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

You tend to pay a premium on laptops in a smaller form factor. I set up the same config i bought with the w230ss and it was the same price for me. I general the 15" will deilver better cooling but with a less mobile form factor and more weight. It comes down to preference. The only difference i see is you get to 2.5" sata drives and one msata in the 15" while the 13.3 gives you 2 msata drives and one 2.5" sata

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Definitely keeping an eye on this thread. Been looking forward to hearing some reviews, particularly concerning the fan noise, throttling. Would greatly appreciate any updates

 

Ordered a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA to drop in this baby. Can't wait! Delivery tomorrow hopefully.

 

My eagle is scheduled to land tomorrow. I already have my SSD & Win 8.1 on a thumb drive ready for install. This will be my first time installing windows from a thumb drive. I normally do it from the DVD, so I'm hoping this install will go a bit quicker.

I remember when installing Windows and all the other software/tools I use was a big deal. I have done it so many times, probably could do it in my sleep.

 

I've been tracking this notebook and I'm eager to see some more detailed reviews in the next couple of weeks as people start receiving theirs - pretty amazing, especially for the size.

It looks like only the FHD display option is available in the US so far (Clevo's specs mention two others). I read that the QHD+ version is PenTile and glossy, so probably not for me, but the WQHD could be great. Anybody know whether it will be matte, and when these other options might be available?

 

Well, got my SS today and already have Windows 8.1 installed. Did it from a USB thumb drive and I think it only took like 20-30 minutes. I still have all my drivers to load and they are taking forever to copy from the DVD to a Thumb Drive on another machine.

So far, I like the size of the machine. Backlight keyboard is a nice touch.

Because I don't have the video drivers installed yet, I'm not sure how the 13.3" screen @ 1080P is going to sort out with the text. It looks kind of fuzzy, but I think Windows set my text at medium size. When I set it to the lowest setting, then the text looked sharper. I'm sure this will all be sorted out once I get everything installed and running the correct way.

This is to replace an ASUS Zenbook ultrabook which was great when it was new, but now seems to be getting slower at almost everything.

Having a quad core in a 13.3" highly portable machine is going to be awesome.

I find that I like taking the Zenbook when we go to dinner or somewhere else where I want to dork out while waiting for dinner. I also have development tools on the Zenbook and it's pretty slow sometimes for type of task. This Sager should really shine. The Zenbook kept running up to it's limit of 4GB and then slowing down to page to disk. Now with 16 GB, that should not happen.

 

I'm thinking of getting this, but I have a few questions:

I'm concerned about the heat this thing will produce. Will I be able to adjust the maximum clock rates and thermal profile so that the 45W i7 the laptop comes with will behave like a 37W i7-4702? I also plan on undervolting it. Will the binning with the i7-4810MQ allow it to undervolt further compared to the 4700MQ?

On Xotic PC, I noticed there were two options for 8GB of RAM, one with one SODIMM and one with two. Which one is preferred?

How does the touchpad feel? Is it responsive? I noticed reviews of the laptop dinged it for being so small, but I am used to that, coming from a Surface RT.

Finally, do you think we will ever see the option for a larger battery, seeing as it attaches in the back and could potentially protrude from the case?

 

With xtu yes you can adjust the profile. Even undervolt AND overclock.

Maybe on the binning.

get 1x8gb if you intend to upgrade later, 2x4gb if not.

 

I'm actually pretty happy with the temps so far. Under a 5 minutes xtu stress test the cpu hovered around 74c @ 3.1 ghz 100% of 4 cores used. Idle temps for gpu/cpu are 45-50c and gaming the gpu runs around 70. This was all with the fans on auto. I didnt check the cpu while gaming. I have two minor gripes with this laptop, the bursting fans speeds and the silver bezel around the screen. Black would have been nicer. After a few hours of use the fans stopped bursting on and off too. Tomorrow I'll play around some more to see if that's really the case. I didn't battery test anything yet either. Just downloaded 50gigs of games so far. I am definitely enjoying the sharpness of the screen along with the colors. When i swapped to my 27" tn panel the color difference and pixel density is startling. I never noticed the difference from my 17" laptop screen to the 27". After i fixed the internal speakers i was fairly impressed with the sound. Crystal clear and decently loud. More bass would be nice but for their size i think they sound great.
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Have the W230SS in hand now. Stock 3DMark 11 is about 5200. So far the GPU can clock +135MHz but requires a slight bump in voltage. The vRAM seems a bit limited on this specific laptop, can only get about +250 before I start to see some artifacting. But temps are definitely reasonable.

 

When you get the chance wingnut can you post your temps and power usage for the laptop? I don't have anything to measure power draw which I'm curious to see.

 

Will you be doing a review HT?

 

Here is a couple of pictures of the new machine with my old 17" Sager D900F. so you can see the size of the new machine and parts. I know most of this was done in HTwingnut's review with the w230st, but some of these give you a better reference of size for components. The bursting fan issue I had in the beginning is definitely better. I wonder if some burn in time was all it needed. Right now I've had the laptop on the table for at least 30 minutes of web surfing and the fan is stable on a very low setting. (laptop is in high performance mode).

I did some temp testing today with and without a targus cooler on my new laptop while playing battlefield for. For reference ambient temp was 72 degrees F. With NO COOLER FAN AUTO CPU was 88C @45% usage, GPU 79C @97% usage. COOLER FAN AUTO CPU was 80C @50% usage, GPU was 74C @97% usage. Laptop fan dropped a notch in speed. Made for a quieter game experience. Next I did NO COOLER MAX FAN CPU 85C @ 44% usage, GPU 79C @93% usage. COOLER MAX FAN CPU 82C @48% usage GPU 75C @ 86%usage. CPU clock was steady @ 3.1 the whole time w no throttling shown. I did not go into turbo mode either which I was expect since it was only halfway loaded. Here's some screen shots. One thing to note the cooler used was a Targus chill mat dual fan and matched the laptop color nicely. Very happy I picked it up. It's light, quiet, and is great for using the laptop on the couch or bed. Overall I only saw a 4-5C difference in GPU temps with the cooler, though it allows for gaming at a quieter fan levels. And helps keep the top cover of the laptop cool. Sorry this sounds like a Targus cooler ad, but I thought everyone would be happy to see some real world gaming temps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
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I actually have been looking for a nice lap-cooler that I can use on my bed/couch. Looks like they reduce temps pretty significantly.

I have a question for y'all that already got your 230SS -- How many WIFI antennas are included from the factory? I ordered my configuration with the standard wifi card, but I was considering adding an Intel 6300 as I have one in my other laptop and it is a great card. What card comes with it stock?

I could put a 3rd antenna in the laptop if it does not include one by default, but plumbing it up to the LCD is not going to be possible without cracking the case open so I might not bother if it only has 2 antennas.

What would you all go with? Intel 5300, 6300, or 7260? I prefer Intel NIC's...

 

I just received my W230SS today. I installed one sumsang 840 EVO msata 250GB ssd as the primary windows drive. Now I'm downloading games from steam and the ssd temperature is quite high: 58 C degree. While the cpu is only 50 degree. And the stock 1TB 5400rpm HDD is only 41 C degree.

Is this temperature normal for msata ssd? I'm very interested on how will temperature go up when playing games... We will see.

And I'm thinking maybe buy another 2.5 SSD and use it as the primary drive. msata ssd only serve as a storage drive. Will this solve the temperature problem?

Edit: after 2 hours of game the msata temperature is 66 C.
So I guess I will switch to 2.5 ssd instead.

 

Good Temps of under 90c on both your cpu and gpu even without using the cooling pad. My question is that why are some owners of the W230st and the recent review by notebookcheck for the W230ss are getting temps of 100c? Is it because their heatsink contacts are defective or they got a horrible paste job straight from the builders factory e.g. sager/mythlogic/eurocom etc....? Are you using it right now as a default factory paste or did you repaste?

 

YES!

/ten chars/

 

My order has been reverted back down to Phase 4. It was on Phase 6 on March 28 so seeing it go backwards was a bit saddening. According to Xotic's website it will take 3-7 days before it moves back up to the next Phase. Bummer, I was really hoping I would be getting it Monday or Tuesday of next week. It probably won't be be showing up at my door till the week of the 14th now. Can't wait till I get this little powerhouse laptop in my hands. I'm guessing the wait will be worth it.

 

If you can PM me your order number I can take a look into why specifically. Typically in those cases we discover a quality defect with the machine coming from Sager and so instead of sending you the damaged hardware we get new parts to make it right before you get it.

 

Thanks Derek. I sent you the order number.

 

And I just shot you an email! I'm gonna take a look into it overnight since we just closed and all the people with the answers I need have taken off for the day. I should have a response in the morning.

 

I did not repaste. I have the diamond thermal upgrade from sager and thats all. Wingnut has both machines now I'd see what he says. Im curious to see if the cpu/gpu cooler is different at all. Keep in mind i did not stress both cpu and gpu to max. If i did, im sure temps would easily hit 100C. During this run cpu was at 50% load and the gpu at 97% load.

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The Samsung evo msata normal operating temps are 0C to 70C. It also has active thermal protection to keep itself within its operating range. This info was off the Samsung website so i wouldn't worry too much.

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Thanks for this information!

So 66 C during game is very close to this 70C limit. My room temperature is 23 C now. When it get warmer, I doubt it will exceed 70C. I don't know what the active thermal protection will do? Maybe shut down automatically?

 

No it will throttle the drive slightly to reduce power. It would effect its max performance but i doubt you would notice a difference in real world operations. Did you dl samsung magician or using turbo write feature? Max do not exceed temp for the drive is 95C.

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Well, I've had my NP7338 for about 30 hours and so far I like it.

Was able to install most all my development tools (VS2010 & VS2013). This machine is pretty quick.

This is my first system that supports SATA-3 (6GB/s) and an SSD that I had for a few months on my NP7280 really flies now. Before it was bottlenecked by the SATA2 interface.

Took me a while to get the Bluetooth mouse to connect, but this could be windows 8 as I had the same issues on the NP7280.

As far as the fan issue that others have mentioned, it doesn't seem to bad. I'm not a gamer so I'm probably not stressing the machine as much as they might. I hear it ramp up from time to time, but so far it's not bothersome.

Love the screen. I was afraid the 1080P would create too small of text to be useful, but I'm not having any issues. Haven't done any coding yet, we'll see how I feel after working on the puppy for 14 hours straight. lol

Love the keyboard much better than the one on my Asus Zenbook, which I bought very early after they were being released. That machine is horrible to type on for anything serious. You have to be very accurate and forceful and even then you have a ton of typing errors. This Sager's keyboard doesn't have any of that issue. I can type pretty much as fast as a full size keyboard. The backlight is also very useful. Coding in dark back alleys will no longer be a limitation...lol

Have ran on battery for some things, but I'm still early in the process of configuring the machine, so much of what I did disconnected from was power. Once I start actually using this beast to do productive work, I'll have a better gauge.

So far I can't see any major issues with this nice little machine.

 

I used samsung magician and the result is 66C. So I guess you are right, this temperature might be the result after the driver reduced the power.

Anyway, other than this it is a great laptop and I love it!

P.S.The fan is loud, but I don't have any experience with gaming laptop so I can't judge it.

 

I doubt it's throttling performance at 66C. Remember it's in the green normal zone until it hits 70C. Anything after that it'll reduce power on the drive to keep it under 70C. Anything over 70 and up to 95C your in the yellow caution zone. I'd consider the drive hot at that point. If you get close to 95C I'd say your close to failure if you stay there long. I would test it with two benchmarks and see how it does. Benchmark it when the drive is cool. Then game for a while until the temps get high and benchmark it again. If your read writes are the same then the drive isn't throttling. I'd agree with you on the fan it's definitely loud when set to max. Much louder than my 17" sager laptop with 3 fans in it running at max. The other laptop exhausts from the rear and not the side like this laptop. All in all though I'm very happy with it. During normal tasks it's quiet enough to be used in a library or classroom with no problem. I just wouldn't try gaming during class .

 

Glad it's working well for you! I found the fan steadied down after a little bit. If you still have problems with the mouse make sure to check intel's driver update site. I know there was an updated driver for me for the bluetooth and wireless card. Of course I'm using windows 7 though so that might not be true for you.

 

I popped the cover really quick to check I went with the intel 7260AC wireless card and it's been working really well with both of my routers. I've had trouble with athenos cards so I tend to avoid them. I only see 2 antenna's by the wireless card. There looks to be a 3rd antenna not connected to anything by the msata port. I assume it would be for a cell modem, I don't know if it would be possible to use or not for you.

 

Hmm, I will probably will order a third antenna just to be safe. Thanks for the info though!
Might end up with a 7260 anyway, the lower power consumption is quite appealing and performance seems good enough.

 

I guess you are right....But I don't know what will happen year from now. So I will switch to 512G 2.5inch SSD anyway. Hopefully this can lower the temperature. For now basically the entire laptop is like a hot pancake. Plus I can get rid of the mechanical drive to lower the weight. Will update if the hard drive temperature drop.

 

Sure thing. I have the 2.5 samsung 840 512Gb in mine. I skipped the msata's for now to keep it simple. I can check the temp on mine if your interested.

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Yes please! Much appreciated! It will be great to have a benchmark on hard drive temp.

 

Ok just surfing the net my Samsung 840 pro stayed at 40C. Gaming in BF4 the highest temp I'm seeing is 45C, so it's a much cooler option than the msata drive. This was without my notebook cooler being used.

 

I ordered and received my clevo with the standered wifi pci-e card (currently at my address in the US), and I had my parents examin it to see if everything is ok before they ship it over to me here in Sweden. And they did open up the bottom to see if it was all there, but i forgot to ask them if the wifi car was dual or single band... Though looking online for barebone clevos rjtech lists the default wifi chip as dual band Clevo W230SS Complete Series, 13.3" QHD+(3200x1800) LCD, nVidia GTX 860M 2GB w/Optimus Technology, Intel i7-4700MQ CPU, 8GB RAM, 750GB HD, WLAN, Backlit Keyboard. so i assume it does have 2 wires, and Iread on other websites that the standered wifi chip is by intel.

 

You will have at leat two antennae to plug into a better card if you want to change it.

 

What do you guys think of the 13.3" screen? I've been using a 16" laptop for years, so how much of a change would this be for me? I'm going to be using it for my computer engineering major in college, so I expect some CAD usage and programming.

 

I've hade my NP7338 for about two days now and have it set up with a larger keyboard in front of the laptop, so I'm now about 6-8 inches farther back. While in this configuration the text @ 1080P is a bit harder to read, but not too bad. I'm replacing a 1600*900 13.3" laptop so it's a bit of an increase in resolution, but still very usable.

I guess this is all subjective as each has their own vision limitations.

 

The 13" screen makes the laptop portable. Since I use my laptop a lot, I'm longing for a 17" screen. But if you have a decent setup, then just opt for an external monitor while plugged in and the small size makes it quite portable. I unfortunately don't use my laptop at a desk often, so external monitor is not a valid option, otherwise I'd opt for that in an instance.

 

I'm considering to buy the Schenker P304 (W230SS). Do i have a heavy performance loss when i'm going to choose the 4702MQ with 37W instead of 4810MQ with 47W? There is also an option to choose the i7-4610M with 37W..

 

Depending on price difference of course, I'd opt for the 4810MQ. You then have flexibility to run it slower if you want/need to. 4702MQ may restrict performance lower than what you'd need in some instances. The i7-4610M is a dual core (why they call it i7 I have no idea, it only muddies the waters), and while in most instances it won't make a lot of difference while gaming, more and more games are becoming multi-threaded. Plus if you need *just* CPU performance you can crank up the 4810MQ for encoding or compiling or whatever else.

 

It would be my first "clevo" and i just want to have a good price/performance. I think there is nothing more in that range.

 

The i7-4700MQ that ships with it ought to be adequate for almost all applications. As for gaming, even as future games become more and more CPU dependent, the level of performance of the 4700MQ will sustain you for at least a couple of years without almost any impact. However, if you plan to keep this longer, then the 4810MQ might be worth it, but by that time the GPU will have long since become the bottleneck, not the CPU. Even then, nothing about this will prevent you from playing games or doing good CPU heavy work, I'd say, for at least a couple of generations.

 

For those that have this laptop I wanted to check on the fan noise, especially when idle or running everyday tasks (not gaming). The notebookcheck review mentioned it was silent at idle but would randomly spool up for no reason which could be annoying when web browsing, running apps, etc. Have you seen that behavior? Are there third-party fan utilities that might better control that? I am not as concerned with fan noise while gaming as I will be using headphones but I am sensitive to it during normal use. This will be my sole PC and will be connected to an external keyboard/mouse and monitor most of the time.

 

I'm also interested onto the max time usage while not plugged in and web surfing.

 

I surfed the internet with a cell modem plugged in and brightness at 80% for 2 hours battery was down to 55%. Bluetooth and wireless was off. I know that's not full drain, but i hate doing that to my batteries. I could see 4 to 4.5 hours w no problem.

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For 35 dollars the price it adds to the resale value is justification enough.

 

He's buying it from Schenker, not Xotic or a US manufacturer, so it's a 169 euro(230 dollar) upgrade.