Overclocking the HP Omen Transcend 16 with RTX 5080 & Intel Ultra 9: A Deep Dive with Gamers Nexus
When it comes to high-performance gaming laptops, HP’s Omen Transcend 16 with Intel’s new Ultra 9 275HX and Nvidia’s RTX 5080 is certainly one of the most exciting machines we’ve seen this year. In a special collaboration with Steve from Gamers Nexus, we had the chance to go hands-on with this beast of a laptop to see how far we could push its limits.
First off, big thanks to Steve for bringing us into his lab—complete with industrial-grade tools and a seriously cool testing environment. Right out of the gate, we were impressed by HP’s Omen Gaming Hub software. It offers an extensive suite of overclocking options that go way beyond what we usually see in laptop software.
Why Overclock the RTX 5080 Instead of the 5090?
Interestingly, the RTX 5080 is actually a better overclocker than the 5090 on desktop, primarily due to having a slightly lower CUDA core count, which gives it more room for higher clock speeds within the same power budget. While the 5090 is already close to its thermal and power limits, the 5080 gives more freedom to push the performance envelope.
In synthetic benchmarks, we’ve seen up to 27% performance gains on the 5080 with the right overclocking profile. That’s not just impressive—it’s desktop-level performance in a mobile form factor.
Testing Setup: Let’s Get Nerdy
We rigged up the setup with a Fluke RS600 thermal camera overhead to capture surface temps and hotspots. And good news for anyone worried about thermal throttling: in pre-testing, the Omen Transcend 16 had incredibly cool surface temperatures, even under load.
We started by running a baseline test using 3DMark’s Steel Nomad benchmark, a synthetic test that focuses purely on rasterized performance (no ray tracing), giving us a great foundation for comparison. Our initial score: 3658, or 36.58 FPS.
Diving Into Overclocking: Pushing Limits
Using the Omen Gaming Hub, we cranked up power limits (PL1, PL2, and PL4) to max values and ran several test passes while slowly increasing GPU core and memory offsets. The best score we hit under these conditions was 4992, a significant bump from our starting point.
Liquid Nitrogen? Yep.
And because we were in Steve’s lab, of course, we brought out the liquid nitrogen (LN2). While we didn’t mount the LN2 pot directly on the silicon due to the laptop’s form factor, we did cool the airflow around the laptop with it. Surface temps dropped to as low as 13°C—10 degrees below ambient!
However, the LN2 didn’t give us dramatic improvements in score. Why? Because we were still power-limited. It’s a good reminder that cooling alone doesn’t guarantee performance gains—you have to consider power budgets too.
Tuning CPU Power for Better GPU Gains
The big breakthrough came when we reduced the CPU’s power limits to free up more power budget for the GPU, which is the key player in a graphics-heavy test like Steel Nomad. We brought PL1 and PL2 down to 125W while keeping PL4 at 169W, the lowest available.
The result? We finally broke the 5000 mark, hitting a peak score of around 5183—a noticeable jump from the earlier 4992 and a testament to effective power balancing.
Comparison with RTX 5090 Laptops
For context, the RTX 5090 in the XMG Neo 6 scored 5913. That’s quite a bit ahead, but considering the price and cooling of the Omen Transcend 16, the 5080’s performance is nothing to scoff at.
Final Thoughts: A Well-Tuned Beast
After all the LN2 shenanigans, fan noise measurements (peaking at 60 dB on max), and overclocking experiments, one thing is clear: HP has done a great job tuning this laptop out of the box. The Omen Gaming Hub gives users a ton of control, the fans are impressively quiet (even in performance mode), and the thermal performance is among the best we’ve seen in a gaming laptop.
Key Takeaways:
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RTX 5080 is an excellent overclocker, better than the 5090 in many ways.
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HP’s Omen Gaming Hub is one of the most complete software suites for overclocking on a laptop.
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Thermals are extremely well-managed, even when pushing hardware to its limits.
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Smart power allocation (especially lowering CPU limits) unlocks real GPU gains.
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LN2 cooling is awesome—but not essential. The gains come more from power tuning than extreme cooling in laptops.
If you're a gamer, performance enthusiast, or just a nerd who loves messing with settings, the HP Omen Transcend 16 is absolutely worth a look. And if you're just here for the cool thermals and LN2 tricks—well, we’ve got you covered there too.
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