When it comes to gaming performance, the build-up of dust can be a not-so-silent-killer. Enter HP's Omen Max 16 gaming laptop, which not only promises a number of snazzy performance-enhancing features but also includes an omnidirectional fan purpose-built to shrug off the accumulation of dust.
Here's a short horror story for you: you're minding your own business, living your best PC Gamer life, when a thought full of foreboding strikes you: "Uh, have the fans always made that noise?" Maybe you, apparently made of sterner stuff than I, even take a wee peek at your GPU temp only to notice it's markedly higher than the last time you checked, many moons ago. There's nothing for it, this requires further investigation.
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Speaking of that all-important CPU, the Omen Max 16 will offer a choice between two AMD chips—the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 or Ryzen AI 7 350 (which has already impressed us in the Asus ROG Zephyrus [[link]] G16 gaming laptop)—and two Intel chips—either the Core Ultra 9 275HX or [[link]] Core Ultra 7 255HX.
The GPU remains slightly harder to pin down, with the official spec sheet giving little away beyond holding space to the tune of, "Nvidia GeForce Next-Gen Laptop GPU." That said, we likely won't have to wait too long for more details on this point; as Andy wrote, it would be more surprising if Nvidia doesn't unveil its RTX 50-series of graphics cards at CES 2025.
It remains to be seen how hot Nvidia's next generation of graphics cards [[link]] will run, and just how much of HP's focus on thermal architecture is due to a power-hungry card at the heart of what it's billing as its most powerful gaming laptop yet. Whatever the case, the future is unlikely to end up feeling as crisp as a winter morn'.