HP OMEN Max 16 (RTX 5080) GPU stuck at 80W
Hi, posting this partly as a PSA for other OMEN Max 16 users on CachyOS and partly to share what I found after going pretty deep on this.
The problem
No matter what you do, the RTX 5080 in the OMEN Max 16 is permanently capped at 80W on Linux. The GPU can do 175W, does 175W on Windows with OMEN Gaming Hub, but on Linux it just sits at 80W forever. nvidia-smi -pl doesn't work (expected on Blackwell laptop GPUs, direct overrides are locked by design).
nvidia-powerd runs fine and connects over DBus, but then immediately logs:
ERROR! Client (presumably SBIOS) has requested to
disable Dynamic Boost DC controller
...and then does absolutely nothing. Requested Power Limit stays N/A.
Why it might happens
After digging through hp-wmi.c in the kernel source I found the issue. Our board (DMI name: 8D41) was added to the driver as a crash-prevention placeholder, not a full implementation. It uses omen_v1_no_ec_thermal_params which disables EC register access entirely.
On Windows, OMEN Gaming Hub sends two WMI commands when you switch to performance mode:
- Set thermal profile to 0x31 (performance) -- the Linux driver does send this
- HPWMI_SET_GPU_THERMAL_MODES_QUERY with ctgp_enable=1, ppab_enable=1 -- this is what actually tells the BIOS to unlock GPU TGP
The Linux driver skips command 2 for our board. Without it the BIOS never raises the NvPCF power budget that nvidia-powerd reads, so it gets the "disable Dynamic Boost" signal and gives up.
What I've tried
- nvidia-powerd enabled and running (v2.0) -- running fine but ineffective
- nvidia-smi -pl -- blocked by design on Blackwell, not a bug
- powerprofilesctl set performance -- sets the thermal profile but doesn't trigger the GPU unlock
- OmenCore on Linux -- sets performance mode but same result, still 80W
- driver 595.71.05 (latest) -- no change
Current status
I've filed a bug report with the Linux kernel platform-driver-x86 mailing list and a suggested fix pointing at the exact functions in hp-wmi.c that need changing.
This affects all OMEN Max 16 variants (RTX 5070 Ti users report the same thing). It's not CachyOS specific -- reproducible on Ubuntu, Arch, anything.
Workaround
There isn't a clean one yet. OmenCore (https://github.com/theantipopau/omencore) is the closest thing -- it can invoke the WMI commands directly on some boards but EC access is disabled for 8D41 so it falls back to the safe WMI path which still doesn't fully unlock TGP.
TL;DR -- hp-wmi kernel driver has an incomplete entry for our board and never sends the WMI command that unlocks GPU TGP.