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

Oh wow, thanks so much! I never expected that to work. I now have artifacts around some menu items in the top bar and some icons, but it's not a huge deal (unless you fixed those too...?).

Thank you so much! Now I can proceed to fix everything else

 

Picked up some 3d carbon vinyl and had some fun:

 

I am glad that this also worked for you.
I am using a Trednet wifi USB (using there OSX driver) , which solves the Wifi for me. I am also getting those artifacts. Sound and everything was fixed with Macpoison and Multibeast . Please update me if you find a fix for the artifacts.

 

I just put on some GELID paste but it made zero difference in my temps... they still get to 92C but it takes a little longer to get there(20 min Bioshock Infinite) :S I also downloaded this XTU app and honestly do not understand it. It says my reference clock is 100Mhz. Im guessing I need to somehow change this? It is grayed out along with several other options.

EDIT: I see that you can apparently disable intel turbo boost in the BIOS but I do not see an option for it in my BIOS. According to XTU it is enabled. Could it be a missing driver? I have the chipset driver installed.

 

You only need to adjust your boost clocks, not disable it entirely. Dropping to 3.2ghz or lower should be fine. I've gone as low as 2.5ghz without a huge drop in performance (but it gets less and less effective as you go lower).

As far as reference clock etc.
Your boost/top clock is just "Reference clock x multiplier". So if your multiplier is 35 you get "100 x 35 = 3500mhz". Normally you don't need to bother changing it from 100.

 

Thats pretty interesting, thanks for sharing

 

I just tried this and it managed to power on after holding it down for about 5 seconds longer. Thanks for the common sense advice.

 

On the bleeding issue.

I actually tried to remove screen bezel. The procedure is described in service manual, it comes out rather easily if you take into account that it's also glued to the lcd by tape.

After I removed the bezel, I saw that the bleeding was little to none. Clearly, it was caused by tensions made by the bezel and other mounting. I also noticed that some tape was misaligned (although it could be the result of my previous attempts to remove the bezel which I was to scared to finish). I tried to align the tape and put the bezel back. Not that the bleeding had gone completely, but it went away from the most annoying spots and decreased in the others. Good enough for me. I think if you spend some more time aligning the tape, you can make it better (some parts of it also don't stick, and if you may try to replace the tape, too),

Sorry, but I didn't make any pictures.

Warnings:

1) It's probably possible to make the situation worse, not better, by this procedure.
2) The LCD is fragile and can probably be broken if you do something wrong or even a little wrong (I don't know, however, what "right" here is).
3) The whole construction is a bit flimsy, and might get worse just under external pressure (say, in a backpack),

 

Yeah this worked for me too. I went to turn my laptop on this morning and I was having the same issue, but I pressed and held the power button for ~3 seconds and it turned on

 

The artifacts are fixed if you log off and log back in to OS X.

I use Chimera/Chameleon on OS X on a separate disk.

Clover's shortcomings outweigh its benefits, so I'll be sticking to Chimera for the time being.

Proper sound should be implemented by patching AppleHDA. Although VoodooHDA does the job, it has a reputation of being unstable. The codec in these laptops is the VIA VT1802 codec.

WiFi with any PCIe card but those officially used by Apple are a lost cause; I recommend saving yourself some $ and getting a USB WiFi module. @Emmeryn, you mentioned you're in Singapore. You can get the ASUS USB N10/N150 wireless dongle at Fuwell, Sim Lim for about S$30 (I think it's actually S$29). It's very cheap, very small, and is very very worth it.

For sleep and good power management, you need a patched DSDT, an SSDT generated by Pike R. Alpha's ssdtPRGen.sh script, and a correct SMBIOS (use MacBookPro11,2). You can also adjust your SSDT to match XTU settings on Windows, such as TDP and max clock (although you cannot overclock beyond 3.5 GHz).

For battery status reporting in the menubar, you also need a patched DSDT and RehabMan's ACPIBatteryManager.kext.

For brightness control and lid sleep, you need a patched SSDT (different from the above SSDT), RehabMan's ACPIBacklight.kext and possibly a patched DSDT for Fn+F8 and Fn+F9 shortcut keys to work.

You can find me on the tonymacx86 forums as Scramjet, or on the InsanelyMac forums as SRSR333.

 

Anyone able to post their CPU and GPU max temperatures when running 3dMark11 or Vantage? Stock with no clocks or voltage adjustments would be great.

 

could you please tell me the dimensions your magnet has?
I will definitely try this out before changing my FAN for RMA.

 

It's 10mm by 2mm. I used one from my fridge.

 

do you think this one will do it's job?

5 NEODYM Magnet Scheiben selbstklebend Ø10x0,5 mm N45 Supermagnete - 300 G! | eBay

it can hold 300g - there are others with up to 1,5mm thickness that can hold 900g but i am afraid that the fan will not spin at all with this strong magnets... or am i wrong?

 

thanx yet again prema..... apologies for the delay in responding!

a question for the forum..... my audio issues is still not sorted out. a cold boot restores the headphone audio, but then to cold boot everyntime to plug in the headphones is a real pain. i have tied several drivers, but no use. whenever the laptop wakes up from sleep, the headphone audio is gone. can someone guide me as to how to get past the issue without cold booting?

 

The heaphone and mic. port are on a separate pcb (along with 1x USB 2.0):



It's likely a usb bus (pcie wouldn't make much sense). Check power state settings for those hubs and plugging in a device on that 2.0 port to see whether the audio wakes up as well.

 

thanx for the input and pic t456. however, i dont think that the audio is on USB. i think the ribbon connector from the daughterboard to the mainboard carries discrete analog audio signals.

anyways, playing around with the USB config also does not help in my case. if at all there were a utility to manually awaken the headphone port......

 

Hi guys i have 2 problems with my w230ss.
I managed to kill windows after 1 day of use and now after reinstalling im missing the SM-bus-controller driver
(PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_8C22&SUBSYS_23001558&REV_05
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_8C22&SUBSYS_23001558
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_8C22&CC_0C0500
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_8C22&CC_0C05)
It is listed neither at my resellers nor at the clevo website so where is the official download?

The second even more annoying problem is the nvidia optimus configuration.I cant get any settings to "stick".
It is locked to globaly choosing the optimal gpu but always defaults to the integrated card and resets changed settings after Nvidia settings are closed.
If i want to use the gtx i have to rightclick a .exe and choose run with nvidia ...

Thank you for your help

 

So, after all these years using this forum as an input on making purchasing choices it’s time to give my input on this machine and ask for your experience/help:
1. Sound quality is really weak. The speakers are relatively quiet and lacking …depth. When I open the Sound Blaster Cinema Software and leave it open it seems to boost the volume a little bit, though. Anybody got an idea on how to boost volume any further or increase sound quality? Onkyo should not have their reputation ruined by advertising their components on the W230SS
2. Another issue with sound output:
- My old laptop switched sound from internal speakers to external AV Receiver (Yamaha RX V773) automatically even while a song/movie was playing
- W230SS: I need to reload youtube or other flash based videos, normal videos or mp3/web radio after I had plugged in the AV receiver. Otherwise laptop won’t use the hdmi output. Does it work for you to switch automatically to external hdmi while playing files?
- Hint: Whenever the AV is plugged in and recognized I click „standard output“ but everytime I used it I have to do this again. Any way to make the laptop remember the hdmi receiver as „standard“?
3. Power in energy savings mode: When on energy savings, I cannot even watch flash videos without immense studdering. Anyboy else similar problems?
4. Not having enough power after switching back from battery to plugged-in usage:
- Whenever I use the laptop on battery and high power (still reduced power compared to plugged-in, I know) and plug it in while playing a power-intense game, it still doesn’t supply full power. I need to restart the game (Star Craft 2 in this case) in order to get the laptop going into full-plugged-in-power. Anybody else having issues of that sort?
5. Battery quality is not satisfactory: I purchased the laptop in July and since then I have maybe charged about 25-30 times. Battery Bar v 3.6.2 already shows 6% wear. Is that normal? (I don’t have extreme heat conditions and pay attention to normal battery care.
6. Battery runtime is awful. I know this is different for everybody but I believed in this „5-5.5 hrs of light web browsing“. With energy savings turned on and only word, thunderbird and firefox running I would only get ~4 hrs max (screen brightness: low) with battery bar showing around 10-15 Watts of power drain. In my opinion I also don’t have any
power-draining processes activated.

BTW: Here’s my system:
XMG P304 PRO Gaming Notebook 33,78cm (13.3")
. 33,78 cm (13.3") Full-HD (1920*1080) Non-Glare IPS-Panel
. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2048MB GDDR5
. Intel Core i7-4712MQ - 2,30 - 3,30GHz 6MB 37W
. 8GB (2x4096) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 1600MHz Crucial
. 500GB SATA-II 5400U/Min Seagate Momentus (ST500LM012). Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260.
Kingstom 120GB msata, Windows 8.1 Pro, Standard Bios and all Drivers up-to-date

PS: Don’t get me wrong. I really love the power of this machine, its quiteness and it’s speed in every day use, as well as the screen. The battery runtime and the speaker quality are really annoying, though. (I’m a teacher and need it for everyday use in the classroom and 5hrs+higher volume would really have come in handy). Before that, I had a much cheaper, 3year old laptop that didn’t have all these issues which I’m facing now (okay, it was less powerful) so I still have to make my peace with this purchase.
Thus, every piece of help is kindly appreciated. I WANT TO LOVE IT, I REALLY DO!

 

I got a problem with the Prema BIOS:
I finally got my lappy up and running, so I flashed the Prema bios on it, but now it won't recognise my SSD, HDD or USB stick as boot devices.
They do show up in the SATA config, but not in the boot menu, and I only get the 'select proper boot device and reboot' message.
Any help?
The SATA config is set to SSD, so that's not the problem.
Edit:
Also, but this is not my primary concern and is not because of the bios flash, the internet speed is awful, both wired and wireless. I get like 500-800KB/S on steam, while normally it is around 10MB/s. The internet speed on my PC and other laptop are normal

 

Is uefi booting on? Does reflashing the stock bios work ok?

 

Amazing what a difference Intel XTU can make. On Linpack full load on stock settings I was peaking into the mid-upper 90°C range (and subsequently throttling on and off). I dropped boost from 3.8 down to 3.2 and it made a bit of a difference but not huge, maybe 10°C max, but then dropped to 3.0GHz and undervolted by 60mV and wow, >20°C drop on full load on all cores from stock settings. Impressive.

 

Voltage changes will always give a big impact on temperatures, power tends to be linear with frequency and the square of the change with voltage.

 

How the hell did you get a 20 degree drop? I undervolted to -70mV and I still get 89 degs as my max temperature.

 

Every chip is different, also what speed were you aiming for?

 

UEFI booting is on.
Reflashing doesn't work. I can select the USB drive in the boot menu, but I still get the 'Select proper boot device or reboot' blah blah something.
:/

 

You will get two instances of devices, one uefi and one not. Choose the one without uefi next to it for the usb stick.

 

As the included readme says we have to manually set the basic settings the same way they where before (stock or mod is no difference, everyone has to do it).

So if your Windows is 8 and it was installed in UEFI mode then both things have to be re-enabled.
If you still have the "F7" boot menu available then UEFI mode is NOT active.

In BIOS menu go to:

"Boot" > "UEFI Setting" to "Windows8.x"
"UEFI Boot" > to "enabled"

Then save and exit.

 

I've set my multipliers to 27, 28, 29, 30 for 4, 3, 2, 1 core Turbo speeds respectively. I've undervolted both the cache and processor to -70mV.

 

I already did that, but it somehow worked when I did it again.
You're my hero! I gave you €5 :thumbsup:.
However, I cant find any undervolting options in the bios. Should I actually do that here or do I need to download software for that? (I've always preferred bios, but needs must )

 

Thank You!

We can overclock via BIOS, but undervolting on this model is only implemented via Intel XTU Software. The BIOS Mod gives us a few more XTU options, too.

 

Thanks a lot, doing it now!
I hope I won the silicon lottery

 

Is it safe to use this laptop in a moving car? I have the hdd hybrid from Seagate

 

It's not safe to use any drive that has moving parts while moving as any bump or jar can cause damage to the disk. Pure SSD would be the best to using in a car but all other moving parts can potentially be damaged as well.

 

I would concentrate on driving instead
As Derek said, if you pass a speedbump a little too fast while your drive is active, you might run into serious trouble...

 

Seems I did, currently testing at -100mV dynamic CPU voltage offset and still going stable
Update:
First BSOD at -130mV. Not too shabby

 

How did you test? I had most crashes with exzessive undervolt when the system is in idle. Same undervolt that crashes in idle worked fine under the heaviest load.

 

Not all chips are created equal...
I tested with IntelBurnInTest, but that didn't work too well. When I tried -125mV on that it worked perfectly, but when I started the built-in stress test it crashed almost immediately, even on -120mV.
I lowered it to -100mV and that was stable, but I've yet to test how far I can go.
TL;DR: Use the built-in stresstest in intel XTU.

 

Anyone able to post their CPU and GPU max temperatures when running 3dMark or a top-end game? Stock with no clocks or voltage adjustments would be great!! Thanks for the help.

 

When testing undervolts you should be testing at multiple clockspeeds since the voltage is changed dynamically, then the modifier applied afterwards (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).

I've found that I can get very high undervolts at dead idle or at max turbo via a burn test (I managed to hit -135mV). However, when it came to regular use where the clockspeed jumps around it would crash at some of the lower clockspeeds.

My final undervolt is only -60mv, but without crashes at any clockspeed. Next step will be to find some way of manually adjusting the voltage ramp as well since those min/max scenarios are where the difference in either battery performance (low clock) or CPU temp (high clock) really come into play.

 

It depends, what is your starting and final VID? I tend to find that chips with large undervolts (i.e. 100+mV) tend to have a larger starting VID than chips with lower undervolts. Intel are pretty tight and accurate with their binning when it comes to standard operating voltages and clockspeeds, it's really at the ultra high performance spectrum (i.e. 4.5+ ghz) where the chip quality plays the biggest role.

Also, check all the intermediate clock domains as well, you may find your final undervolt is quite a bit lower than expected. For example, I XTU tested my chip at every 100mhz increments from 800mhz-3.2ghz at my undervolt (by manipulating the 4 core multiplier) to finally arrive at -70mV. This is because Intel already operates Haswell quite close to threshold voltage already for the clockspeeds below 3ghz.

1. This laptop was never known for it's sound quality. While the internal speakers suck, the sound output is pretty good, I pretty much always use headphones with mine. If you are using it as a projector for a classroom type presentation, it is better to use a small set of bus powered external speakers.

2. No idea about this though a couple of users have posted issues regarding the sound jack bug when this laptop resumes from hibernation. You can circumvent this by installing Clevo Control Centre.

3. There is no need for power saving mode, the CPU is quite efficient and you may actually get better overall battery life if you leave it to Balanced since the CPU is spending less time active (i.e. race to idle).

4. This is a known issue for me, it's to do with the BIOS programming as this IC informs the Windows drivers of which performance profile to use, it doesn't always work correctly when the power profiles are invoked in the middle of an application. The reduced performance is to protect the battery while not plugged in.

5. this could be normal unit to unit variation as it is impossible to tell how long the laptop battery was sitting in a warehouse, you have to try to cross-reference the manufacturing date of your battery.

6. What windows are you using? switching to Windows 8 improves your battery life by at least 10% due to the increased interrupt efficiency of the new kernel alone.

Windows 8, in conjunction with Prema's BIOS, allows you to use more advanced power saving features that can net you a further 1-2W less usage. The two biggest features are the PCIe ASPM modes and the Intel CPPC driver, implementing the ASPM shaves about 1 W from the idle consumption. Implementing the CPPC mode reduces your light usage consumption by about 2-3W.

Your choice of storage can also have a big impact on your runtimes, I've learnt recently that the W230SS does not have DevSleep so all but the most efficient mSATA units will consume about 0.7W-0.8W at idle. The spindle HDD usually uses about 0.5W while idle but uses a lot of power during spin up. Coagulating your storage in to a single 2.5inch Samsung unit will yield you an extra 1W savings at idle.

Using DDR3L RAM (i.e. 1.35V units) can boost your battery life by about 8% on average. However, Clevo resellers use 1.35V RAM by default these days but it is worth double checking.

Finally, using Intel XTU can further boost your battery life by about 15% depending on your undervolt luck.

Applying all these tweaks, I can get a comfortable solid 6 hrs on light word and web browser usage, about 8-12hrs on idle. But bear in mind also, my battery is also almost bran new with only 2% wear.

 

You have to use 1.35v ram as that's all the 4xxx mobile chips support.

 

Here you go:
3D Mark Firestrike only with -83,98 UV and + 175 MHz Coreclock:

 

It seem that I've got a few BSODs while downloading some of my steam library this night...
That's really too bad but... oh well, it was too good to be true anyway
Imma lower it some more and hope it doesn't crash randomly.

Also, I get idle temps of 50C, which seems really high (but then again, I'm coming from a desktop which ran below 30C most of the time )

 

I still don't understand how you guys get just 75 degrees under full load with a -60mV undervolt. Running Skyrim or X-Plane 10.30 (the latter is extremely CPU, GPU and RAM intensive) doesn't even take my GPU past 60 degrees Celsius even with a +200 MHz, +400 MHz and +175 mV on the core, memory and voltage (Maxwell FTW).

What the hell is wrong with my CPU? As a matter of fact I might as well not undervolt/clock my CPU seeing that I am getting more or less the same as stock temps. It reaches 95 degrees so often that I'm worried that my CPU's lifetime is slowly being eroded away. Any suggestions from you guys?

 

Be happy. I get idle temps of 70 degrees.

 

i would repaste the thermal paste - maybe it helps - the temps seem to be a way too high for idle

 

I have repasted few times and every time my temps start to rise again after few weeks. Arctic mx-4 just stops working. I have coollaboratory liquid metal waiting for the next repaste.

 

oh - i use the MX-4 too - do you use too much paste? If not maybe you can check if the heatsinks surface is not totally flat. Clevo Heatsinks are known for that problem. The quality is some times very different within the same model series.
If iths totally flat maybe the pressure of the heatsink is strong not enough (carefully press a little with a pencil earaser and see if temps change). Similar to this thread.

 

Hi guys,

I'm looking forward to upgrading my current W230ST to a new generation of Clevo 13" laptop (maybe W230SR? ) for The Witcher 3. Is there any news about a possible new generation from Clevo ?