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

Well, I've continued to test it and all seems good. But I noticed something that doesn't seem normal. When running cinebench single cpu benchmark, it only goes up to 3.6ghz. Only one core is being used, so I assume it should reach 3.8ghz, am I right? In XTU the single core multiplier is set to x38, and even with all default settings the same thing happens.

 

Windows tends to use one or two in the background.

 

Hi All,

I've been following this thread for a while but hasn't found in depth review about 3200 x 1800 QHD+ screen. I heard that the hi-dpi will have lower screen refresh ( 35Hz instead the normal 60Hz like in MSI GS60 3K ). I also heard that the screen of this laptop has problem showing yellow color for both FHD and QHD+. I'd like to hear if anyone got a view on this. Thank you

 

I'd have to see the screens side-by-side to tell the difference. I am satisfied enough with my FHD since I care more about external monitor resolution than a little 13.3" screen. I have noticed that at full brightness on a black screen there is an awful lot of light leakage from the backlight. It's not enough to notice on a light background, but it shows off the "meh" build quality that sager puts into their systems. With that said I would buy a sager over a mac (higher build quality) any day.

 

Haha yeah mine broke a month ago. Just bought a replacement battery but it's still not charging. Emailing my tech support guy again right now.

 

I finally got around to installing the Prema BIOS mod so I can overclock the 860M, and it successfully installed, I used the QHD+ version for my FHD model laptop, as my NVIDIA Bios is 82.07.27.00.0A.

Before the mod, all games are working fine, wolfenstein new order, batman origins, titanfall, etc.

I used MSI afterburner to overclock, no change to voltage, just a simple +135 mhz GPU Core overclock and a +165mhz Memory overclock. GPU Temps are stable at max 77 degrees.

The overclock does work, the stats say the core is going up to 1232mhz (boost).

Yet 3DMark 11 and 3DMark 13 both crashed before the end of the benchmarks.

Errors like: DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG or DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED or NVIDIAxxxx has crashed and recovered.

I am using Geforce driver 344.60, which is a few weeks old and not the latest, but still fine.

What am I doing wrong?

 

Try installing the most recent driver. If that doesn't work bring the clock speed back down to standard and see if the errors continue. Part of the nature of overclocking is that when you do reach your limit on the device you will often start to experience funny crashes rather than an immediate and simple "you can't do that" message.

 

I think the issue is the memory, I can only do a 140mhz memory overclock before running into problems. Since my last post, I have successfully run 3dMark11 with the GPU core at 180mhz.

My other issue is my i7-4700MQ is giving me terrible Physics scores, and I just ran this XTU benchmark I found in the Intel app, and I only got 401. This is terrible, I am ranked 550 out of 570 with a 4700MQ according to XTU overclocking records @ HWBOT

How on earth could my CPU be performing so poorly and is there anything I can do about it? It hasn't really been defective or caused blue screens or anything like that, it is just....slow. During the test the processor frequency is around 2.55 Ghz, which seems low.

Of course, my laptop is plugged in and on high performance mode.

 

I got a question for you guys. I noticed some LCD issues, and when I sent my laptop for RMA (touchpad issue, shout out to Eric@Xoticpc for the help) they said that the issue was from me carrying my laptop in my backpack. I'm a student, I take my laptop to class everyday, and I keep my laptop in a really nice soft case. I have about 20 pounds of paper and textbooks on average, which is what I assume to be the cause of the issue. What do you guys recommend? I don't really want to get a new backpack, if prefer a really rigid case that will take all the pressure (my backpack can hold up to 15" laptops). Thanks!

 

It's likely you need to just be careful how you leave your bag, don't throw it around and don't leave it in a position where all the books are lying on top of the machine.

 

Hey guys! How's the laptop holding up? I remember sending it back due to the weird buzzing noise that it made. Does anyone else have the same problem ?

 

It's not your fault, really. The plastic lid's far too thin, causing it to flex under the slightest pressure. Neither are you the first to have the lcd damaged because of this. This is a laptop, for heaven's sake; it's supposed to be portable and, hence, carried. Hopefully there'll be sufficient RMA's and complaints for Clevo to remedy this with the next overhaul.

Sure, a hardened case would help, but it's a stop-gap measure and you still wouldn't be able to place anything on top of the lid. One carelessly (mis)placed book or some-such and you're back to square one. Didn't like that idea either, so have resorted to reinforcing the plastic; can squash anything in the bag now and force it to close, won't budge a bit. Carries coffee mugs and thermos too and, for peace of mind, survives an accidental collision with something or another without scratching the screen (am a stickler for 100% perfect lcd's ... ).

Titanium alloy's overkill, of course, a 1mm steel or aluminium sheet would do. Don't use stainless; it's weaker than regular steel and a total pain to cut to size. Made a cad drawing with the required dimensions (slightly odd, trapezoid form), think it's on a different hdd ... will post a dwg and pdf once found.

 

Yeah..that pretty much makes me not buy it again.

 

Damn.

I may do this when I feel a bit more brave. I've got the equipment for it though... I'd prefer some sort of case tbh. How'd you attach the titanium?

EDIT: If I'm reading this correctly, the titanium just spreads out the load to the edges. Would a laptop sleeve with rigid sides work as well? Would I have add the furniture fabric to make sure the pressure is distributed?

 

Superglue, ample ...

A heads-up for anyone wanting to replace or swap the WQHD or QHD lcd; both of these are so unbelievably thin that there's no room for the regular screw mounting holes. In its place is some sticky double-sided tape, unfortunately (or fortunately?) this is quite strong stuff and since the screen's thin, it'll bend when pulling the lcd away from the tape.

Spoiler: wqhd display lid

Used a box cutter (carefully) to slice the glue and get the lcd free, worked fine. FHD shouldn't have this issue as it still has the eight regular mounting holes (means it should also have different mounting brackets, can someone confirm this?).

When checking also noticed the black tape that's intended to prevent backlight bleed around the display bezel:

Spoiler: wqhd backlight bleed at corners

Hadn't noticed this when embedded in the bezel, but if you've got bright spots in the four corners; a little extra tape would cover those undesirable gaps in the filter.

 

Oh, yes, and the fan's a mediocre 0.4A ADDA (sorry, not much into photography ):

Spoiler: ADDA 0.4A fan

Actually a good thing, though; means there's still 0.1A leeway for a better fan (Sunon, preferably). Or even one that's rated 0.55A ... there are a few of those too. Lower temperatures would be more than welcome, the additional noise's not much of an issue; can always force silent mode, if desired.

Anyone upgraded the fan yet?

Exactly.

Not sure of what you mean, can you make a picture/sketch?

 

Would something like:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00BW0QBOG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1417755111&sr=8-1
distribute the load in a similar fashion? It's only going to be an issue until June when I take off for college.
In your post you linked me on installing a titanium plate, the poster put black felt around the screen bezel. Is that really necessary?

 

I don't think upgrading the fan would make much of a difference. The heatsink is too far and too small from the heat sources (i.e. CPU, GPU) to make much of a difference. The current fan at maximum RPM (which is already very fast) doesn't do much to cool the CPU and GPU both running at full tilt. Temperatures can reach 90°C, which is evident that the cooling design isn't sufficient.

A better solution would be to reposition the CPU and GPU closer to the rear edge, a lá P650SE, and move the heatsink to the back as well, and increase its length. Perhaps add another fan. The battery pack can be made internal or moved to the front.

It would be excellent if an all-aluminium 13/14" P630SE/P640SE with a hypothetical GTX 960M were released, to completely supersede the W230S series.

 

It would encase it completely, so it'll be perfectly safe. Of course, that would mean lugging around a case ... and you may want to check whether any ports will be obstructed by the case's sides.

Maybe, not sure. But I've seen lcd's damaged by imprinted palmrest or keyboard (different laptops, though) and noticed there isn't much leeway in this system either. It's just a precaution, more so since the wqhd is hard to find (and starts at $170).

Amen to that, have the same temperatures (repasted with Gelid).

 

A 14inch w230ss with double fan might be soldered or tiny version of P650SE would have my money in instant if it upgrades on the fan noise.

 

This sounds like the make a suggestion thread on TechInferno regarding the 2015/2016 Clevo lineup. Hopefully they listened to our wishes.

I'd happily take a 14" W230SS esque design but it'd have to be <26mm thick.

 

Quick Q, can the W230SS run with 2 x mSATA plus a 2.5" HDD? Went a little cross eyed looking through all the posts to find the answer even with using search.

Cheers,

C.

 

Yes, it can. It only has 2 mSATA slots and one ordinary SATA slot.

 

Yes you could have a couple of 250-500GB samsung 840 evo drives and a 2TB mech HDD, that's quite astounding considering the size.

 

Cheers guys, have a 128gb M4 mSATA and 256gb M4 mSATA to be fitted with the 2TB pre-configured into my system.

Will be installing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the 128gb and Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 P or U onto the 256gb, leaning more to 8.1 as have got quite used to it.

 

I did the same, though I was at first hesitant to try Windows 8.1 until I properly tested it. Last year I tested 8.1 "enterprise" version that Microsoft allows you to download and test for 3 months for free. After installing "start is back" I found 8.1 to be very usable and had experienced better performance compared to Windows 7. Here's the link to test 8.1 and there's also the link for Windows 10 in case you're curious though, you'll need to create an "Outlook" or "Live" account first: Try Windows 8.1 Enterprise | TechNet Evaluation Center

 

Cheers for the link buddy, have a full retail of 8.1 pro so will throw that on.

 

Do you have 1 or 2 sticks of memory in there? I have heard that on some benchmarks like this, dual channel can make a big difference.

 

Get a screenshot of the XTU graph, add in all the relevant charts such as throttle percentage.

 

Is it normal that after you stay in BIOS for a while, the system will run hotter?I noticed this every time I stay in the bios to do some settings the fan will go 50%-80% all the the time. Any ideas?

 

Yes the bios does not idle the CPU since it's a basic (basic input output system) environment.

 

Cheers!....

 

Got another problem...I noticed that my GPU will stay at 405Mhz core even though I am running Furmark or other intensive GPU apps. Any idea why?The nVidia option is set to performance.

 

Here's the pdf;
View attachment W230SS - display lid, dimensions.pdf

... and a dwg;
View attachment W230SS - display lid, dimensions.dwg.txt

These are the dimensions and shape of the display lid's flat part, so before the tapering at the edges. It's in mm and expects A3 paper size (do not print-to-fit). There's an outer contour, which is exact, and an inner, which has 2mm offset (rather have a margin than filing off steel to make it fit ...). You can print and cut to use it as a template for the structural sheet or, say, to cut a custom photo or artwork to size.

 

Some extra information is required, ignore furmark and take graphs of the GPU behaviour (clocks, temps etc) during the intensive applications using a program like GPU-Z (logs from this work too) and post it up so we can see what is going on.

 

I am not sure why is that relevant? The issued is cured with a restart and occurs randomly, no matter what game or application I used there isn't a pattern that triggers this issue.
Everything is normal except it stays at 405Mhz Core with 800Mhz memory.

Upon doing some research I noticed this is a common nVidia issue so any help appreciated otherwise I will have to deal with it...

On another one, is there a keyboard shortcut that will enable me to go through Control Center profiles without having to go manually and select them?

 

Awesome. I'm gonna go do that, I looked and a hard case is just a really bad solution. I appreciate the help?

 

"Yeah b*tch! Magnets! Oh!"

It worked smoothly for me too. Thank you!

 

Where can I get such magnet from? Thanks!

 

Bought mine in a chinese store near my place. It's a little narrower than the one from the guy who posted the pics. 10 euro cents.
A hardware store should have tiny magnets too.

 

Guys, I have a strange issue with my W230SS. I have set the display to turn off after 2 minutes. All good, after 4h cameback home set the display to NEVER turn off and It turns off on it's own and comes back when I touch a key or the touchpad. Any idea what this is?It is definitely set to NEVER and it behaves like it's set to 2 mins or something.

 

you can use mousewiggle as temporary solution, see if that can prevent your screen to turn off

 

Perhaps you changed the screen timeout on a different power plan?

 

Hey guys, I ordered this Laptop from Eurocom and it is arriving today, so excited! Just wanted to share some information with you. I am not sure if it is common knowledge here, but after some emailing back and forth with Eurocom (I was inquiring about voiding the warranty with repasting), they told me that they use IC Diamond by default now for their thermal paste. I just wanted to let you guys know after lurking on the forums for so long without contributing.

 

Yep, and this is after our production team tested a whole variety of thermal pastes to figure out which one provided the coolest option for laptops. Amusingly enough I've seen other resellers offer the thermal paste as a $$$ add-on, it's an automatically done upgrade for all our customers and always has been since we started it.

 

If anyone has heard of this problem and it's been talked about in this thread, I apologize. If so, just let me know and I will dig deeper into reading the back log of pages here.

Anyway, My w230ss has been getting a system error of some sort each time I try to power up the laptop and I can not find any sign of what is causing it. After about 1-5 minutes of being powered on the fans ramp up to max and about 2 seconds later it starts beeping VERY loud at about 1 second intervals in sync with the num lock/cap lock blue lights flashing in the top left corner. After half a minute to 2 minutes later it shuts down, beeping loudly the entire time. About one out of five times it resolves it's self and quits, but will do it again a few minutes later and almost always shuts down the second time for sure. The fans are not ramping up due to heat, as I have all the monitor programs running so I can keep tabs on it. I tried all my system restore point and multiple virus scans to no avail. To me it seems like a hardware issue but the odd thing is that if I leave it on the Win8 log-in page it doesn't do it. It's not until I go into Windows the the problem occurs.

I have been running the Prema Mod bios for about 6 or so months, but from what I was able to find out, no one has reported this problem. I was going to try pulling out my current storage and operating drives and then put an old empty HHD in the laptop to do a fresh install of Windows to rule out software issues and also try to track down the stock bios and reinstalling that if the fresh install didn't work.

If anyone has any ideas it would be highly appreciated.
Thanks!!

 

Don't format your hard drive yet - it might be a CPU/motherboard heat sensor issue that causes the fans to ramp up and force a shutdow. The behaviour you mentioned is typical of what happens when you unplug the fan header and leave the notebook on for a while.

It might also be blocked/improperly filled heat-pipes that cause the issue. The issue doesn't happen before you login to your user account in Windows because the CPU is almost completely idle. Even background tasks haven't been started. This is just speculation, though.

I strongly recommend taking your notebook to your reseller and explaining the issue to them. They will likely know the issue and be able to fix it. Ask them to check it with a different drive with Windows installed - see if it happens. If the problem still occurs , it's not an OS issue. If it doesn't, you may need to reformat and reinstall (likely that the reseller will do it for you). Make sure you back up all your data.

 

Well, after 2 screen swaps it seems that I'm a new owner of the w230ss. Very impressive, I can even emulate PS2 games like zone of the enders... something that I considered for a lot of time "desktop only" territory. I currently have an stable undervolt of -117 mv, which pretty much makes the fan silent. I have heard a lot of Prema and I wanted to install it but seeing that there are some problems with it I decided better to wait... Anyway, coming from a former glorious DV6-6110sg, I must say, this thing is small and it simply flies.

I has been said a couple of times but here is it again for future reference: The screen has a very yellowish tint, needs to be calibrated. The way I liked it it was using Windows and the very same Intel utility, under display options, values are for me:
Red - Brightness = -15, Contrast = 50, Gamma = 0.8.
Green - Brightness = -15, Contrast = 50, Gamma = 0.8.
Blue - Brightness = 5, Contrast = 50, Gamma = 0.8.

I got very nice colors with it, some blues that I haven't seen before. Note also that undervolt saves a lot of heat.

 

-

 

Disable UEFI in the bios to avoid that boot style.