Mythlogic Chaos 1313 (Clevo W230ST) 4702MQ mini-review and comparison with full voltage

Background
This is a review of the Mythlogic version of the Clevo W230ST, branded "Chaos 1313." HTWingNut already did a thorough review of the Sager version of this notebook (Sager NP7330). However, I think the Mythlogic version deserves a little appendix of its own, since it's assembled at a completely separate facility. Also, the Intel 4702MQ Core i7 processor appears to mitigate some of the heat/fan issues of the stock version, so a separate set of benchmarks might be useful.

This review is in no way intended to be as thorough as HTWingNut's treatment. It merely is supposed to provide a point of comparison with Sager. Please read his review first if you haven't.

Motivation
I sought a powerful system that fit within a 13-14" form. Unfortunately, none of the major manufacturers seem to be interested in making such devices any more. As a result, this was my first foray into the realm of lesser known, "enthusiast" laptop makers.

Before ordering from Mythlogic, I tried the NP 7330, the Sager edition of this laptop. The result was most frustrating. There were two major build quality issues: a nearly constant "rattling" fan sound even when the fan was in a low state, and randomly unresponsive keys. When the exchange unit had the same exact problems as the original, I returned it. Mythlogic had a reputation for quality control, so I tried them instead.

A final reason to switch to Mythlogic was that the Sager NP7330 with Core i7 4700MQ has numerous heat dissipation issues, and Clevo's erratic fan profile makes for a very noisy laptop. As a result, I went down a notch to the lower voltage Core i7 4702MQ to try to try to create a quiet PC under normal, non GPU workloads.

System as tested
Mythlogic Chaos 1313
Intel Core i7-4702MQ 2.2+GHz
16GB (2x8GB) PC3-128000 1600MHz SODIMM
NVIDIA 765m
Intel Advanced-AC 7260
2x Plextor M5M 256GB (total 512GB) (provided by myself)

Build and Aesthetics

The system is much more pleasing to see in person than in photographs. It has a subdued futuristic look, and the angular edges give it an attractive styling. Unfortunately, the lid is a fingerprint magnet. See this mess after a weeks' worth of usage:



The fingerprints aren't exactly easy to get off, either.

One thing to note is that even though this claims to be a 13" laptop, it is closer to a 14". See this comparison with a 13" Sony VAIO Z and a 14" Dell Latitude computer. The large Bezel means that Clevo could "cheat" and claim this is a 13" laptop, whereas the chassis is actually closer to a 14".

From top to bottom: VAIO Z, Mythlogic Chaos, and Dell Latitute E6400 (The back ends are matched precisely):


The lid is firmly attached and feels very solid when being opened and closed. However, the opening angle for the lid could stand to be a bit larger. Right now, the LCD stops at about 120 degrees from the horizontal, which is about the minimum I need when presenting from the laptop while standing up. The angles for seated use are fine.

I am extremely pleased with the keyboard. Both the Sager and the Mythlogic editions have an almost mechanical feel to them, and are very satisfying to type on. Unfortunately, one of the Sager versions of this notebook I tried had key recognition issues---keys would randomly not be recognized. The Mythlogic edition doesn't have this problem.

BIOS
As far as I could tell, the BIOS menu is no different than the Sager NP7330 BIOS menu, except for the fact that the Mythlogic "gargoyle" logo comes up when you boot. Fortunately, this gargoyle can be turned off. Mythlogic representatives said that they are working on modding the BIOS to provide better control of overclocking and fan profiles.

Disks and Operating System

I ordered the system with no hard drive, and provided my own 2xPlextor M5M 256 mSATA to be formatted as RAID-0. Despite much FUD to the contrary, RAID-0 SSD can be highly useful in certain settings, especially in saving/restoring virtual machine states and copying large amount of files.

Having tried and loathed Windows 8, I installed Windows 7 using a Samsung USB external DVD drive. The Windows 7 installation required a USB with Intel RST drivers in order to recognize the RAID0. Once that was done, the installation went without a hitch and Windows 7 booted up.

Please note that under this RAID0 configuration at least, Windows 7 boots much faster than Windows 8. The boot time from first seeing the Windows logo to receiving a password prompt is about 3 seconds (vs. 6 seconds for Windows 8). Following login, it is another 6 seconds for the Desktop to fully load and be fully responsive (this time depends on the number of startup programs).

Here are the crystaldiskmark benchmark results:


I can suspend a 3GB 64 bit Ubuntu VM in about a second using this RAID0 configuration---doubtful in a non-RAID0 situation.

Drivers

Mythlogic provides a unified driver DVD for both Windows 7 and 8. In addition to the basic drivers, niceties such as intel XTU (the undervolting utility) are included.

Mythlogic claims that their drivers are different from the stock Clevo drivers. I didn't get a chance to test this in detail.

Screen quality
Everything you've heard about this screen is true. I had relatively high standards coming into this purchase---the 2010 VAIO Z screen is arguably one of the best TN panels ever made. I despaired over every being able to own another 13" laptop with dedicated GPU and such high screen quality.

Luckily, I have to say that the ChiMei screen used in this computer matches the quality of VAIO Z in terms of color richness, black level and brightness. Here's a view with a bright light on the ceiling:


A slight backlight bleed is visible on the lower portions of the LCD under maximum brightness and pure black background (i.e., when the system boots up). I haven't noticed it during regular use, however.

Fan issues and noise
The Sager NP 7330 edition of this notebook had two serious fan noise problem. The first problem was a nearly constant "rattling" sound that would come out of the fan. Both Sager notebooks I tried had this issue, which was extremely vexing and annoying. The Mythlogic version mostly doesn't have the issue under normal use (it did creep up a couple of times, but went away when I lifted the front of the laptop and put it back down).

The second problem was that under a normal, non-intense, non-GPU workload, the Sager 4700MQ fans would switch on and off into relatively high states semi-regularly, and would be extremely disruptive to my quiet living room. HTWingNut says that undervolting may mitigate this issue partly. The issue is that the cooling in the notebook is inadequate for a full-voltage GPU.

I'm happy to report that the 4702MQ, which comes stock with a lower voltage, performs admirably. It is absolutely silent during non-GPU use. During GPU use, the fans are on and steady and provide adequate cooling.

However there is one small exception. For some reason, when running any temperature monitoring software---OpenHardWare Monitor, or SpeedFan for example---an extremely erratic fan behavior can come about. Fans go on and off and switch between all the states in a most annoying manner, just like the 4700MQ. The problem ceases entirely when I quit out of temperature-monitoring software.

In conclusion, the Mythlogic unit I tested had almost no fan rattling issue (it did occur twice in over a week+ of use but went away after quickly lifting up the laptop front). Otherwise, it was absolutely quiet over a week+ of non-GPU use--- except when running temperature-monitoring software, which for some bizarre reason caused fans to turn on and off erratically during low-performance workloads like web browsing.

Performance and thermals

All tests were performed under "High Performance" thermal mode, with stock GPU at 3.1GHz. Please note that undervolting using Intel XTU had little effect on this machine, maybe a few degrees C (unlike the full-voltage version tested by HTWingNut). The numbers reported here do not use undervolting.

While doing normal typing/web-browsing, the CPU temperatures are in the range 45-50C degrees. Fans were in their quietest state, which is inaudible unless you put your ear right against the fan.

wPrime 32M test took 9.3 seconds. This is about 11% slower than the 4800MQ HTWingNut reviewed. Intel 4702MQ temperature peaked at 69C, and fans were audibly on, briefly.

wPrime 1024M test took 303 seconds. This is about 15% slower than the 4800MQ HTWingNut reviewed. Intel 4702MQ temperature peaked at 75C, and fans were audibly on for the entire test.

Please note that hyperthreading, which allows two threads per core, was on, and makes a big difference to these benchmarks. Without hyperthreading only 4 physical cores would be used for these benchmarks instead of 8 virtual ones, and all benchmarks were measured to take 50% longer. Hyperthreading is turned on by default in BIOS, but if it's not detected by the benchmark suite or software you are using, it might not be taken advantage of.

3DMark11 720p had a score of 4236. This is about 3% slower than the 4800MQ HTWingNut reviewed, expected since the GPU are the same. Intel 4702MQ temperature peaked at 79C over two runs, and fans were audibly on for the entire test.


Wireless Radio
Whether a driver issue or something else, the wifi radio becomes unresponsive every few days (also happened on the Sager unit). This can be easily remedied by turning it on and off in the Clevo Control Center (Fn-Esc). Right now this occurs infrequently enough that it's not a real concern, but I hope it gets fixed in a future update. For now I will chalk this up to the Intel AC being a relatively new card and driver.

Update 9/30 Updating to the latest Intel Wifi drivers fixed the wifi issues. I haven't had any dropouts since the update.

USB ports

There is one USB 2.0 port on the left hand side of the laptop, and 3 USB 3.0 ports on the right hand side. The USB 3.0 ports have very high power---I believe that they are at least 2 amp, judging by the extremely short time it takes to charge my iPhone (comparable to an iPad charger mini-brick). The USB 3.0 ports stay powered even when the computer is suspended, which is very useful. You can plug in your device even after the computer suspends, and it will still charge the device (unlike powered ports on some computers, where to begin charging, the computer must be awake).

Copying files over USB 3.0, I achieved a maximum transfer speed of about 180 megabytes/s, which is useful for fast device backups.

The only issue I found with the USB 3.0 is that one of the three ports appeared to have issues with an iPhone. Using the port closest to the front of the laptop sometimes caused the iPhone to wind up in a connect/disconnect loop. Not sure why, but others have seen this problem with USB 3.0 ports and iDevices, and the Sager version of this laptop had the same issue. Plugging the iPhone into the middle USB 3.0 part never caused any issues.

Overall, performance of USB 3.0 is extremely impressive!

Gaming
Some anectodal FPS at 1080p:
Mass Effect 3, every setting at max: 60FPS Average
Skyrim, every setting at max: 37FPS average

Resolution downscaling: Downscaling from 1080p to 900p showed little blurriness. Downscaling to 720p showed some noticeable blurriness, but not as bad as you would think. See images below.

1080p:

900p:

720p:


Power consumption and battery Life
The system has a battery that is not fully recognized by Windows 7---this means that no "remaining time" is calculated when viewing battery percentage via the stock Windows icon. A third-party utility like BatteryBar can be used to estimate remaining life.

Oddly, there are two separate ways to adjust power consumption. One is the standard Windows method of selecting between Balanced, High Performance, or Power Saver mode. The other is via the proprietary "Clevo Control Center" which is invoked using Fn-Esc. This brings a popup which allows you to select between Performance, Quiet, and various other modes. In my testing, it appeared that the Clevo control center operated independently of the stock windows power profiles. This made for some awkwardness---it is possible to have a "Performance" Clevo state mixed with a "Power Saver" Windows state, which is confusing at best. In short, you have to worry about both the Windows power setting and the Clevo control center when adjusting power profiles.


To test battery life under low-GPU workloads, I set the Clevo state to "Quiet" and the Windows state to "Power Saver." I then conducted my work as usual---using Wifi, editing GMails, browsing the web, and typing documents. No "high performance" programs such as spreadsheets or other number crunching software were used. The resulting battery life was 4.2 hours. For comparison, HTWingNut's 4800MQ yielded a battery life that was scaled down by about the ratio of CPU TDP, (37W/47W, giving 3.3 hours). However, it should be noted that HTWingNut ran a Firefox stress test (reloading pages every few minutes), rather than normal light use.

Suspend time is something Haswell really shines at. I turned off hibernation and set the machine to sleep---it used up 10% battery over 8.5 hours. That implies a full sleep lifetime of 85 hours---a dramatic improvement from Intel CPUs of a few years ago. I'm going to go ahead and turn that hibernation off permanently. Please note that with a 16GB memory footprint, resuming from hibernation actually takes longer than a cold reboot.

Gaming battery life is 1.25 hours---not bad, considering that this is a 765m graphics processor.

While the battery life may be disappointing to some, I am glad that there is a manufacturer that values low weight and sheer performance over battery life. Ask yourself: how often do you truly need more than 3 hours battery life from a laptop? I leave a power adapter at work, another at home, and always use a desk, and therefore rarely need more than 1 hour battery life (that's when I'm presenting from the laptop).

One final note is that you may wish to remove Clevo Control Center. The issue is that the control center suite is overly aggressive in throttling the CPU while on battery----CPU was limited to 50% maximum performance while on battery, and no setting was able to override that. While this is desirable for many, others require full speed performance on battery.

To persistently turn off control center (which I now have done, and I recommend), move Hotkey.exe shortcut from the global startup folder to somewhere else, and disable the PowerBiosServer service from services.msc. The service is not a Microsoft service, but is authored by Clevo. After disabling, CPU frequency control will be reverted to Windows, and you can fine-tune as you wish. This change can be undone by restoring the shortcut to its place and re activating the service. Much thanks goes to user victotan001 for this advice.

Projector detection
Projector/external monitor detection and auto-resolution-finding on the VGA part is flawless and requires no action on the user's part. As soon as the VGA adapter is plugged in, the maximum supported resolution is found and the display is rescaled to clone.

Reliability
One question that frequently comes to mind is: how often does the thing crash? My old Sony VAIO Z used to regularly fail to wake up from sleep every five days or so, usually due to the NVIDIA driver causing a kernel panic. I'm happy to report that after six weeks' regular usage, the W230ST has had only one failure to wake from sleep, and no BSODs. The failure was within the first week I owned it, and may have been patched away by a driver update. There have been no crashes in five weeks. My system hasn't been rebooted in two weeks, and that was due to a Windows update. Overall, as Windows machines go, I am very pleased with the reliability of the overall package.

Conclusion
If you want a gorgeous 1080p IPS screen a powerful GPU in a package that's lightweight, there is no other way to go than this laptop. The 4702MQ version of the laptop sacrifices 11-15% CPU performance and 3% overall 3D performance with respect to a 4800MQ, but the net gain---a silent PC during typical low-performance workloads---is well worth it. The Mythlogic version of this laptop spent 2 weeks in QA vs. a few days for Sager---and the build quality is definitely much better, though costing 15% more than Sager. My Mythlogic unit still has infrequent issues with fan rattling, but it occurs rarely enough (once every week or so) and is so quick to fix that it is at this point only a trivial annoyance. If it gets more frequent, I will follow up with Mythlogic.

 

Nice review. Good to see some info on the Mythlogic version and 4702MQ.

One thing I've noticed about keyboard responsiveness is if you have temperature monitoring software that polls your dGPU (765m) when it's in idle state (i.e. Optimus using Intel GPU), it can cause some missed keystrokes. It seems this happens when it polls the dGPU for temps and has to turn on the dGPU to do so. Once I turn off the temperature monitor then it no longer has responsiveness issues.

 

Not surprising as waking up the gpu is likely to create a delay in the bus network.

 

Any ideas for keeping fingerprints off?

And what's the best way to clean them? Simple damp towel doesn't work that well.

 

Would you mind posting a battery life comparison? I read in many places that the 35W (or 37W) CPUs don't provide much additional life vs the 45 (47W) CPUs. I was just curious if this was the case as I am considering upgrading to a 3632QM or something similar.

 

Thanks for the review. I have the Mythlogic version too, been using it for past couple days, I can vouch for all the advantages you posted. I didn't own the Sager version so can't really compare, but I think the 4702mq is providing some sort of benefit here. Looks like Mythlogic does an excellent paste job too, my temperatures are really good. I am too lazy to do a battery benchmark, but have used it on battery with medium to heavy task load for over 2 hours, and the battery came down to 58%, so I think it might provide some benefit over the 47W CPUs. I'll post battery benchmark results tomorrow, might do it overnight.

 

OK, I updated with some treatment of battery life (with more to come later) and some corrections.

 

I have the metabox version of the laptop and am very happy with it too, updated to stock clevo 05 bios, fan doesn`t burst as frequently, only happening once in the last two weeks, keyboard is form and responsive, but for some reason does not respond for a second or two after the laptop wakes from sleep (if anyone knows why this is do tell), the screen is great, not too matte, very small amount of light bleed, very bright, colours look good and blacks are inky deep. Would it be possible for you to upload the mythologic drivers from your cd, thanks.

 

Thank you for the update. That's interesting and I definitely see your point, is it worth sacrificing CPU power for the off-chance that I need my computer to last an extra hour? (maybe 5 hours instead of 4?)

 

I don't know that you will see an extra hour in reality. If we did the same test the battery life difference would likely be within 15 minutes. Plus with the latest nVidia drivers (326.80) I've noticed a drop in power consumption at idle. I will eventually do another battery test, but run the CPU at 2.8GHz and reduced voltage. From my initial impressions actually using the laptop, I can easily see 4 hours use, although so far I'm rarely unplugged for more than an hour.

 

If you make the CPU slower it will simply stay active for longer completing tasks and sleeping less.

 

I have some classes that last 4 hours long and my main classroom only has a single plug at the front; so over 4 hours would actually benefit me a lot there. But really, once I can cross 2 hours doing basic things, I ought to be fine. Over 3 hours would be just peachy perfect for me.

 

Intel driver update has resolved wifi issues.

Also updated the review with information on the USB 3.0 ports performance.

 

If you set the right power profile and turn off all unnecessary connections (bluetooth, wifi) you should manage that.

 

I was able to get about 2 hours while on internet and such with a light game thrown in for a couple minutes, but that was better than I thought. I always custom-set my power profiles in windows so that I never have to change them. Now all I have to do is figure out the button configuration to turn off bluetooth. It must be somewhere on this keyboard.

 

I get around 3hr++ on light wifi and mild photo-editing
Just be careful of the brightness. The screen does suck quite a large amount of power...

 

Thanks for writing the review.

Is this with stock thermal paste?
Concerning undervolting, how many volts will your 4702 allow you to diminish stably? Does that improve temps by three or four degrees? : )

 

I'm easily getting 3.5 hours now, over 4 hours if I baby the settings.

 

That's pretty good considering the form factor.

 

Planning to buy a w230st from Mythlogic. So is it safe to say that with their repasting and the 4702mq, that the erratic fan noise issue will not crop up at all under normal use? Ex Youtube, Excel, Word, Coding applications for java and c++. I'm planning to be using the laptop during lectures and in the office, I don't want an erratic fan noise distracting everyone including me.

 

I don't get those issues using a 3630Qm (45W) so I'm sure the 4702MQ (37W) is even better.

 

Review was updated with some reliability and projector info.

Yes, this was absolutely my concern. I needed a dead quiet laptop (when the GPU is off) and I must say that the 4702MQ is the quietest laptop I have ever owned. Unless I am doing some serious diff. eq. integration in MatLab or video transcoding, this beauty is in the lowest (inaudible) fan state. I'm really happy---it's even quieter than my 2010 VAIO Z. Youtube, coding, LaTeX compiling a complicated document, not a peep out of the fans.

Read the review though---if you run a hardware monitor that polls temps, then yes, the fans do start going off. So turn off that SpeedFan or OpenHardwareMonitor.

I don't know anything about pasting or repasting---for my money, if I have to repaste, then I have lost the point of paying someone like Mythlogic to build my laptop. I didn't want to touch anything other than putting in the Plextor m5m. So to answer your question, I didn't tweak or touch the internals at all. I don't even used the "prop the back of the laptop up using a book" cooling method.

 

Another thing---today I was transcoding videos AND playing Mass Effect 3 at the same time for about an hour. Boy, I'd never dared do such a thing before. And guess what. Not a single hiccup on the Mass Effect 3 while the CPU was fully loaded transcoding.

I only dared try the 100 mV. And yes, it was about 3 degrees difference. Not really worth it.

 

Awesome, and I did read the part about the polling, obviously if you say that polling causes the fans to go weird then I won't be using those programs. As for the pasting I guess I used the wrong wording, I should have said pasting instead of REpasting. Since mythlogic builds from scratch and doesn't open up prebuilt ones to put in new paste.

 

Dear elathen

i want to ask about sleep time, you said that over 8.5 hours only used 10% of the battery ?
is there any specific configuration for that ? for me if i closed the lid (Sleep) after a couple of hours (maybe just 5 hours) the battery depleted...

is there any suggestion ?

regards,

 

I think that's definitely the sign of a problem. I don't think your system is actually sleeping when you close the lid.