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Elitebook 8440 and 8540 have better heat dissipation than old generation
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by Brad S | Jan 31, 2010

I just finished several hours of intensely working out HP’s new Elitebook 8440p, Elitebook 8440w and Elitebook 8540w models this week running several games in a row (special thanks to several friends who helped). Well, to be frank, we weren’t just ‘officially’ testing them – we had lots of fun playing the latest game titles and creating fancy CAD car models while at it!

I’m not gonna post a whole bunch of benchmark and temperature numbers here, perhaps at a later point in time, but today, I want to keep things simple and straightforward. The HP Elitebook 8440 and 8540 models have very much improved heat control compared to previous models. So far, I’m not sure what’s bringing such a huge improvement – better fan speed control, reshuffled component layout or more efficient components – but there was a tangible difference I could feel. After about 8 hours of running a mix of AutoCAD, 3Ds Max, Left4Dead 2 and Need for Speed Shift, I could literally hold the quad core Elitebook 8440w and 8540w models using my bare hands, by the bottom of the notebook, without getting my fingers and hands fried. The dual-core Core i5 running Elitebook 8440p fared much better: after going through the same stress test, it really didn’t feel as if the notebook had been doing any work at all – it was as cool as a notebook that had merely been idling with some windows open.

For comparison’s sake, I wouldn’t touch the bottom of any old generation Elitebook that I knew had just undergone some heavy task lifting because they can literally burn!

Off topic: Anyone know why notebooks can suddenly ‘switch off’ and how to solve this problem? There was an Elitebook 8730w (among other various notebooks) at the gathering which frequently (and suddenly) switch off without warning. I suspect it’s due to overheating (processor can go up to 90-100 degrees Celcius running the same apps/games as above) though I’ve tried cleaning the fan and even removing the bottom panel for better airflow – but no luck.

9 Comments

By david, February 1, 2010 @ 11:52 pm

I had a similar problem on my (ancient) HP pavilion zd7000, and in the end it turned out to be because of faulty RAM. Possibly combined with high heat.
By satein, February 2, 2010 @ 10:16 am

For a matter of suddenly switch off, not only CPU overheating can cause it, but also the chipset or graphic too. If it did switch off and need sometime before being able to reboot again. Overheating would be the problem. But if it did swith off and can reboot immediatly, probably it may be os, software, virus things… Hope this help.
By Brad, February 2, 2010 @ 3:30 pm

Thank you david and satein for the tips =)

@david, I’ll probably try swapping out my dv4′s RAM for my pal’s 8730w RAM and see if that’s the cause. I have noticed that the RAM area of the 8730w models in general tend to heat up a lot under heavy loads, but I never thought that would have been an issue.

@satein, In that case, I don’t think it’s a hardware issue – the notebook was able to power on immediately after the sudden turn off and it only happened very frequently with specific apps like Left4Dead 2 and 3Ds Max. Some other titles like NFS Shift worked fine without any issue (besides helping to increase temperature)
By curious-character, February 4, 2010 @ 3:03 am

When are you going to post all the benchmarks mentioned? I’m very interested in comparing the 8440p/w and 8540p/w…specifically to see if the NVS vs FX GPU’s makes much difference in gaming and how much better the FX is on Cinebench R10.
By Igor, March 1, 2010 @ 9:34 pm

I’m very interested in the 8440p, are you goning to publish a detailed review anytime soon?
By Brad, March 2, 2010 @ 5:29 am

Yup, review of the Elitebook 8440p coming up real soon. Sorry, it’s been a slight challenge trying to juggle real life (a lot of form filling and document compilation lately), HP news and another review (Battlefield Bad Company 2) at the same time, but expect the review to be up this week. I promise =)
By pgwmw, January 25, 2011 @ 6:22 pm

A very late reply, but owning a 8530w for some time I can first hand complain about overheating issues.
While performing ‘normal’ tasks, the gpu/cpu temperature is at a reasonable 50 degrees celcius. I believe that the problem is caused by a cooling problem with the containing nvidia chip. Even though it’s not a perfect card for 3D uses like playing video games, the amount of overheating it produces is beyond acceptable. Within 5 minutes of semi-intense use it will heat up all cores to over 100 degrees celcius and cause massive slugging and, when not supported by external fans, instant shutdown. I have been struggling with this problem for a long time, also because as to date I have found no way to manually control internal fans. Even though I’m not a regular gamer, i feel it’s a design problem. If you found more about the improvements in this aspect for later models, I’d be very glad to read more.
Kind regards,

(Also: I’m not a professional geek. Annoyance made me do quite a bit of research into the subject.)
By curious-character, February 14, 2011 @ 9:11 am

@pgwmw: That is unacceptable performance. Use your warranty. Sounds like maybe the heat sinks or thermal paste need to be looked at.
By dxf, September 18, 2011 @ 8:16 am

i agree with pgwmw. i have and an 8540w i5 and it seems to be overeating. while rendering in cinema 4d and other similar applications it would shut down. but i general i find that it gets hot really fast. i don’t even know how this matter can be resolved. it even worse when i have an external monitor connected.