HTWingNut's Sager NP7330 / Clevo W230ST First Impressions WITH VIDEOS!

THIS THREAD CLOSED TO AVOID MULTIPLE THREADS AND AVOID CONFUSION. PLEASE CONTINUE CONVERSATION AT THIS THREAD: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...np7330-clevo-w230st-review-3.html#post9298430

I finally got my little guy. I'm naming him Defiant based on the "though little ship" commanded by Worf in Star Trek First Contact.




NOTES:
- LCD is CMN 1343 or Chi Mei Innolux N133HSE-EA1: Innolux N133HSE-EA1 Stock 510 pcs - Panelook.com
- 2133MHz Kingston RAM is running at 1866MHz out of the gate with i7-4800MQ
- Fn+1 full speed fan works like in other Sager notebooks
- Looks like Intel XTU will allow voltage adjustments to CPU!
--- UPDATE: Sustained 3.5GHz all four cores with i7-4800MQ at <80C, dropping voltage 0.125V.
- Fan profile needs some work. It tends to burst time and again, and if spiked with a benchmark like Intel XTU or SuperPi or whatever the temps will go to 80C+ before the fan kicks in.
- Keyboard ghosting same as other Clevo keyboards
- Temperature on the keyboard after a 20 minute BF3 gaming session was ~ 37C at the WSAD and palm rest/touchpad, and ~47C at the IOPJKL area of keyboard.
- BF3 gaming session pushed the CPU to 90C but GPU never exceeded 70C (but remained > 60FPS at high settings and 1080p)
- Battery life was 3hrs 25mins with browser test.
- Slight vibration can be felt in the system due to fan.
- Touchpad is not ultra-sensitive and so far have not had any random moving of the cursor because of it.
- Bottom panel held on by three screws, lift up from side to pivot open, everything accessible: CPU, GPU, RAM, 2xmSATA, 1xSATA, Wi-fi
- Keyboard is solid, no missed keystrokes, two levels of white backlight.
- Propping up the back of the laptop reduces peak temps by about 7-10C !!!
- GTX 765m will run sustained at 900MHz with Boost 2.0 (stock)


IMAGES:
Backlit Keyboard:


Bottom Opened:


Wild Animals:


Here's images of the NP9150/P150EM, NP7330/W230ST, NP6110/W110ER LCD's (Left to right) = 15.6" LG 72% Gamut 1080p, 13.3" Chi Mei IPS 1080p, 11.6" AUO 315C 768p

It's really difficult to take a good photo for this type of thing with my camera, so sorry if it's not better.

Front Head on Full Brightness:


Front Head on Min Brightness:


LCD's full tilt back (~ 135 deg)


LCD's top down


LCD's From left side of laptops


LCD's from right side of laptops



I did some quick and dirty videos to show you guys some detail. This is basically raw footage, sorry for that, and I'm no cinematographer or presenter, so you'll have to live it.

SPECIAL THANKS TO LPC DIGITAL and LARRY especially for expediting this order.

But here's some videos to help out from the start. More details will be coming as fast as I can post them:

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uz05XpeHAqA" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/R3Pm3-j261s" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0cgtAcWSToM" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QutTmEdGBCI" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Jfsv41gUa0k" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Reserved for future posting!

 

Looking forward to the review!

I think what would also be helpful is a size comparison of the screens of the W230ST with the other models and perhaps also a shot of the backlit keyboard?

 

Thanks for suggestions... all in good time, all in good time.

 

Nice! Why do I get excited even though I'm not the one unboxing it. Lol

 

Awesome! So is this one your (personal) machine that you ordered, or an engineering sample that was sent to you for review purposes?

I really hope that the one I ordered will have the Chimei display as well. Supposedly the reason why they are shipping with the AUO display is because the Chimei one is discontinued, or will be discontinued soon.

 

This is regular product and my personal little tough guy.

 

Now get busy checking out the thermal properties for us...

I didn't even bother to watch the unboxing as I figured it be the same as the 8250 given that Sager's packaging is, well, basic...

Win7 or Win8? BTW...

 

Yo HTwingnut, good stuff man!! So the W230ST from Larry LPC is a Chi Mei huh so that means it is the better one compared to the AUO. Btw bro, i ordered my W230ST from Larry yesterday and he is a great guy and we talk for a few minutes on the phone and i told him about you and how you recommended LPC Digital compared to the other resellers so i went for him. :thumbsup:

 

Let's do something about that BIOS...

 

HWT - nice videos, thanks! Looking forward to a thorough review. Also read your review of the NP8250... wondered if I could ask you (and anyone else who wants to chime in) a question.

I'm looking for a machine for gaming & development.... wondering if you could give a subjective recommendation between the NP7330 and the NP8250.

The $ delta between my chosen configs would be about $600.

I'm trying to figure out if the 780M & extra RAM in the NP8250 are worth it, or if the portability of the NP7330 wins out. Same processor (4800) and same drives (SSD & 1TB HDD).

Thanks in advance!

-Colin

 

Woot! Got your PM, back at ya!

device properties or hwinfo64 then google.

 

first, apologies if this messages winds up being posted twice... looks like my initial question didn't wind up in the thread.

HTW: thanks for the videos and the excellent reviews. looking forward to seeing more about the np7330.

i was wondering if i might be able to get your (or anyone else who might like to chime in) subjective impression of the np7330 vs the np8250. (and thanks for the nice review of that machine, as well.)

i'm looking for a gaming & development machine. the $ delta of the configs i'm looking at is about $600... and i'm weighing whether the 780M and extra ram on the np8250 is worth it, or if the added portability and lower price of the np7330 win out.

would really appreciate any thoughts.

thanks,
colin

 

Did the fans burst in even at light loads?

 

Thanks for the quick review. The LCD info is really great.

Just wondering, can this laptop output to 2 external monitors simultaneously?

 

HT, you said it suffers from kb ghosting, can you tell me if these key combo works when you get a chance?

Q+W+D or Q+W+Spacebar and W+E+Spacebar

Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

 

Yes. But I expect it to be fixed with a BIOS update soon. There were similar issues with the new released other laptops.

Those work fine.

It's the Q+W+E + Z,X,C,V, or SPACE that don't work.

 

How are the load temps?

 

Ahhh so should I expect a lesser looking screen if I order in a couple weeks?

 

I'm waiting for that battery life assessment

 

I would love to see more of a comparison of the W110ER and the W230ST (Power adapter, screen, keyboard)

Keep up the good work, I cant wait till I get mine Friday!

 

I love how the first thing you did when you took this laptop out of the box was tear it open, replace the internals, and reformat the machine with Windows 7.

+1 to you. A true nerd's nerd.

 

A HA! But I installed Windows 8 actually.

Just played a 20 minute session of BF3 and I have to say am very impressed. 1920x1080 high settings ran over 60FPS pretty much the whole time.

As posted in the first post as well, WSAD temps were about 37C, and at the IOPJKL area of the keyboard it got to 47-48C. CPU was 90C and GPU was 70C.

Next is battery life.

 

How was the fan noise when you were gaming wingnut? How about when idle?

 

I didn't notice the fans, but was using headphones. They were cranking pretty much the whole time though. I'm going to crank the speed down to a 4702MQ which would be 3.0GHz with all cores active and see the resulting temperature. I should be able to drop voltage quite a bit more too resulting in much lower temperatures, but I'll see how much game performance suffers.

 

Thanks for everything so far! Looking forward to more write-ups, etc.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I will repaste the CPU and GPU to make sure nothing is wrong, but I believe it won't improve a whole lot. However on my desktop and other laptop I usually limit FPS to 60 and that drops all temps down considerably. Not VSync, but using nVidiaInspector to limit FPS. So I will try with that and see results as well.

 

This is awesome. Thanks so much. It looks a lot slimmer than I'd imagined.

Just to be clear, those BF3 temperatures were with the CPU undervolted? Or stock?

 

Would you say those gaming temperatures (Cpu 90C, Gpu 70C) are considered good//reasonable/safe? Or should we be aiming for a lower optimum temperature? FYI, it's been about 90F here in Southern California, so what kind of temps should I be looking for? Cuz with my Alienware M17xR3, I don't think I ever saw temperatures exceed 80C on the CPU or the GPU during the summer. (I had repasted my computer with ICD 7 as well).

 

Did you spend your last cents on gaming so that you could not afford a room with AC? When I was a student we scrounged a window A/C unit cheap and put it in one room in the house we were sharing and we would crowd into that room on hot nights to cool down.

 

Thanks for your initial thoughts HTWingNut may I ask what is keyboard ghosting as i'm not familiar with the term and also if you could post a picture of the screen with a browser open as well as some desktop icons so I could get an idea of FULL HD on 13.3 latpop thanks in advance

 

Nice Temp on the GPU there.
What's your ambient?

 

Very excited for the full review, HT helped with my choice of the W110ER. Firstly does it 'feel' like a massive upgrade compared to the W110er when you played Battlefield?

But even more importantly lets get that 'INCOMING' note change to 'IT'S HERE!!!!!!!!'

As ever awesome stuff

 

Wow lots of nice notes. One thing, I noticed that when you unboxed there was no Windows disk -- does Sager usually not provide media? I haven't seen any resellers provide an option to request a Windows disk.

Since there's not even an optical drive anyway, I'd be perfectly happy to download an ISO. Do you know if that's an option?

 

Without using it I will say yes just because of the huge difference between the 765M and the 650M.

As for an ISO search "notebookreview legal windows 8 download" in google.

 

I did not order Windows with my machine. Windows media will come with your machine if you ordered Windows.

Battlefield is like a new experience. It's smooth as butter at 1080p and high settings.

Exactly.

 

The first thing you should know about ghosting is that 95% of people use that word in the wrong way, and that also seems to be the case here (also on the Microsoft link Colpolite provided).

Ghosting is what happens when you press 3+ keys, and keys that you didn't press get registered.
This problem comes from the keyboard matrix, which is made of wired rows and columns, while the keys act as switches. For instance, when you press 3 keys pertaining to the same 2 rows and 2 columns, the fourth key of that (small) matrix is bypassed by the current, and the keyboard controller sees it as being pressed.

Masking is what happens when you press that key that was just ghosted, and release the key diagonally opposed to it (matrix-wise): since those 2 rows and 2 columns are always closed, the keyboard controller always sees the same 4 keys being pressed.

Blocking is usually what peaople think Ghosting is. It is a way to prevent ghosting by limiting the max number of allowed simultaneous keypresses in the keyboard controller. This results in "lost" keypresses.

To prevent Ghosting and Masking, the key switches has been be in series with diodes, to prevent the current from looping back to other rows/columns.

Key Rollover measures the number of simultaneous keypresses that can be registered. nKRO means n- Key Roll Over, and a Full nKRO keyboard has no limit on how many keys you can press (and get registered) at a time.
6KRO is quite common, as it's the limit of the compatibility version of the USB HID.
2KRO refers to keyboards for which you are sure to be able to do *any* combination of 2 keys at the same time, but some bigger combinations might work too.
The limits on KRO ultimately depends on the type of switches (regular electrical switches will have ghosting, while capacitive switches won't, for instance) and if they have diodes... and then the interface (HID) kicks in.

More details here.

 

Battery life test, not so impressed. Granted I think I have a worse case scenario with the i7-4800MQ, three SSD's, and 1.5V Kingston DDR3 2133 RAM.

But my browser based battery life test with four flash based browser tabs refreshed from every 1 to 5 minutes, 30% brightness, power saver mode, resulted in 3hrs 25mins to 5% battery and shut down.

Although as with W110ER the battery life was improved greatly with some BIOS and EC updates.

 

Did you set the Windows energy-saving stuff before testing? I figure the CPU shouldn't matter if it's being severely throttled. And if that's your high-load results, actual moderate / light usage should be well over 4 hours, I'd think. You could probably squeeze 5 if you had one or two drives and throttled the hell out of everything...

 

Power saver mode, HIPM+DIPM on SSD's, backlit keyboard off, 30% LCD brightness.

But I realized I didn't turn the Clevo Control Panel to Power Saver too which might help a little bit.

I think with one or two SSD's, light usage, remember to run Clevo Control Panel at power saver too, you should be able to eek out 4hrs.

You're right about CPU though. It runs at 800MHz when on battery, and I believe i7-4702MQ and i7-4700MQ do the same. I will check but I think it will "boost" to 1.2GHz if needed.

 

By the way I have a tutorial coming on how to set up RAID if anyone is interested.

 

Wow, under 4 hours of battery life with those settings is disappointing, even limiting the powerhouse that is.

 

May I know what is your ambient temperature?

Looking forward to a full review and 3DMark results...

Do you think my score of 2288 for the FireStrike test is lower than expected or it's normal?

 

Surprised that with Optimus it can't pull off more (also considering initial say of battery life by LightningPL was around the 4.5h mark). The MSI GE40 which has similar-ish specs (lesser GPU though but with Optimus that shouldn't matter) pulled off almost 6h.

 

Thanks HT i'm glad those 3 key combination that i asked you to test are working. W+E+SPACEBAR is my forward strafe right and jump and W+Q+Spacebar is forward strafe left and jump and the last one which is W+Q+D which is forward strafe left and right camera movement with D.

Regarding battery life, that is kind of low and I wish we could get like 5 hours just doing basic surfing but I guess 3hours can work.

What about your opinion on the screen quality? Is it an IPS panel? Does it have a good color gamut and good blacks and good contrast ratio? Is there a backlight bleed when viewing full screen dark background?

Last question HT, do you notice or hear any humming/buzzing or low/high pitch buzzing sound on your w230st or the ac adapter?? If not then the only sound you hear is the fan since you replace the hdd with ssds right?

Appreciate it!

 

Well I just ordered mine from Mythologic yesterday. I hope I get the batch that still has Chemei panels. Otherwise I will have to replace that AUO thing.

 

I can answer one thing for sure: yes it's an IPS panel with WLED backlight, according to the link provided in the first post.

As a Clevo W230ST owner myself, I personally think the screen quality is very good.

One question for you HT: what were the settings you used for BF3? Was AA on?

 

is there a quick way of knowing what panel you get? How is it coming from the W110ER? Feel like a worthy upgrade in every way? My main problem with the W110ER was that the thing was just too small for long gaming sessions (LCD, Keyboard)

 

Ambient is about 75F. And will post some benchmarks soon.

Screen quality is great, yes it's IPS. Good contrast and color gamut not sure yet, I think I'll calibrate it. There is a little backlight bleed in one corner. No buzzing or squealing that I can tell.

BF3 High Settings, Medium PostAA. Will post an image with settings later. I'm at work rightn now.

Just device manager deviceID or HWInfo64 and under monitor, then google if it doesn't give you full details.

This is definitely a worthy upgrade in every way. The performance, the screen, the keyboard. I had the same issue with W110ER. I couldn't use it for more than 30 minutes or so before it became cumbersome. I love this machine so far though.

 

How much were you able to get the W230ST for from LPC Digital? Minus taxes and shipping and expedited order etc. Thanks!