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

No it didn't overwrite any drivers. It was like connecting a bluetooth speaker.

 

The bluetooth adapter can handle multiple devices.

 

Questions for the owners of this laptop out there

1. HTWingNut's review and Notebookcheck's review have very different temperatures for the surface of this laptop. How hot does it get at idle or just doing basic internet browsing or taking notes in OneNote?

2. How loud does the fan get when browing the web or using microsoft word/power point/excel? Im looking to possibly buy this as my laptop for school and I dont want something that might get loud in the middle of class while im taking notes

 

During web surfing and office work it doesn't get loud at all. Heck, it doesn't even get loud when I am using Google Earth. It spins so slowly and quietly that you can barely hear swishing sound only when you put your ear next to the laptop. This machine is very quiet in desktop mode and IMO Clevo did a good job at fan management. No issues like sudden spins up of a fan Dell and Alienware have (I have had experience with Dell and Alienware 14 laptops).

 

Sweet! Thank you! As of right now I am deciding between this for $980, the Clevo w740su for $958, and the ASUS N550JV-DB72T $800 as my college note taking/video editing/gaming laptop to compliment my desktop. I was worried about heat issues with this, but I think after reading stuff on here and with what you said I would be much more comfortable purchasing this

 

It gets loud and hot during gameplay, but in 2D it's as quiet as a mouse.
I did some research on W740SU and Asus N550 with gtx850m as well before I bought this. W740 is in completely another class, Intel 5200 is still very weak compared to modern nvidia gtx series and people say that build quality of W740 is subpar. But of course don't take my word for build quality, I haven't seen W740 IRL.
I didn't go for ASUS either because it is heavier and more expensive than Clevo.
Just my 2 cents.

 

Is the 2.4ghz band crowded in your area?

 

Don't get the W740SU. Really, don't.

I would not buy a card without 5 GHz support. AC is still iffy, but 5 GHz N is basically mandatory at this point.

 

The only issue being that 5ghz does not have as good a wall penetrative or range as 2.4ghz.

 

The Windows 8.1 scaling issue with QHD was killing me with gaming below QHD and regular apps and text.

I finally settled for Windows 7 x64 at 2048x1152 with text at 125% ( Diablo 3 cursor won't appear with text at 150%).

Finally a good compromise.

That 3200x1800 res for surfing and pics was nice though...

I swapped out the 1x8gb DDR3 1600 stick for 2x4gb c10 G.Skill DDR3 1866 (1.35v) and it works just fine, but I do believe it has to be 1.35v.

 

Love the W230SS, it's nice and well behaved when doing regular computing tasks, but it turns into an absolute beast when playing games, you can see people look at it and think "what the hell is that?". I love the stripped down look of it, I've removed all badging so there are no visual clues that this laptop is anything different than what you'd go in to best buy and pick up off the shelf.

 

Am looking into this option as well. It might require a different cable though; the 1080p lcd is 30pin, the QHD and WQHD are 40pin. And according to the service manual the 40pin QHD is only 188mm whereas the FHD and WQHD are ~280mm. This seems very odd; the FHD and WQHD are bottom left lcd's, which makes for the shortest possible cable; the QHD might be longer but NOT shorter ...

From the service manual:



Worse might be the mb revision; the manual lists 4 mainboard options, but all have to do with 3G/TPM yes/no:



So you would expect no different lcd connector on the board itself, which is promising. Yet these screenshots suggest a missing 2nd connector on the FHD revision and an actual connector (though unused) on the QHD.

The FHD:
View attachment 113612

The QHD:
View attachment 113616

Since the QHD and WQHD have identical connectors, the cable too might yet be identical, only with the 2nd splitoff connector 'floating' around somewhere? Perhaps it is placed out of the way and taped down on the mb.
Hopefully a current owner of the FHD and an owner of the QHD are able to verify whether this is the case:

View attachment 113614

If so, the lcd cable should be similar to this one:

View attachment 113611

Regardless, the LQ133T1JW02 is matte (or semi-gloss) whereas the LQ133T1JW14 ('true' glossy) is not listed as an option. Would prefer that one, but cannot find any for sale, unlike the W02. Seems a bit overkill to buy the Zenbook just for the lcd ... perhaps stalking the UX301LA thread will do some good; some owner might find it too glossy, I could buy the W02 and replace it for free .

Made a list on Gdocs.

Smallest claims 120W, but it is only rated 19v/5.7a, which makes for a measly 108W ...
So the König Slimline seems the best option from this lot (docs is editable, so feel free to add your own).

 

hi guys,

Got my NP7338 last week and have had a few issues, going to call Sager tomorrow but wanted to see if you guys had any input first:

1: Headphones. VIA hd audio is detecting them, but I cant get any sound to work through them. The speakers work fine without headphones plugged in. HOWEVER, today I randomly plugged them back in and they were working, but when I came back later they weren't.

I've tried rolling back the drivers to the windows audio manager instead of VIA, this didn't work. I also deleted and reinstalled the drivers and this didn't work either. Also, at one point VIA was detecting headphones as another input (rather than just saying something was plugged into the jack) - this is NOT what it did when it actually worked the one time though. Any thoughts?

2: Screen. It seems like whenever I go to the desktop from the internet, or make any relatively drastic screen change, the screen dims/brightens very slightly. It's not a big deal really, and is tough to notice, but does occur. It happens even if I have auto-brightness off as well.

3: Screen 2. When I was watching a show on netflix, the first 10 minutes or so were fine but then I got orange flickering throughout the screen. This happened until I restarted the browser and turned the laptop from power saving mode to balanced. It was fine after that.

 

I'll try to help with #1. I got my NP7338 last Friday, Jun 27, and I've played around with it quite a bit. I've read all the pages of this thread and bookmarked all the sections that relate to this problem. None of it really worked.

Here's what worked for me:
1. Uninstall HotKey Utility. Reboot. (This I found was the culprit)
2. Install latest Audio driver from Sager support. Install all components. I think I ran Setup1.exe, SETUP.exe, install.bat to be safe. Reboot
3. Install Sound Blaster Cinema. Reboot

Right-click on volume icon in taskbar:
My playback devices only show "Speakers VIA HD Audio"
My recording devices only show "Microphone VIA HD Audio"

Device manager:
Audio inputs and outputs:
Microphone (VIA HD Audio) - Driver Provider: Microsoft, Version: 6.3.9600.16384
Speakers (VIA HD Audio) - Driver Provider: Microsoft, Version: 6.3.9600.16384
Sound,video, and game controllers
NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM) - Driver Provider: NVIDIA, Version: 1.2.23.0
VIA HD Audio - Driver Provider: VIA Technologies, Inc, Version: 6.0.11.300

Headphone is detected when inserted by VIA HD Audio ("Jack plugged in" VIA ADeck message on bottom right) and has been working well so far even after sleep, multiple reboots, etc.

I think it was really the HotKey Utility that messed it up, specifically the Clevo Control Center. This software is supposed to be able to control all the functionalities on this laptop including sound device output, Num lock, caps lock, via the GUI. Blahh who cares.

Hopefully that works for you.

EDIT#1:
I retract everything I said above. The headphone eventually stopped working for me again. I believe it was after I closed the lid and the laptop went to sleep. I read this post by jinsirius again and I can confirm this is the right way to get the headphones working reliably, even after sleep, restart, shutdown, whatever: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ger-np7338-owner-s-lounge-96.html#post9668721

In summary, the Clevo Control Center, a.k.a. Hot Key Utility, is necessary, plus it's got cool features anyway. I ended up installing the version from Sager and not Clevo, just because I'm using Audio, SB Cinema, etc from Sager. To run Control Center, DOUBLE-click on the Hot Key Utility icon in the tray. You get 4 "performance" options: Quiet, Power Saving, Performance, Entertainment. Whichever you choose, click on Gaming (bottom-right), and set Headphone to Direct....headphone magic.

 

Wow - thank you t456 for picking up this topic again, and for the helpful spreadsheet that you've created. It would be nice if any of the slim AC adapter options were available in the US...

 

Hey dreville, do you get any white/static/background noise when using headphones?

 

Not at all actually.


Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Hey Dreville,

Thanks so much for helping. I don't seem to have a Hotkey utility installed on my machine, how might I locate it if I do? I've searched everywhere and don't seem to have it.I'm running windows 8.1 btw. I don't have the same VIA HD Audio driver as you it seems (Mine is 6.0.11.0300), and it seems to be operating the same way (Detects port plug in when I plug in my headphones, still only shows speakers when I right click -> playback devices). It's just weird that it worked once but has not before or after.

I'll try all the other steps you posted and see if it works.

EDIT: OK so I have the same driver as you now. It's now showing headphones as an additional input next to speakers. Test speakers, work fine. Test headphones, nothing. Its detecting them when I plug them in (little message in the bottom left corner), but no sound still.

EDIT 2: Sorry for all the edits. So I rebooted and I no longer have an additional headphone device under playback devices. Not sure why that changed. I'm just so perplexed that it worked once and no longer does....this gives me hope that there's a fix out there though.

 

There's definitely hope because everything you're describing sounds similar to what I went through. I am running on the latest drivers from the Sager site. It worked for me when I got my laptop, then I started updating drivers and installing it probably incomplete or the wrong way. I'm also running Win 8.1.

The Hot Key Utility was installed on my laptop from factory. I found it in Program Files (x86). But it's also in Programs and Features

 

I also had the headphone problem. When I first got my laptop I hadn't even turned it on before I yanked out the factory HDD and replaced it with an msata SSD. I re-installed Win 8.1 and all the drivers that came on the disc that came with it. After the fresh install the Hot Key function wasn't working on this laptop, but at the time, I didn't even realize I was missing it until I read about some people talking about it on this forum. When I tried to use it, it would not work. I tried uninstalling the driver and then re-installing it with no avail. I had noticed prior to this my headphones would not worked also. I had pretty much had the exact same symptoms as you. At the time, I had no clue the two issues had anything to do with each other. I eventually did yet another fresh Win 8.1 install for an unrelated reason, but this time once everything was installed, the Hot Key app worked....and so did my headphones.

 

Well guys, I think I got the headphones problem fixed. Thanks a bunch to Dreville and Lostcoast. I actually INSTALLED hotkey program on my laptop and headphones work now....weird how the opposite from Dreville's solution fixed it for me. Also just watched a show on netflix and had no blotching issues, however the slight change in brightness still occurs sometimes (Not while playing a game I noticed though). It's very slight but noticeable...

 

FYI
New Audio drivers are available, to support Sound blaster Cinema 2, available @ Clevo download.

 

But only Asia mirror is working for me @awful low speed 6,7KBit - 35Kbit :-(((

 

Yeah here also....

 

FYI
New EC Firmware for XMG_P304 @http://www.mysn.de/

 

40kb/s ohhh, takes me back to the good old year 2002.

 

YAAAAAAAY. Overclock successful, finally. Praise be to unclewebb for making TS 7.00, intel xtu simply refused to allow me to max multis without freezing. Now running 36/35/34/34 on CPU with voltage set to 1.15 with -100mV offset, 65A, 72W TDP, no throttling, temps under high stress on CPU max out at 90-91 (which are still lower than the stock temps at stock clocks and volts when machine arrived), and the GPU is running at what I consider to be a very nice OC, maxing out at 77C in 3dmark / firestrike (probably 80-something under high-stress gaming).

1338 / 5710 Does that mean +710 memOC? 30% core OC, 14% memOC

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Notebook W230SS - 4558
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Notebook W230SS - P6230

 

Nice score sangamaru. You can direclty overlcok the CPU in mod BIOS without software.

Just saw AndiiiHD's score for 3D11:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4712MQ,Notebook W230SS


Guys you are really having fun with the Mod BIOS.

 

Yea, AndiiiHD's score defeats me. He has lower vram OC and lower core OC (175MHz i think he said in his post, I have +240). So i'm scratching my head trying to figure out how that score came to be.

I'm sure I could break 7000 3dmark11 Pscore or 6000 firestrike if I could replicate his scenario )

 

Hi I've got one quick question. Hopefully this isn't a stupid one! I've been pricing the w230ss on various websites. I noticed some offer 1866mhz ram and others only offer 1600mhz. Is there much of a difference? Thanks!

 

I also have trouble hearing audio when switching output devices, whether hdmi, speakers or headphone. The fix is very simple. Just mute/unmute in taskbar and it works. Until drivers fix this for realsies at least.

 

1.35v ddr3 1866 works fine on the w230ss, I swapped out the single 8gb stick of crucial ddr3 1600 for 2x4gb c10 ddr3 1866 for dual channel. I think my WEI ram score was 7.6 b4, and went to 7.9 with the dual channel 1866. Not sure why anyone would need 16gb on a laptop.

Perceptionwise does seem a little snappier but not a big difference at all.

So not really necessary but I've always gamed with dual channel and prefer 1866 or higher (1866 max on this laptop).

BTW anyone pm me if u want to buy the extra 8gb crucial ram if u r in the USA.

 

Regarding ram, imo the best option at the moment is to go for Samsung 20nm DDR3L ram (it's binned at 1600, but there's reports of massive overclocking up to and exceeding 2133 with prema's bios mod).

Not to mention that ddr3l 20nm ram consumes significantly less power especially when idle (1W adds up to tens of minutes at those low idle numbers).

 

The König is on ebay with worldwide shipping, pricey though. You might check the manufacturer's where to buy; there are several webshops that ship internationally.

 

Usually when the word "Ship" is included that refers to the day they will give it to UPS. Once they do, then you can enter in your tracking number on UPS.com and look for "delivery" date.

 

Hi LagunaX thanks for your oppinion. I guess I'll go with the 1866 ram. Thanks again!

 

No problem just make sure you get a mSSD or SSD or plan on cloning to a SSD.

 

hi folks, i'm joining the family one question straight: is it normal that the "optimized" games values in geforce experience panel are wrong? i get really low fps with those settings, is it just me? i already tried to figure out something in the gpu control panel but i'm still far from those results...are they actually too high or is it just matter of wrong settings somewhere else? i'm running last beta drivers on win 8.1, no problem to downgrade to win7 if it could help as well...thanks in advance for your tips

 

what game are those settings for?

 

Here are the latest Sound drivers with the Sound blaster cinema 2 update as well (since CLEVO is super slow):

Audio_SBC2.zip (driver):
https://mega.co.nz/#!0V5AxSTS!VXM8VV8HOYnHdnb686pFynlCuI9LWCegiLevNevmJak

SBCinema_2.zip (Software):
https://mega.co.nz/#!RJpyBaIA!Bbcve10RSaBif-nX_rwvpADoqLJavdPkYWA9MIVfncs

Enjoy!

 

I've been using the optimal settings in Nvidia Geforce Experience panel for all my games that I've played so far since I got the laptop. This includes Mass Effect 3, BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Battlefield 3, and Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim. Mostly all on top level graphics quality (e.g. Ultra) with some little tweaks on specific settings. Works well for me so far, smooth gameplay, nice.

 

Under the Intel HD graphics control panel there is an auto adjust brightness setting. That might be causing your issue. Its under the power settings and called auto display brightness. Also display power saving technology setting plays a part ;-)

 

For some reason, HWMonitor doesn't seem to know the name of the Nvidia 860m GPU. It detects the hardware, and can monitor the voltage and temps, but beside the GPU icon, there's no name. Anybody have this issue?

 

That will be because the 860m maxwell is new and the software needs an update.

 

ahh OK, so everyone who has posted NP7338 temps are just assuming that the blank line is the 860m, like me.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I would say both drivers for integrated Intel GPU and nvidia 860m

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

i tried fifa14 and grid autosport so far, and both run under 20fps with "optimal" settings, is there something i can do to fix it?

 

I actually edited my post. I was wrong. My headphone stopped working for me again, I believe after I closed the lid and my laptop went to sleep...headphone stopped working. So, I went back and re-read this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ger-np7338-owner-s-lounge-96.html#post9668721

It's the proper way to do it. So yah, I have Control Center / Hot Key utility again.

 

You mentioned you were using a beta driver right? Not sure if you can downgrade. I'm using the latest stable GeForce 337.88 driver, released on 5/26/2014. Worth a try. Beyond that, maybe just stick to tweaking settings in-game instead of through Nvidia GeForce Experience.

 

that made the trick bro! i just installed stable drivers and now i got over 90 fps with max setting in fifa i'm just reborn!