HTWingNut's Sager NP7330 / Clevo W230ST REVIEW

That black piece of plastic is there on mine as well.

 

How it the keyboard? Any flex?

 

Anyone else having the same issues with W7 vs. W8? Wondering which I should go with, since I'm used to W7, but don't mind the upgrade so long as the Intel AC 7260 wifi, SC2, and League of Legends work...

 

Oh yeah, hey HT, when you did the repaste for the CPU/GPU, did you use a dot/blob/ricegrain/X for the GPU? And a line for the CPU?

FYI, I'll be using IC Diamond

 

Would this be possible on this laptop, would there be space?, seems to run very hot, bordering on shut off temps. TheRandomLab: Laptop cooling mod

 

Thx HTWingNut for your review.
Here is another and the author is referring also to yours.
http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/c...w-gtx-765m-true-ultrabportable-gaming-laptop/

 

I use a line for both. A little thicker for the GPU because it's square, so it fits the width.

That is a little overkill and would require finding proper heatpipes. You might get similar results by applying ram heatsinks on the pipe if you can get a little extra airflow over them.

 

Impressive, -12° in-game !!!
You can find some heatpipes on ebay, they're cheap enough..
I wish I could do the same but doubt it though

 

I caused that by telling him about HT's review on a reddit post.

This guys review gives a good example of undervolting the 4700mq and shows WoT bench for those who play.

 

Anyone heard any processor whine? I loved my w110er, but eventually got rid of it because of the coil whine

 

No whine here.

 

Only ones I could find were overseas and cost a fortune to ship, nothing domestic:

Copper Heat Pipe 150mm Length Round Profile 6mm Diameter CCI 00C93440101 | eBay
Copper Heat Pipe 200mm Length Flat Profile 2mm Thickness CCI 00C93420101 | eBay

I might actually try it if I can get some cheap enough and buy a spare heatpipe/sink assembly.

 

Try here:
HP Compaq NC6000 Laptop Heat Pipe Heatsink 344410 001 | eBay

If you've got an address for spare parts, I'm interested in an azerty keyboard =)

 

The problem is those are all welded assemblies so won't be real useful and can't cut them because heatpipes are sealed with a gas in them to help transfer heat.

 

Great reading material while waiting for my toy Another week

 

^I feel you, dook. That's why I did rush build for +$50 gonna be here tomorrow.

 

Haha, I'm super jelly dude. By the end of this, it will have been ~3 weeks without a proper computer. Been doing everything on my phone, tablet, and this netbook my buddy lent me...SO PAINFUL >.<

 

Does anyone happened to have a calibrated display settings file / icm that I can use? I found one in http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/c...w-gtx-765m-true-ultrabportable-gaming-laptop/ but does anyone have a professionally calibrated one with chimei screen?

 

That IS calibrated with spyder4express with the chimei screen.... what are you looking for? Don't know if it would apply to your particular screen though, don't know why people use other peoples profile.

 

Because they use the same panels, which aren't usually calibrated by the manufacturer.
So using someone else's profile is usually much better than nothing if you can't / don't want to afford a physical tool.

 

I am using the chimei screen too. So I thought the profile should fit. I don't have any calibration equipment so I thought I could steal one.

 

Hmm, never heard of monitor/display calibration until Sager/Clevos. Do other manufacturers pre-calibrate the displays (e.g. my old HP and Alienware laptops)?

 

I don't think so. Thing is that notebook screens are usually so crappy that they just won't benefit from it. More importantly, photographers and people who will most probably benefit from calibration don't rely on notebook screens for that. So normally, you will see 24 inch IPS screens with wide gamut being calibrated.

 

I've got a spyder 3 express and when I get around to calibrating I'll share the icm file. But as noted, every screen is different so it may or may not improve it.

 

Acer 4830TG, Clevo w110er.... crappy displays that benefit from calibration (colors, whites).

 

Ok, improvement might be a little subjective.
Don't know the acer, but if you think this display benefits from calibration, good for you man. I just don't see the point in calibrating a display for its poor 40% sRGB coverage...

 

When whites aren't white, or if the colors tend toward blue or red.... you can feel the difference.
Calibrating doesn't necessary mean it's going to be perfect (or even "good"), if you can get a better result than stock why wouldn't you do so ?

I'm no expert at all in this field, but let me quote a french forum fellow, I assume it's easy to translate:

Before calibration, dE 12.8, contrast 172, brightness 131
After calibration, dE 0.6, contrast 142, brightness 121

And it sure is visible, so yes, I guess it benefits from it

 

Thx for updating your review with power measures HTW.

Can you just check power consumption while idling when you can. That'd be nice

 

Yeah, that's part of my point. I have seen that before, a little more drastic though (higher contrast and brightness changes).
Also take into consideration that if the current color temperature of the display doesn't bother you, then you'll probably enjoy more the extra contrast and brightness in movies for example. It's quite difficult to notice a color bias, it's usually more important to photographers, web designers, and people who need their screen to show them a precise end-result colorwise.

 

Yep, I can understand that !

 

Just keep in mind that the calibration is based on LCD brightness too.

 

Yeah, the 765m is waaaay faster than the W110ER's 650m, and I can even OC the GPU to +135 with no problem. It also seems to have a considerably better cooling system than the W110ER.

The issue with performance using the battery is probably due to the battery's inability to deliver enough current, just like Wingnut said. Like I said - Physics is a biyatch.

And yes, this thing is so much lighter than a 15", it's not even close. It weighs *exactly* the same as my old 4820TG, and is at least 4 times faster. That's amazing progress in only 3 years IMHO.

Wingnut is right about something else: In most games, I have an extremely difficult time distinguishing between 768p and 1080p. The quality of the LCD (I think) has a lot to do with this. IPS is just wonderful.

Overall, this is the best combo of light weight, small size (without being small just for its own sake) and awesome performance. The difference between the 765m and the 770m is basically dropping the res down to 1600x900 rather than 1080p (and possibly less MSAA). Quite an achievement for a 4lb notebook that it packs that kind of firepower plus the quad-core.

 

Hey Wingnut, another question, may have been asked but Im in the middle of interning for an A+ course at the moment so haven't had time to reread the thread.

I am a bit of a touch typist after my mechanical keyboard experience, how is the keyboard in terms of what it takes to register the keys? Does the shift key need to be fully depressed in order for the keystrokes to be registered? I would love the laptop even more so if I didn't need to carry around a mechanical keyboard in order for me to be near as efficient.

Thanks in advance man, very much appreciate all the information you have been able to provide for us here

 

Typing is pretty personal from user to user. I'm a fast touch typist though, like 80-90 WPM and it's much better than my Sager NP9150 I can tell you that much. So far no missed keys. Travel isn't very deep either.

 

I uploaded four videos to YouTube. I recorded at 1080p lossless video the screen running four game benchmarks at 1080p and 720p to see the little to no difference in fidelity. Granted you lose some quality by compression and conversion to MP4, but I think you can get the idea. I also have the raw video available if anyone is interested in downloading the raw 2.5GB of files for some 15 minutes of video. Granted my camera isn't the best either, but I think good enough to show the difference, or non-difference.

I highly recommend you watch in 1080p to get a better visual understanding:

Bioshock Infinite:
<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9dyxtoIkVKc" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Dirt 3:
<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YZyub87L8pM" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Metro Last Light:
<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/I-nBltF8p4E" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Tomb Raider:
<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AIPh8kdaY8c" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

As of this minute Metro and Tomb Raider haven't processed the full 1080p yet but should be complete shortly.

 

What is the best program for monitoring temps?

On a side note, my W230ST just froze while I was defragging, and downloading.

 

Hi, I recently purchased a Clevo w230st without a hard-drive and am looking for a large, high performance ssd to use as my daily driver. I am tossing up between a 512gb 840 pro $490 or a 750gb 840 evo estimated at around $530. How much slower is the evo to the pro?, would buying the 1tb version be worth it (it seems to be faster than the 750)? and how reliable is the new flash technology?, thanks

 

Any updates on the battery life? Sorry if I keep asking, it just seems like this would be perfect if the battery life wasn't so short.

 

hwinfo64, CPUID's hwmonitor, or gpu-z. I know that gpu-z can give you a log of the temps, which is nice, but it's only for the gpu.

 

I use HWMonitor. For in-game I use MSI Afterburner + HWInfo64 and use the OSD that is compatible with Afterburner. Afterburner will give you all the GPU info you need, HWInfo64 will offer pretty much anything else.

Opt for the Crucial M500 960GB @ $600?

You won't see any updates for a bit until either a new BIOS comes out from Clevo or Sager or third party like Prema's which addresses the issue. And/or new reference drivers come out from nVidia that work with the 765m. I think the prime culprit is that the 765m isn't downclocking properly on idle, drawing more power than it should. There was a similar issue with the W110ER that later drivers fixed.

I'd be curious how well Mythlogic's version lasts since they have a custom BIOS and not sure which drivers they use.

 

hwinfo also logs GPU plus MANY more things and can be output to a data file csv(comma separated value) which then can be imported into any number of analysis programs easily, e.g. Libre Office Calc -> graphing/whatever...

 

I hope you weren't defragging your solid state.
Also, it's better to not have much hard drive activity while defrag is going on.

 

Yeah, no defragging of SSD...

 

haha, no ssd in my machine brothas.

 

Just as note, I measured temps of two sets of RAM at each of the 8 exposed chips of the top RAM:
(1) Kingston Hyper-X 2x4GB 2133MHz (running at 1866MHz) @ 1.5V
(2) Samsung 2x4GB 1600MHz (running at 1600MHz) @ 1.35V

Kingston idle was about 48C average on the chips with a range of about 45-49
Kingston at load was about 50C average on the chips with a range of about 47-51
Samsung idle was about 46C average on the chips with a range of about 42-49
Samsung at load was about 49C average on the hcips with a range of about 43-51

So for whatever reason some chips ran cooler on the Samsung RAM, but average the temps were within 1-2C, and didn't vary much with a load applied.

 

Ordered mine last thursday, hopefully it shows up next week.

For those people wondering for sure if downscaling the game to 720p or 900p will not actually be noticeable or anything, you can rest assured that the games will look absolutely fine.
The average 1080p monitor is around 24", and have a PPI of around 90.
This little 13" panel has a PPI of around 165, and even if you set the resolution to 720p, that's still a PPI of 110. You'd have to set the resolution to 1024x600 to get the same PPI as a regular 24" 1080p monitor. So don't worry about downscaling issues too much, it shouldn't ever become an issue.

 

@HT thanks for the temps, those are very cool indeed. My kingston ones from the w110 are so hot..
I have nothing to measure them but can't keep touching them for more than a few seconds even when idling.

 

Wing, does your fan kick in at a very loud noise when playing BF3? At max fan speed this thing is a little uneasy on the ears lol

 

HT, how are the cpu temps on your replacement w230st when gaming or benchmarking before doing any mods or undervolting and just stock sitting on a flat surface?

Do you get cpu temps as good as Amal in the mid 80s?

 

You guys are all using notebook coolers, right?