to 16GB RAM and also the CPU but I am unsure what exactly I should do.

According to the HP support page the only alternative is an i7-7700 3.6Ghz. as the motherboard is limited to a 65W TDP processor.

This should handle BF V OK but maybe I am better in going another step up to try and extend the time before another upgrade is needed?

Presumably I will need to get a new motherboard but I haven't got a clue.

The current motherboards full specs are here. but the basics are: Form factor: uATX: 24.0x24.0 cm (9.4x9.4 in) Chipset: H270 Memory sockets: 4 x DDR4 Processor socket: LGA1151.

Any (positive) advice on what you would do in my position would be greatly appreciated.

(Will possibly look at a GPU upgrade at Xmas)

Varik

Should be getting 90-100 fps on max 1080p on fortnite with that, and above 50 but probably not 60 on BF1 on max.

There's an underlying issue there.

ED E

BF is weird in that its super CPU heavy, especially in large multiplayer. So normally if you spend €50 on CPU you spend €100 on GPU (made up numbers!) but with BF its closer to €50 to €75 to get the most bang for buck.

The thing is you're then spending a lot on a part that most benefits a single title. When you go back to other games you'll still be GPU limited.

A new 7700 is 170 - 200GBP. Thats a fair wad of cash for the gain you'll see unless he's hugely into BF.


New mobo likely means start again with new case and PSU. Check with others who have that case but typically HP build their boxes so standard mobos/PSUs won't fit.

Do-more

ED E wrote: »

BF is weird in that its super CPU heavy, especially in large multiplayer. So normally if you spend €50 on CPU you spend €100 on GPU (made up numbers!) but with BF its closer to €50 to €75 to get the most bang for buck.

The thing is you're then spending a lot on a part that most benefits a single title. When you go back to other games you'll still be GPU limited.

A new 7700 is 170 - 200GBP. Thats a fair wad of cash for the gain you'll see unless he's hugely into BF.


New mobo likely means start again with new case and PSU. Check with others who have that case but typically HP build their boxes so standard mobos/PSUs won't fit.

From what I understand the motherboard is upgradeable. The Omen line of gaming PC's are designed to be so.

Bit cheesed off that having only bought the PC 9 months ago it is too slow already!

Don't know where you can get a i7-7700 for £200 I'm seeing prices more like £270.

Crazy thing is that the 8700 is a very similar price so that's what got me thinking that spending the extra for a new motherboard would get an additional 20% bump in performance.

Thanks both for your input.

TerrorFirmer

It's the CPU. BF is very CPU punishing, normal what you're experiencing with the 7400.

Doesn't have to be a 7700. An i7-6700 or 6700K would be fine. CEX sell the 6700K (4Ghz) for 185 with 2 year warranty (though CPUs either work or don't).

As EDE said above, with BF, it should be high-end CPU with mid-range GPU, eg, i7-6700 + 1060 3GB.

ED E

Do-more wrote: »

Don't know where you can get a i7-7700 for £200 I'm seeing prices more like £270.

I meant to say a 2nd hand 7700, not new but goofed.

Inquitus

I'd go with the CPU upgrade and sell what you have 2nd hand.

Do-more

Thanks for all the input.

Having looked at a YouTube "how to" vid on the CPU upgrade, it seems pretty straightforward.

Whereas changing the motherboard and all that that entails and whether I would get to re-activate Windows as it was a factory install has brought me to the conclusion that the CPU only upgrade is the way to go.

Do-more

Thanks, I will get him to look at that and adjust his settings.

I don't know what the specs are for his monitor but it is nothing fancy and a few years old so he probably has the settings above the monitor's capabilities anyway.

That was something I was going to suggest to him to buy with his own money! I was looking at a Acer 27" LED Predator XB271HUA

Do-more

He has a second monitor running that he has some chat program on and chrome with YouTube and lord knows what else open.

No idea what if any CPU cooler is on his machine but the upgrade video I looked at yesterday also recommended the Hyper 212 Evo when upgrading to the i7.

TerrorFirmer

That video is the single player, the multi player is twice as intensive and is what kills processors, which presumably is what's being played.

The campaign mode runs fine on pretty much anything really, an older i3 even is grand.

TerrorFirmer

60fps average maybe but what people very regularly overlook is 1 and 0.1% minimums, CPU benchmarks are not much use without them.

EG an i5-7400 would probably be something like 60-80fps average on ultra, but when stuff is really getting hectic on screen and a lot is happening, you'll get mad spikes on pretty much any i5 (apart from the new 8th gen obviously which are six core).

It will go away with an i7, those 1% and 0.1% lows will be massively improved, the extra threads go a long way in Battlefield.

The other way to test it is to play 32 player deathmatch or something instead of 64 player conquest, you'll see immediately an improvement as the CPU is not pegged at 100% as much.

Do-more

Just to report back on what action I took and the results.

I bought an i7-7700 3.6ghz cpu and 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666MHz RAM

Also bought a Hyper 212 cooler.

Fitted the RAM and CPU today which proved to be very straightforward given that I had never upgraded a CPU previously.

The cooler upgrade proved a little trickier. The cooler fitted from new by HP is similar to the Intel cooler but screws onto the board. Unfortunately the threads are a different pitch to those on the Hyper.

Taking off the other side panel doesn't give access to the rear of the MoBo so I will have to fully remove the MoBo from the case in order to mount the cooler and looking at the amount of connections to be disconnected and reconnected I decided against jumping in to doing it today. One concern is whether I can remove the mounting nuts for the HP cooler or not, I would like to know that I can complete the job before I start it!

I will probably try contacting HP support first to see if they can recommend an aftermarket cooler that can bolt straight on to the existing mounts.

So for now I have refitted the stock HP cooler which seems to be working OK. Highest temp so far was 80C.

Testing the new setup with Battlefield 1 the CPU is´now hitting only 70% compared to being maxed out on the i5 and RAM usage is around 60%

So on the face of it looks like going for a better CPU or more RAM would have been overkill.

Only problem now is that he has started playing ARK Survival Evolved and the GPU is maxed out at medium settings!!!

Now that I have an i5 cpu and 8GB of RAM lying around I guess my next thread will be looking for recommendations for building them into a small HTPC....

TerrorFirmer

You won't get an aftermarket cooler to fit that plate. They're usually stuck onto the board with strong mounting tape so you may have to pry it off. 80c under load for a 7700 sounds normal though I assume you applied new thermal paste and cleaned the old stuff off? Otherwise it wouldn't be optimal at all and run alot hotter than necessary.

K.O.Kiki

You might be able to undervolt the CPU by 50-80mV, that usually savesa few degrees.

Do-more

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

You won't get an aftermarket cooler to fit that plate. They're usually stuck onto the board with strong mounting tape so you may have to pry it off. 80c under load for a 7700 sounds normal though I assume you applied new thermal paste and cleaned the old stuff off? Otherwise it wouldn't be optimal at all and run alot hotter than necessary.

Yeah I cleaned away all the old Thermal paste and applied new, so that should be all good.

It only hit 80C for a few seconds when the game was loading otherwise it was sitting at around 70C.

Having read a little more it seems like starting with the Kaby lake chips Intel has them running hotter than previous generations and 80C is no problem.

HP do a water cooler for this model but it is not in stock in the HP parts store. Seems to be made for them by Asetek but can't find a consumer version anywhere.

He has core temp installed now and I have told him to keep an eye on the temps and if they start to creep up I will look for a solution again.

Do-more

Just to update the thread regarding a cooler that will fit the standard HP Omen backplate.

I asked on the HP Support community forum about a cooler that will fit and after some weeks a user has now replied that they have had success in fitting a Alpenföh BEN NEVIS cooler to the standard HP backplate.

This cooler is pretty widely available in Europe, it's available for €25 on amazon.de for prime members for example.

The cooler is fairly similar in general spec to the Hyper 212 evo, cooling capacity for the Ben Nevis is rated at 140W TDP as against 150W TDP for the Hyper.

The other user's motherboard is the HP Tampa 2 whilst mine is the HP Naples but looking at photos online the two are almost identical so I am very confident that the Ben Nevis cooler will fit mine also.

I have now ordered this cooler and will confirm that it fits when I get it, hopefully next week...

Tags: Aftermarket 3rd. party cooler that fits HP Omen backplate.

Do-more

Success!

The Alpenföhn Ben Nevis cooler arrived in today's post and was very straightforward to install, just a matter of unscrewing the four screws holding the AMD bracket that came pre-mounted on the cooler and attaching the included Intel 1151 bracket in its place.

Clean off and apply new thermal paste and then the new cooler screwed directly to the existing HP backplate.

Max. temp so far was 64°C so a drop of about 16 degrees compared to the standard cooler.

Now, fingers crossed for a decent price on a 1080ti GPU on Black Friday.