HP EliteBook 845 G10 review: Business laptop impresses with AMD Ryzen 7 7840U and unbeatable price

[Redaktion]

After reviewing the top version of the new EliteBook 845 G10, we now take a look at an exciting configuration with the low-power display and the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U. Thanks to lower power limits, this configuration remains much quieter when working.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-EliteBook-845-G10-review-Business-laptop-impresses-with-AMD-Ryzen-7-7840U-and-unbeatable-price.754141.0.html

[NikoB]

See review www.notebookcheck.com/HP-EliteBook-845-G10-im-Test-Der-fast-perfekte-Business-Laptop-mit-AMD-Zen4.739431.0.html ...and it price vs this model price..

Minus 18% in processor sustained performance. Minus 30% in the screen color space and 3.5 times worse response, minus 100 nits. FHD vs 2.5k in top version. But the screen is semi-matte, and not a nasty glossy one with glares. The price of this version of screen differs from the top 2.5k version in the link above by only $30-40 at retail stores...

Minus 16GB DDR5 5600 (-50$) and minus 500GB SSD (-25$). Moreover, those purchased and installed independently will have a warranty of 5 years, and not 1-2 years...

HP, do you really think that these additives cost +1250euro or the price of the second  G10 845 of this version upgraded to the same level? )))

Thus, the real price of the top model by link above is not 2250euro, but 1350euro maximum.

What do you guys choose? 2 x G10 845 with 7840U or one with 7940HS for 2.25 times the price? Thinking the question is rhetorical for any mentally sane person who pays out from own pocket with money earned by real labor...

And by the way, this version with 7840U is much quieter in operation than the top version with 7940HS. Losing only 18% of sustained CPU performance.

This is another significant reason to buy this "cheap" version. And carry out the upgrade yourself.

Install 64GB of RAM, install a 4TB SSD and replace the screen (this is only 1-1.5 hours of your manual work, if they(hands) are not crooked from birth - a joke) to 2.5k@120, purchasing it yourself.

As a result, you will get a much quieter laptop with a semi-matte rather than glossy 2.5k@120Hz screen, twice the RAM vs "top" model and 4 times more capacity of SSD (and both with a 5+ year warranty, not 1-2 years from HP) and at the same time its price will be at least 500-600 euro lower than the top model G10 845 with 7940HS. =)

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As for ECC memory support, this is a really relevant question, because formally the Zen4 Phoenix series, for the first time in x86 history, supports 256GB of RAM (but now the maximum available at retail is 32+32, ddr5 5600 modules for 64 and 128GB are not on sale yet).

With RAM amounts of 32GB+, especially on the business series, there simply must be support for ECC memory for a trivial reason - if the laptop is constantly used in sleep mode, because. hibernation is very slow in terms of write speed of this size of memory even on a pci-e 4.0 x4 SSD, and in sleep mode S3 (STR) - which the bastard hardware manufacturers deliberately removed in collusion with M$, it falls asleep in 1-2 seconds and wakes up in 1 -2 sec maximum. Feel the difference if you need to put a laptop connected to a power supply to sleep 5-10 times a day... with hibernation you will lose up to 0.5 TB of SSD resource per day with loaded software and a cache of 50-60 GB of RAM, and recording and recovery will be extremely slow.

The greater the capacity of the RAM, the more strongly it is affected by any interference and fluctuations in the electromagnetic global environment on the planet. Therefore, error control in the form of ECC is already very important, especially in business-critical applications.

The new-fangled filthy S5(S0), conceived by the scoundrels in M$ as a spying mode for Windows users with wi-fi, cable Ethernet and much more, even working coolers, has nothing in common with the good old S3(STR) - ideal sleep mode, where only RAM works (in slow update mode) and of course a unit for spying on all x86 owners since 2006 in the form of an Intel ME hardware module. Which is impossible for the average person to disable using simple methods - remember, the NSA can always connect to your machine. even if the power is turned off, but power is supplied from the battery, and even more so from the power supply.

No one will hibernate 256GB of RAM - it's simply too long even on a pci-e 5.0 x4 SSD - it will take more than 30 seconds to save and restore memory state from SSD. This means that laptops should then sleep well in a mode like S3 (STR) and wake up quickly in 1-2 seconds, but with RAM that can check errors in itself on the fly.

[NikoB]

And for the difference in price with the "top" version, the buyer, after upgrading this version, can buy a desktop GTX4070 ($450-500) + eGPU riser ($150-200) and a 1m TB4 cable ($20-30) to connect it to your laptop and, in moments of relaxation, play any modern games via the USB40 port with eGPU function.

Do you think that the upgraded version of the model from the review with 7840U + 64TB RAM (10 years warranty) + 4TB SSD (5 years warranty) + Raiser + desktop GTX4070 (3 years warranty) is worse than the top version with 7940HS for the same money with 32Gb RAM(1-2 years warranty) + 1TB SSD(1-2 years warranty)?

[QueryGuy]

Are your dimensions correct?  I get 315.6 x 224 x 19.2 mm from HP site??

[Alex280]

Not sure if Andreas Osthoff monitors these forums.

1. I'd love to know whether the unit has active state power management (ASPM) disabled. This can be seen by running the `powercfg /energy` command. I'm having very high idle power consumption and the energy report shows that ASPM has been disabled. If the unit doesn't have an error in the report about ASPM being disabled, it means some units are ok.
2. What version of the bios does the unit reviewed have?

[NikoB]

2. What version of the bios does the unit reviewed have?

See second screenshot from CPU-Z in review.

[edram]

"The fan doesn't kick in at all in everyday use." - spectacular :) Now please define "everyday use".

[Neenyah]

"The fan doesn't kick in at all in everyday use." - spectacular :) Now please define "everyday use".

Everything that's not a full load? It literally says in the same sentence you quoted, again literally immediately after the part which you quoted:

Under the Ryzen 7 7840U, the limits are now significantly lower at 30/25 watts, which has an extremely positive effect on fan activity. This doesn't kick in at all in everyday use and under full load it takes around a minute before you even hear the fan.

[ruselok]

I haven't seen the reviewed model anywhere for 1049 eur. Is it msrp?
The cheapest what I could find with a good screen starts from around 1300 eur.

[Marcos8]

Good evening, I just purchased this PC. With the balanced profile and the best performance profile after just 5 minutes of gaming the laptop becomes very hot and the processor reaches 95°. In your opinion is this normal? Could there be any damage in the long run? Furthermore, in any game the fps are very low even with low details; in the various benchmarks the fps are very good.

[RobertJasiek]

Such differs from notebook model to model. Very hot means the notebook is not well designed. 95° is not dangerous for the CPU but can mean two things: a) the notebook is not well designed or b) there is insufficient paste or the like on the CPU. A new notebook should not have such but bad manufacturers sometimes sell such models or individual notebooks. Repasting might solve the issue or not, but it ought not to be the task of the enduser to repaste a new notebook. If you can, undo the purchase! A high temperature can, but need not, shorten the life of a chip. Typically, a chip is endangered for above 105° or 110° so would throttle early. Maybe even at 95°. Anyway, high temperature means higher noise.

[NikoB]

The problem is not in the processor, processors other than obvious defects cannot be burned for a long time unless you overclock them - they have built-in protection circuits, including automatic throttling based on temperature and consumption.

The problem is in the power harness on the motherboard - this is where the root of all problems lies. How high-quality are the mosfets, how high-quality are the solid-state capacitors on the board, how high-quality are the tracks made and etched - because everywhere there are monstrous currents of tens, and sometimes hundreds of Amps with a crystal voltage of only 1V or less.

It is the quality of the power wiring (number of power phases, quality of components) that distinguishes different motherboards.

This laptop is basically not designed for heavy loads from the start. If the components are not of very high quality (most likely), then it will not last long under intense load.

If you want to play, don't do nonsense. Build a gaming PC at home that will be as quiet as possible, or buy a "gaming" laptop with at least a 2-year warranty. Well, or PS5.

[Marcos8]

I have already a ps5 and a pc with 5600x and asus 3080. I bought this laptop for daily use, for the whole family. I don't intend to use it just to play, but I wanted to see how it went with the games, also given the excellent reviews and benchmarks like this one from notebookcheck. For example in the review of radeon 780m diablo 4 on 1920x1080 with medium details go on 43 fps, while with the same settings I only get 25 fps with fsr2 enabled. Also i noticed that during the game the usage of cpu is very low, 30% about, but maybe this is normal.

.
The problem is not in the processor, processors other than obvious defects cannot be burned for a long time unless you overclock them - they have built-in protection circuits, including automatic throttling based on temperature and consumption.

The problem is in the power harness on the motherboard - this is where the root of all problems lies. How high-quality are the mosfets, how high-quality are the solid-state capacitors on the board, how high-quality are the tracks made and etched - because everywhere there are monstrous currents of tens, and sometimes hundreds of Amps with a crystal voltage of only 1V or less.

It is the quality of the power wiring (number of power phases, quality of components) that distinguishes different motherboards.

This laptop is basically not designed for heavy loads from the start. If the components are not of very high quality (most likely), then it will not last long under intense load.

If you want to play, don't do nonsense. Build a gaming PC at home that will be as quiet as possible, or buy a "gaming" laptop with at least a 2-year warranty. Well, or PS5.

[RobertJasiek]

CPU usage depends on the game or task. E.g., MS flight simulator is said to be CPU-heavy. E.g., frequent repetitions in Go result in exceptional high CPU usage.

[NikoB]

For example in the review of radeon 780m diablo 4 on 1920x1080 with medium details go on 43 fps, while with the same settings I only get 25 fps with fsr2 enabled.

You need to make sure that your versions of drivers, their settings, and system settings match all of this from the author of the review. You must also have dual-channel memory 8+8/16+16 or 32+32. In all other cases, igpu performance will be sharply lower.

If you are sure that all the settings match, 2 identical RAM modules, then only then can you be sure that the numbers in the review are incorrect. They obviously exist here, but you need to make sure that everything matches exactly.

If you are trying to get the specified fps from the battery and you have dual-channel memory, then you apparently do not understand that all tests in review are done only from the power supply.

Why buy a non-gaming laptop for "everyday" games? I don't understand. Well, buy "game@ laptop for this with light weight if weight is so important to you. Why even use small 14" at home and not 17-18"? At home, weight does not matter at all, and you should use the laptop all the time from the power supply - this guarantees 100% performance all time of use. I always use all laptops at home only from PSU almost 100% of the time in maximum performance profile. And no problem.