*** Official Clevo W230SS/Sager NP7338 Owner's Lounge ***

Yeah, disabling EIST disables all CPU frequency changes too. I don't want to stop dynamic scaling, I just want to stop the GPU throttling and locking itself to 400MHz when on battery. I want it to act like normal when its plugged in - 400MHz idle, 1200MHz in use...

 

will wireless usb adapter help much in decreasing the latency and increasing the speed?

 

I think poor sound in headphones in my case might be due to high impedance of HD555 and W230's audio chip not being able to push it. No other headphones to test with unfortunately.

 

Um... trying to catch up on posts I missed and this post kinda ended up getting away from me. Sorry for super long post xD.

I have a FiiO E07k. Works very well. I use it with both my phone and tablet as an external DAC.

AFAIK you can't use the nVidia GPU in Hackintosh. It's kind of a waste to buy a thick computer with eh battery life if you don't want the dGPU. Go for something thinner/lighter with better battery life.

If all you want is to replace the CPU, you *can* manually upgrade the CPU as it is not BGA. I know you were squeemish about dealing with the HDD but it's basically the same thing, just be a bit more delicate not to bend the pins. HT has a nice video on YouTube about how to thermal paste it (just use less paste than he did -- he kinda went overboard lol).

Reversing a bank wire is a pain in the . If it's really a concern, I'd strongly suggest just paying with an amex. amex also offers a 1 year warranty extension on almost everything. I strongly, strongly recommend buying laptops with an amex because of it.

No, and yes.

Also worth noting is that every MXM 860m that I have seen is Kepler architecture, not Maxwell. Worse performance and battery life. There may be non-Clevos that have MXM Maxwell (like the Lenovo Y50 series, potentially, but even that may be soldered on board with multiple motherboards available).

Potentially. Running the fan at max speed will wear it out faster than running it at 200-300 rpm, but it is better for a $10 fan to die slightly faster than it is for your $350 CPU to sit at 90C when it doesn't have to. The $10 fan is much easier to replace than the $350 CPU.

I'm kinda surprised I'm not the only person that goes full OCD when buying a new laptop and reads 100 page threads... . The 4910MQ is not worth it, it'll be throttled. The 4810MQ is pushing it as is but is still a decent upgrade over the 4700MQ. Everything should be supported under Linux, nvidia optimus is a pain but https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus will help (I suggest Bumblebee!). Can't comment on wattage use via powertop, but can say that it won't get any better (or much worse) battery life than Windows, 5-6 hours with casual non-nvidia GPU usage.

I'm interested in this as well. I asked Prema about it on another Clevo laptop (the w740su), and he said it wouldn't disable speedstep, but I figured it would. Disabling speedstep isn't a real solution as it'll kill battery life. Unthrottling the IGP should not have that severe an impact on battery life, but has a drastic effect on performance.

If you get an external antenna, potentially. But unless you are dealing with long distances, tons of interference, or LoS issues, I wouldn't bother. (and switching to 5 GHz is a much better fix for interference anyway).

That's definitely possible, most mobile DACs are not equipped to deal with high impedance cans. Although Clevo does claim the headphone jack is "high amp" or whatever. I'd still suggest an external DAC. I love my FiiO E07k. Connects to my phone as well, over USB, completely skipping the internal DAC/amp and provides a drastic improvement in audio quality. I couldn't listen to music on my phone without it.

 

Thanks for advice, I was looking into buying E17 but I think I might go with E07K because it's smaller and cheaper.
So audio output via usb is not such a bad thing? I always thought it's the worst way you can go because usb headphones are a total waste.

 

Depends on the headphones.

 

No way, USB audio is the best way to go in terms of audio quality (edit to clarify: it's not the USB part of the setup that means good quality, it's the DAC that is attached to the USB. You can get awesome DACs/sound cards that function over other interfaces like PCI(e), but it wouldn't help for laptops/cellphones). USB headphones are crap because the headphones are crap, not the USB part. When you plug something like an E07k/E17 into the headphone jack, then plug your headphones into the E07k/E17, you're wasting the DAC that's inside of the E07k. It's using the cheap/low power/interference ridden DAC that's inside of the onboard sound card. On top of that, the signal is being amplified twice: once by sound card, once by the external DAC (which is now just an external amp). It isn't always a bad thing, but amping a preamped signal does result in loss of quality. When you plug it in via USB, it shows up in Windows as it's own soundcard. It completely bypasses the internal soundcard.

In the case of high impedance headphones like yours, all you technically need is an external amp, but you might as well get a decent DAC as well for much better audio quality.

The E07k/E17 can function as both an amp and as an external DAC over USB. If you have a phone that can't use a USB DAC (not all phones can), you can just use it as an amp.

 

Thank you for explanation!

 

No prob! Happy to help .

 

Well I was wondering about the non-gaming stuff. I guess when I compile my stuff it would be faster. Android VMs would be faster. Heck even some VirtualBox VMs would be faster. What worries me most is when do the fans rev up. If I'm trying to compile the latest kernel will they go on? If I play Hearthstone or do I need like really heavy-weight games for that to even be a problem? Is there some other Clevo laptop I have missed with the same sizing minus the dGPU? I wanted to get a bit more down with the weight than 200 grams from my current comp.

 

After owning the W230ST for a year, I have one question:

How does the fan noise compare to the W230ST? Is it the same loud noise when gaming?

 

Unfortunately, I don't think this is the case. I just ran a test:

iPad Air 16GB Wifi @ 73% battery life with screen off and not in use, but wifi and gps switched on:

1 Hour charge time on middle USB 3.0 Port = 9% battery gain

1 Hour charge time on lightning bolt USB 3.0 Port = 9% battery gain

Note: This is with a non-OEM 3 metre charging cable I purchased off eBay.

 

Hey guys! Here is a link to the thread where I have my laptop up for sale

http://forum.notebookreview.com/notebooks-desktops-sale/754336-fs-sager-np7338.html

 

The only Clevo I know of without a dGPU is the w740su as I was considering getting it for a while, but it's really quite bad, no reason to get it over the w230ss at all.

Compiling the kernel will absolutely cause the fan to kick in. You're putting 100% load on all 4 phys/8 logical cores for 15+ minutes. The only thing worse than that would be like... playing a modern game on highest settings while streaming/recording the video output (as you'd be stressing both dGPU and a lot of the CPU via game and encoding). But even then you could enable Intel QuickSync to drop load/temps significantly.

Hearthstone should run fine on the IGP without reving the fans up too high.

You don't need a super powerful CPU to run the Android emulator super fast. You just need an Intel CPU with Intel VT-d support so you can use Intel HAXM.

From what I've read, the fan is the same, so at 100% RPM it sounds the same as the W230ST. The difference is in the firmware/controller for the fan. It won't rev up to 100% speed unless it has to, whereas the W230ST would often take an "all or nothing" approach to fan speed.

 

After all these comments I'm pretty much sold! Nonetheless I would really like to see some real life usage screenshots/videos of it running Linux. My only concerns were about the weight (Was hoping for something at 1.5kg) and the temps/fan noise. I guess I'll order one in the next two weeks and see how it does. If someone has a MacBook or a MacBook Pro and could post an image comparing their thickness and size difference I would appreciate it.

Any reason not to pick up the best CPU offered to me; the 4910MQ? Has anyone found any reseller with the 1440p screen?
Sligthly OT: Would you suggest anything else Clevo or otherwise to lessen the weight and up the longevity of the battery?

 

I have had this laptop for about two weeks now and I run Arch Linux on it as my primary operating system with Windows on a separate SSD for games. No major issues under Linux so far as everything works out of the box as far as I can tell. I did opt for the 7260 ac wifi card and I find it only runs about half as fast in Linux as it does in Windows but this card does seem to have its share of issues in both Linux and Windows, hopefully drivers will improve. When just surfing the web or word processing the fans are silent and lm-sensors reports temperatures in the 48 C range. I played the Witcher 2 the other day (in Windows) and didn't find the fans overly loud either.

To get less weight you would likely be looking at an Ultrabook or something that is highly integrated and not very upgradeable (Razor, Sony Vaio Z). Prior to this laptop I had a Sony Vaio Z (SVZ version) and it was a great laptop from a portability point of view as it was as light and thin as a Macbook Air but packed a quad core processor with an external GPU. The problem with it though was to achieve that thinness and light weight everything was integrated, RAM could not be upgraded (8GB max), SSDs had to be proprietary ones if you wanted to swap them out, etc. While I loved the sexiness of it as time passed I missed the ability to upgrade it.

The Clevo on the other hand is thicker and not as sexy but is highly upgradeable and maintainable and at the end of the day this suits my needs best. Personally I don't find much difference between carrying the Vaio and the Clevo around, the Clevo is a bit thicker but not to the point where it is uncomfortable.

In terms of battery life under Linux, I get an estimate of 5.5 hours but have not formally tested it as battery life is not very important to me. You can use powertop in Linux to check power management and I use TLP to do power management in Arch, both work fine in Arch. Unfortunately I am having an issue with powertop where it is not reporting wattage, hopefully it's just an issue of it needing more time to gather stats but need to investigate more.

 

Just bought the barebones model of this laptop today, cant wait till I get it!! Putting my W230ST parts in it when I get it (4700MQ, etc) with some IC Diamond paste. Cant wait to see what this little beast will do for me compared to the 765m! Sold my W230ST (barebones) off and it ended up costing me $120 more on top of what I made to get this, so excited!!

 

Sorry for the LOOOONG response (I had a minor shoulder operation result in the loss of use of my left arm... Army... Jeez. Fixed now for the most part) That is fantastic to hear! Considering I was going to go mucking around with the BIOS lol. This laptop does have a major flaw I found. My wife used it while I was winged and now she wants it lol. Small form, anytime I am on 24 hour duty it shames all my buddies 17 inchers (one exception, the $4,000 SLI cooler queen that one guy has). Since you work with Mythlogic, should I wait to hear from them on any future updates?

 

Thank you for that info. I may never log on to win using this beast and only try out steam linux games. I have contacted Shenker with some questions regarding the model. My BlackBook fans spins at 6200 rpm most of the time but if something is played I don't min it at all. Well the same cannot be said during a class. Powertop needs to run about 45 mins on battery to show estimated watt usage. Regarding the better CPU and the 2560x1440 screen anyone has any comment to make?

 

Seeing as the 4710, 4810 and 4910 processors all have the same TDP, would it be safe to assume that they generate roughly the same amount of heat and that they all benefit from undervolting etc?

 

Has anyone seen the new gigabyte x3? Opinions before I get the SS

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

Only way you'll see it is if you're at Computex in Taipei. It's over twice the cost of the SS. So depends on how important the extra "features" are to you.

 

Christ... bugger that. Does look awfully thin to house a 870m as well. SS it is.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

Has anyone tuned colors on their W230SS internal display? It appears quite yellowish to me. Is there a better way to adjust colors besides Intel HD Graphics control panel?

 

If you have the money, feel free to go for the CPU. Just know it'll be throttled heavily while gaming because of thermal limitations. And about the 1440p... I would not recommend it for Linux. 1080p 13" is already pushing it on Linux. Linux WMs just do not have the scaling options yet for really high DPI displays. It's a total pain in the . Unless you want to use everything at native scaling and have everything be tiny, go for 1080p.

 

Get the 4810MQ and tweak the voltage on it.

 

I may be mistaken but since both 4810 and 4910 have that 47W TDP. From wikipedia; "The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, refers to the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU, which the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate in typical operation." and from another source; "TDP is technically the max amount of power the cooling system needs to dissipate in order to keep the chip at or below its maximum temperature.". So since both chips need a fan with TDP at 47W I guess that their throttlig should be the same. Just that "somehow" the 4910 can run cooler with higher clock rates. I mean, if Intel says they need the same amount of cooling prowess out of you fan and they both have max temp 100 degrees C, Since 4910 has higher clock rates it should in theory produce less heat at the same Hz,

 

If you keep reading, that says it's the TDP under "normal desktop application" usage...

"The TDP is typically not the largest amount of heat the CPU could ever generate (peak power), such as by running a power virus, but rather the maximum amount of heat that it would generate when running "real applications.""

The 49xx series WILL generate a ton more heat than the 4700mq despite having the same TDP.

 

It will clamp to roughly the same speed and head over an extended time, the 4810qm is the best balance due to the multipliers available and potential tweaking options.

 

Yeah mine was at first too. I used Control Panel > Color Management > Advanced > Calibrate Display and went through the steps from there. Fixed it

 

Sold?
i am interested in

 

Hi All

For those that interesting to install a 4G LTE mini card , I am using the Sierra Wireless AirPrime MC7700 3G 4G LTE HSPA+ EV-DO Mini Card that is working perfectly. I bought it from Amazon

 

Where are located and what carrier are you using? Glad to see you had good luck with the broadband card.

 

Hi, I've been on the fence about purchasing this laptop but cyberpowerpc currently has a promotion going on (I believe it ends today) with a bunch of free upgrades, and it makes the price quite appealing - around $100 less than comparable configurations elsewhere. Does anybody know about this reseller in terms of reputation, service, quality, etc? Think it'd be a safe buy?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
(also posted similar question here).

 

I bought my w230ss from them. They were pretty decent and I got the laptop withing the time frame I requested it. I really like the system so no complaints. Well their logo on the cover was slightly askew so I took it off. Not hard to do and it didn't mar the nonskid finish. A little eyeglass cleaner solution got rid of the glue residue. Prema's BIOS and a little registry work got rid of the other logos.

 

Bought from them as well. Although I did get a defective Wireless card, (Went with intel 7260ac) they swapped it out thru their RMA service, they paid for both way shipping which was good. Took them two business days to troubleshoot/fix and than another to ready/ship and it's on its way back. About the logo outside of the system. under order notes I've requested no logo outside of the chassis and they were able to do just that

 

Those sales have been going on for months. When this one expires, they will post a new one immediately with the same free upgrades. They had a really good deal a couple months ago though.

Battery life completely depends on usage. More intensive stuff drains battery faster. It's impossible to really say. 4-6 is light usage. Web browsing, reading, etc.

Temperature is the same. When gaming it can get pretty hot.

It should last two years. Usually comes with a 1 year warranty, if you order on an AMEX card that warranty is extended to two years through AMEX.

There are 4+ different wireless adapters for the laptop. Need to be more specific.

You can install some software to improve sound quality slightly. But the built in speakers are still pretty bad. I'm a minor audiophile though, so I'll never get decent quality from onboard speakers.

XoticPC is nice. Can't comment on international warranty though.

I didn't know they could ship it without the logo, that's awesome.

 

Hi Folks,

I have just finished reading the 114 pages on this thread and now is probably a good time for my first post. Thanks for all the comments/screenshots, it s been hugely instructive. I am this close to buying a Clevo 230ss (we call it Aftershock 13v2 here in Singapore) but I still have a small hesitation with the much thinner/lighter yet same specs Gigabyte p34g v2. I know the same question has been raised earlier but the only reply was about the Gigabyte getting hotter and thus much less powerful due to throttling. Is that really true? Surely it gets warmer but not to the point where it becomes unusable.

Let's look at the real life benchmarks. Notebookcheck website, 3dmark11: Clevo gets 5210, Gigabyte 5209. 1 point difference. Please don't tell me that's because of the over heating So any more thoughts (apart from greater upgradability) to convince me to leave the Gigabyte alone and buy my Clevo tomorrow (we have a local PC show with great discounts ending tomorrow). Note that I have delayed my purchase because since the page 80 of this thread there has been quite a few people complaining that the wireless card/audio jack/ etc. are not working properly. More than on the 'average' owner's lounge.

Thanks folks!

PS: Amazing to see how some people are thinking alike and end up buying the same computers years after years. A couple of people on this thread migrated from the same 13' gaming laptop as the one I currently own, i.e. the acer 3820tg
PPS: The new Asus gx500 looks amazing. Ok, that s not the same category and price, but you have to love the idea of having the same specs in a 3x slimmer laptop with a 4k screen

 

Can't express how happy I am with this laptop. It crunches everything I throw at it- metro, grid 2, alan wake. Everything on high with a decent fps. And it doesn't heat that bad either.

 

The DAC included in this unit is below average, but for my purpose I'm actually using this for portable LAN computer. I'm not as young and perky as used to be so carrying the full tower just keeps getting old. speakers are loud enough to sonic thru the fan on the unit. I had the defective unit 7260 apparently which Reseller swapped out, I'll be back online with it on Wednesday so I'll keep it updated.

 

Assuming you mean the Series 5 I'm looking at, it's an ULV i5 dual core CPU with a TDP of 17W. The W230SS/ST ships with a nearly desktop class CPU with a full 47W TDP. When you push it to full load, it'll get hot. Really hot. The GPU should run cooler than the GPU in the Series 5 did (860m is lower power/runs cooler than the HD 8750M). The W230SS probably has better cooling but I've never used a Series 5 (besides the Chromebook) so I can't say. Under full load it will get too hot to leave on your lap, yes. But that is true of absolutely any gaming laptop, especially one this obscenely powerful.

The 7260 has had driver issues on Windows. I personally use Linux and never touch the ac part of the card so can't comment too much. Thoroughput is definitely limited by the driver on Linux.

The DAC is meh if you have low impedance headphones. If you need to run anything higher end, it will quickly fail you. Again, pretty standard for laptops. I personally use an external USB DAC so I don't have much experience with it.

Considering the w230ss itself will throttle under high load... if the gigabyte really does have worse cooling, it will throttle even more. Benchmarks are often short ran and only really stress the GPU. A 5 minute benchmark is not comparable to gaming for 2 hours. It takes a while for the CPU/GPU and the heat pipes to warm up, after that is when you really start running into throttling.

Also keep in mind the Gigabyte is quite a bit more expensive (at least here in the land of america). I don't really feel it is fair to compare two laptops that are $500 apart.

 

The 7260 should be fine.

 

My experience so far with my one week old W230SS (bought in Denmark - I7 4710, 8 Gb ram, Crucial M500 240 Gb SSD mSATA, TN panel I guess?)

Noise: Is a complete nonissue with web surfing. It just never makes a sound. Happily surprised here, as I was dreading noise coming and going all the time. It reels up the noise for 5 seconds when booting into Win8, then it's never heard off again. Noise during gameplay is acceptable. This means it's quite loud, but that's expected from such a strong GPU unit in a small case.

Gaming: My temps during BF4 for 1 hour @ FullHD Ultra settings (FPS around 30 in urban maps): GPU : 78-83 degrees celcius. CPU was in the 60-70s all the time. My Asus UX32VD with it's weak Nvidia 620M had GPU at 92 degrees and CPU at 89 degrees during a similar session.

Casing: Thick, I'm coming from a UX32VD, so this took some time getting used to. It's wellbuilt though, although there's flexing in the screen.

Love the accessability - that I can easily open and maintain the computer/parts. Love the ability to put two extra HDs into the PC. Accessing parts was a PAIN with the Asus UX32VD.

Screen: Even though the NTSC/RGB gamut is lower than my Asus UX32VDs screen, I am really hard pressed to see any difference. Colors are really vivid and you can tell it's a high quality screen. If any, it's less backlight bleeding on the W230SS. When editing photos I usually use my external 22" IPS display, so it's no problem at all.

Problems:
Touchpad: It works okay with two-finger scrolling, but I'm still adjusting to the pad in general. I can't get rid of the ANNOYING charms bar when sliding in from right. The pad in general is actually not far from the UX32VD in usability, but not as good. Any advice on best drivers or configuration to make it a smooth user experience?

Battery: I'm getting 4h25m with the balanced profile (50% brightness and anything but wifi turned off) + Control Center profile "Quiet". I can definately live with that. Weird thing though, is the first time my battery was fully charged I got a whopping 5h30m with the same settings. Where did that capacity go? Any advice here?

 

I bought mine last weekend from Reflex notebook. Haven't received it yet but I did do a price comparison with xoticpc, lpc-digital, prostar and sager notebook, I can send you a spreadsheet if you want it, lol.

All of them have a separate warranty for Canada on top of the US Sager warranty. There's also the option to include coverage for two-way shipping from Canada to US/Sager for the duration of the warranty. That's either included on the price of the Canadian warranty or a separate option. Funny thing is ,among all the resellers, the NP7338 config I wanted amounted to the exact same dollar figure, regardless of free shipping or not. Of course, not including differences in NBR member or cash discounts.

I was originally planning to buy it from the US and have it shipped to a US mailbox at the border. With the current bad exchange rate, and if HST was charged at the border, the difference would have only been $50. Now if you're getting it shipped to your residence, especially if it's UPS, UPS is going to you...with brokerage fees. It's bad enough that a notebook with a list price of $1200, we get charged with taxes that can buy a nice SSD.

With that said, totally up to you. Price is a major consideration for me as we're expecting our second child this August. With a recent streak of bad reviews, I'm just really hoping Reflex notebook delivers within an acceptable time frame. This forum has helped to ease the transaction and I will definitely put up a review when appropriate.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I guess I was just surprised to see such a difference in cooling capacity considering the Gigabyte has two individual fans for CPU and GPU, but apparently the empty spaces with static air around the components in the w230ss beat the more complex cooling system of the overly condensed Gigabyte.
And about price, you are absolutely right. Talking about this, you will be pleased to hear that you guys in the 'land of America' really get a good bargain. The price in Singapore for a i7 4710, 8gigs, 1080p screen, 1tb 7200 +250 evo msata ssd is SGD 2,150 i.e. about USD 1,700-1,750... That s the premium to pay to buy in Asia a computer with components, well, made in Asia for most of them

Two quick questions to help me make the best out of my new beast:
1. How do you guys connect it to a UHD screen (4k TV)? I used to plug my 3820tg to a 1080p TV through VGA but I guess that might not work on more recent 4k screens. HDMI?
2. Back in my days, it was a bad idea to keep your battery in the laptop when it was plugged in. Batteries were used only on the go, and it s a pain to remove it and put it back all the time. Does that still apply or am I just an old timer shocking you with my stories about the early days of computing ?

Cheers

 

Sent you a PM with a link. Let me know if it doesn't work.

 

Long time lurker, first time poster

If you are located in ontario specifically near hamilton or brantford, would you be interested in buying my eurocom m4(w230ss). The specs are as follows
I5-2410m haswell
16gb of ram
1080p matte
120gb ssd
6 hours of battery
4.4 lbs
nvidia 860m
windows 8.1 professional.

selling for 800

 

Hi I recently purchased a sager np7338 and am waiting for it to arrive.
I am going to get an SSD for it as well and am thinking of one of these two.
Crucial m500 240gb
Amazon.com: Crucial M500 240GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD3: Electronics
Or the samsung 840 evo 250gb
Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO mSATA 0.85-Inch Solid State Drive MZ-MTE250BW: Electronics

From the reviews I have seen the samsung is better, but not enough better to justify the added cost.
Am I wrong, or are there any other msata ssds I should look at?

I am also planning to run linux as well as windows 7. Currently my plan is to just install windows but have a partition for installing linux later. I have not used ssds before so I want to make sure I set it up correctly. So any tips for how to make installing windows on it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Damn, that pricing is pretty awful . 4k should work over HDMI, but I've never used a 4k display so can't comment too much. You'll only get 30 Hz out of HDMI 1.4 though. You need HDMI 2.0 (which I don't think the laptop, or your maybe even TV has) to get 60 Hz. You could look into USB3 to DisplayPort adapters if it doesn't work.

Modern LiIon batteries are pretty smart. I don't worry about any of it. Personally I just leave the battery in and ignore it. If it lasts me a year or two, $50 every 2 years is not a lot of money to spend to replace the battery. The only real precaution you should take if you leave it plugged in 24/7 is just to discharge the battery about once a month. If you're going to leave the battery off of the laptop, discharge it to about 40% first before storing it.

At a $40 price difference there probably isn't too much reason to go for the 840 Evo unless you really care about performance. The Samsung drives do perform much better than anything else out there, especially on Windows if you use their software caching driver thing. Kinda surprised at the price difference on the mSATA drives. The 2.5" SATA drives are a bit more comparable.

 

Considering how powerful the Intel 4600 is, I'd recommend that everyone set Nvidia Panel to use the Intel by default and only use the Nvidia card when you specify. The laptop will run cooler and quieter.

Anyway, back to my problem. Does anyone know how to force the Intel GPU to work normally on battery rather than locking to 400MHz? Disabling EIST/Speedstep locks the CPU and GPU to max speed/power at all times so that's obviously not an option on battery.