What your guys thoughts on HP Pavilion 15 Inch, i5 9300h, GeForce gtx 1050
BEFORE YOU BUY the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop, here are the pros and cons I found with my OWN 4-5 months use of it (NEW)
Scored this hp pavilion gaming laptop for 300 bucks on facebook market yesterday! 9th generation i5, gtx 1650, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd nvme.
How will the following games run on an HP Pavillion gaming laptop with the following specs?
Videos
Hello guys.
I decided to create this thread to share my experiences with a New HP Pavilion Gaming 15 Laptop and the pros and cons (Spoiler alert: Most are Cons).
WARNING: By no means I'm hating on it, I love HP and I like the Pavilion but after using it for 6 months I found many things that HP could've done but didn't because of it being "The most budget gaming laptop"
First are the Laptop's spec that I bought:
A Ryzen 5 5600H (6C/12T) Boost 4.2 GHz Single Core and 3.8 GHz Multi 6-Core
RTX 3050 Laptop GPU with 60W TGP
8 GB RAM Dual Channel 2 x 4 GB
256 Gb NVMe SSD and 1 Tb HDD 7200 RPM
A 60 Hz Display
Now the Pros:
The laptop has a good battery-life considering it's only a 52.5 Wh, I clocked 4:30 hours with basic workload (YTP playback, Wifi, some installation)
The RTX 3050, while only 60W did compare to the 75W one in terms of FPS so if you see a low priced 60W RTX 3050 Laptop, just go for it (Just make sure it has DB 2.0 !!!!)
Now the Cons:
In Morocco, this laptop was at 1150 USD. I bought it at that price and only because this is what I found within the budget (1200 USD) [As basically even the other budget gaming brands are expensive] yet with the performance, it's a loss for me.
The Laptop ships with 8 GB RAM Dual Channel, meaning I have to spend more money to upgrade the RAM to 16 GB, meaning the true cost is more of 1250 USD.
Now the real set of problem starts: The GPU ! I know HP targetted extreme budget friendly in their Pavilion brand...but seriously ???? No Dynamic Boost 2.0 ?? Meaning my RTX 3050 can't go to 75W and only stays at 60W. knowing that CPU is not usually being used, that extra performance is worth it. I only found that the laptop doesn't have DB 2.0 AFTER I bought it, reviewers on YTP didn't specify this and other brands with Budget friendly laptops have DB 2.0 (I can forgive not having the MUX Switch as that's in more premium laptops.... but NOT not having Dynamic Boost 2.0)
Thermals ! I did buy the laptop new, I also found that people had problems with the 2020 year model with the GTX 1650 ! but those were are said to be resolved. The laptop has only one heat sink shared between CPU and GPU with one one exhaust from the rear in the middle were the Dual Fans are located. The fans were tested using the "Speedfan" software and I found that the fan speed when in stress test (Meaning 100%) is 3550~ RPM. For comparaison, My current Lenovo Legion 5 hits 4500 RPM at 100% speed; I saw in reviews that Premium ASUS Laptops (Zephyrus or Strix) also hits 4500 RPM at 100%.
I should note that HP Pavilion Gaming did throttle ALOT! (Cyberpunk 2077 tested and CPU Temp is 96-97°C !! // During Installation the CPU Temp reaches 99-100°C ! which drops the clocks and TDP!) Sure Local temperature here is 31°C but I use a Dual fan cooling pad and the laptop is cleaned from dust, I suspect the Thermal Paste but the laptop is bought new, I wonder if HP decide to use cheap thermal paste because it's bad if they did !
5) The lack of customization in the OMEN Gaming Hub. In the Victus and Omen, you can choose performance modes in the inbuilt software, something the Pavilion DOES NOT have ! At least let us choose Performance Modes...not that it will make a difference with Point 4 as CPU TDP never exceeds 45W (Even with AIDA64 Stress Test) and 60W TGP Limit of the RTX 3050 ! (For comparaison: In my Legion 5 with a Ryzen 7 5800H, the CPU reaches 78W under stress test with a relatively safe 90-91°C temp)
6) My laptop was advertised with 144Hz display, turns out I bought the 60Hz one, the store didn't have the "Try before you buy" and no replacements so ALWAYS TRY BEFORE YOU BUY !! If a store doesn't offer this option ! even the offer is tempting, DON'T !
7) Finally, the lack of BIOS Customization, the only thing I found interesting is "Laptop Fan Always ON: OFF/ON", the others are features that soooo minimal and should be in the Desktop, not BIOS like Backlit Keyboard light time and Battery saving feature.
Those games should run well on this laptop, but not necessarily at all high settings. I don't have these particular games, but...
- I believe Minecraft is a fairly cpu intensive game.
- Fortnite probably also could do with a bit more grunt at the higher settings, as while it is cartoon like some of the lighting
and shadow effects may require more processing power than expected.
- i3 is a dual core cpu with Hyper-threading which adds two pseudo cores. Some games don't like Hyper-threading.
- i5 is a proper quad core cpu and a good option for games, however 2.3GHz is a bit on the low end for many games.
If at all possible see if Santa can offer a cpu closer to 3.0GHz.
- However the 1050ti is a good graphics card and will compensate a bit for the relatively slow 2.3GHz cpu.
- 8GB system RAM is more than enough. particularly relative to the cpu and gpu processing power.
The only way you would use even 8GB is if you heavily multi-task (have heaps of stuff open in the background while gaming).
- Don't worry about the AMD Athlon 64 or Pentium D. Those are older model cpu's (over 10 years old) and are less
capable even if the speed is a bit higher.
"1 TB SATA hard drive instead of SSD (don't know if this matters)"
Win10 runs a bit snappier on an SSD, but games don't benefit baring a slightly faster loading time.
Problem is, even if the SSD is 256GB it could fill up surprisingly fast, so I would go with the 1TB HDD, even though that
is perhaps a bit large if you don't already have a big game collection.
- Note that no laptop, even with a 'Gaming' tag is as good as an equivalent desktop machine for gaming. Laptops all have
a problem keeping the heat down during long gaming sessions.
Using an external fan pad can help, but they still run hot.
.
For the games mentioned, you should be fine
The GTX 1050 Ti is mid range and it is plenty powerful enough for games
Fortnite will run fine with the i5 as well