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

Here's the same bench on mine with 16Gb if your interested. Looks like my latency is higher than yours

 

You reminded me of one mistake I made with my D900F. I had ordered it with 3 320Gb hard drives in a raid 5 array. For some reason I wasn't thinking one day (not really a surprise) I tilted it 90 degrees to read something on the bottom while it was on. Needless to say it was a bad idea. A nice high pitched whine from the drives and it froze. Upon reboot my array had to rebuild itself which took almost all night I learned two important things that day. Raid 5 was a good idea and not to put high density hard drives in a laptop that I'm going to own! Thankfully SSDs help save me from myself. Now that I have the option I avoid spinners in all my laptops.

 

Oh my... Worst I've ever done was drop a 250gb on the floor swapping it from my old desktop to a new one. It clicked and sputtered but I managed to extract the data before it could seize :thumbsup:

I've got to go away for work in June and despite the fact that the town I'll be in has a population of like 500, I'm told they have excellent internet service at the hotel by some coworkers who've been there. Since there's nothing else to do I may as we'll get my game on!

 

Hey guys,

I've a few questions which I don't think have been covered in this thread. If they have been already, I apologise in advance.

My first concern on this notebook is cooling. I know Maxwell is a very good chip when it comes to its TDP, but how does this unit handle cooling both the CPU and GPU? I will probably opt for a 4712mq as it is 10w less than the others. I have a pretty noisey NP9150 at the moment and I would like a quiet laptop for once.

So what kind of temps are people seeing on their CPU and GPU when gaming and stressing? What are the noise levels like at idle (I don't mind noise when gaming)

My next question is the screen. From what I've seen there are 3 options. 1080p, 1440p and 1800p. I was using mysn to price up this laptop, and it says the 1800p wont be available till late July and it mentioned nothing about the 1440p model. Are there any European vendors offering these screen upgrades as of now?

Lastly, and probably my biggest concern; the build quality. I'm not a fan of my 9150's flexy chassis and creakey plastic. What's the w230ss like in that department? I'd like it to feel robust and sturdy with little to no flex on the body.

I'd be really appreciative if someone could help me out with some of these queries.

Thanks guys

 

If needing cool/quiet is a must, look at the 15" models, which have dual fans/exhaust/separate heat pipes. If you look at the inside of the w230ss, the CPU and GPU share a cooling solution, so if you put load on one, it's going to tax the other in terms of thermal limits. No clue about that specific CPU (haven't seen it yet), but pretty much any quad core haswell i7 at max load will hit the thermal limits of this laptop, especially if you're using the GPU. When idle, the fan should be nearly silent if not entirely off. But at max load, it will be moderately loud and will still have to throttle the CPU to prevent overheating. (again, haven't looked at that specific CPU which may run cooler -- only interested in the 4810mq personally).

Don't get the 1800p display. It's that crappy Samsung rgbw pentile display, that has meh color reproduction and isn't actually 1800p anyway. The 1440p screen may exist, but I haven't seen it anywhere. Would appreciate info on it as well.

Can't comment on build quality as I don't have mine yet.

 

Thanks Alexis. 1800p on a 13.3" sounds ridiculous anyway lol. Thanks for the info.

 

Can anyone here which works for a reseller for Clevo tell me if it would be possible to order this item from Clevo and in general how easy it is either for an ordinary person or for you (as a reseller) to order it?

Item no: 6-23-7W230-020 (for W230SS), the item is the fabled secondary "OPTION"(al) 3G/4G-antenna.

If a quote could be given for how much it would cost I would also be most thankful.
Just thinking "aloud" if one could order this secondary antenna to improve chances of getting the W230SS to work with a 3G/4G-card.

Edit:
Just to clarify (don't think it will impact price directly and could be sourced from other vendors but anyway, if someone were to ask they could mention this as well) I am looking for "everything" that is needed: the antenna itself, cable running from the antenna to the computer with a connector to the 3G/4G-card and screws or other mounting material that is needed.

 

I'd check out Htwingnut's review of the unit shox. He gives you some great info on the unit. The 1080 screen available now is great. Fans are quiet for light load work and you have some profiles to help if your looking to keep it quiet. I'm not sure if I am the best judge of the build quality for you. Personally i prefer ease of access and the clevo no frills look to bling. I found the unit to be fairly solid in feel. Not much flex from what i can tell, but it still new. No rattles or creaks. I wouldn't be embarrassed to use it at a meeting or worry about the fan noise unless gaming. Highest cpu temps on gaming were 92C on cpu intense games (supreme commander forged alliance, bf4 64 player) gpu averaged in the 70s mostly. Playing for long periods will let the keyboard and palm rest get warm. A cooler helps with this. I have the 4810mq. I down clocked it a bit to keep cpu temps in the 80s while gaming. I think the only thing to mention is on battery the cpu is only clocked to 1.7 ghz. It might limit you for cpu intense work like coding when on battery.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

I personally feel the overall build quality is decent. It definitely favors easy access and tinkering vs absolute solid near impossible maintenance or disassemble. The biggest thumbs down in the bezel around the screen is a bit flimsy and overall lid is pretty flexible. Much more so than the HP it replaced. The back matte finish on the lid looks and feels nice but is a major magnet for finger prints that do not clean off easily. There's a couple other minor gripes but I love the power this little laptop has. It is quieter than my 2 year old HP dv6t while browsing or watching videos. The fan stays off or spins nearly silent with those loads. Under larger loads it will get louder but so far it only ramps up like that with a game or benchmark tests.

 

Does anyone know how to install Ubuntu along side Windows 8.1 ?

 

How to Boot and Install Linux on a UEFI PC With Secure Boot

That should be a good start

 

Hi! I was wondering, is it possible to run multiple monitors off of this?

Thank You!

 

Yes you can run any 2 displays at once (the internal is included in that).

A third can be done using intel's widi but you need the wireless hdmi module for that.

 

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it.

 

Not sure if this was ever asked but how do games look when lowering the resolution a bit to like 720P?
I know it can handle most games at 1080P but some demanding games like Crysis 3 and others struggle a big at full res, just wondering how they look scaled back from members that already have this laptop.
Thanks

 

Is the internal considered "always on" or can I turn off the internal and just run two external?

Thanks!

 

You can turn it off and run two external.

 

Thank you!

 

What about spinning down my secondary mechanical drive (Windows 8.1)? I would be very interested in that -- even if the drive goes offline, I don't really use it much except for archival purposes.

And another noob question, which I think would be helpful to other noobs like myself, is how would one best setup the best performance plan? 3 different places to configure gets kind of convoluted (XTU, the Sager Center application, and Windows power management).

I basically want one profile for good speed but good thermals at idle, and one with great battery life. If I could have one profile that I wouldnt need to monkey with that would be ideal.

Right now I have the multipliers cranked up in XTU, Sager set to "Performance", and Windows set to High Performance and I cant get it to clock higher than 2.69 except for very short periods during an antivirus scan (which it does report as hitting 4.0ghz).

Many thanks!!

 

I'm going to order this notebook soon, and have a few question for which you maybe can help me.

- I want to order it with an msata SSD instead of a sata SSD (want to leave the option open to insert an older sata disc i already own in it). Is there any downside on having an msata SSD instead of a sata SSD? (assuming price difference is very low)
- Should i spend some extra money on it to put 16GB memory in it? Is that worth it (i do like to play a game and have multiple other programs (like chrome with lots of tabs) open on my secondary monitor). I guess it can be worth it for situations like that?

Thanks for any help!

 

Msata drives can run a bit hotter than the regular 2.5" ssd drive. Other than that there is not much difference. For the memory it depends on you. I ordered it with the 16Gb, max mem usage ive seen is 6 to 7Gb so far for me. It nice to have extra but if you get an 8 gig stick you can always add in later.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

Don't forget that idle RAM isn't wasted. The OS will use it for various buffers/caches to speed up the computer. Even if you only need 8GB, it'll run a bit faster with 16GB, and it's a bit more future proof/will last you longer.

 

I got a reply from "CarTFT.com" where I am thinking about buying the 4G-module (Huawei ME909u-521) and here is what they said:

Q:
I have a few questions about the Huawei ME909u-521.

There are three connectors for antennas, one "MAIN", one "AUX" and one "GPS" and my computer only has one antenna for 3G/4G which is called:
"Antenna 3G+LTE WGT LTE-1 PCB 0.7G/0.8G/0.9G/1.8G/1.9G/2.1G/2.6GHz"
there is an OPTIONAL antenna which is not my computer by default which is called:
"Antenna 3G+LTE WGT LTE-2 PCB 2.1G/2.6GHz".

Do I need both for this to work and if not which drawback can I expect only connecting one antenna (guessing to the "MAIN" connector)?
Live in Sweden and going to use this with "4G" or "LTE".

A:
the device should work without any problems, if you need the "MAIN" connector.
The AUX Connector is not needed for use.

Q:
Thank you very much for your reply.
Oh, ok so what does the "AUX" port do?
Does it boost signal strength (meaning if I run only with the "MAIN" connected I won't get as good signal strength as with both "MAIN" and "AUX") or will only using one of the two ("MAIN" and "AUX") limit my transfer speeds on 4G for example?

A:
as usual, you do not need the AUX Connector. It is maybe a possible "boost" but it
the device works perfect with only one antenna, connected to the "main" connector.

---

It seems to work only by using the "MAIN" connector.
I'll buy this card and report when I've received my computer and the card and have everything set up.

 

@TheSwede86
I love your dedication to this endeavor. You have me interested in a similar setup now, though I'll likely wait to hear the outcome of your quest

Still, a big :thumbsup: to your pioneering spirit!!

 

Thank you very much.
Still, its nothing compared to the people posting reviews and benchmarks etc. and I am not alone in this endeavor, people like LostCoast707 and a lot of other people have posted a lot of helpful stuff and dissembled the laptop to check and so on.

"It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan" to quote our favorite supervillain Bane

If I can by some small part help the community and people interested in this laptop by "talking aloud" and posting my findings then it is the least I can do since Notebookreview and many users have helped me

Still, thanks

 

Just ordered this laptop to replace my aging Acer 3820TG.
i7-4712, GTX860, 16GB of ram. Hope it will come soon to test it!

 

That's a nice jump in power This is the spiritual successor to that machine really.

 

Really extremely interested in this notebook now that the battery life woes of the W230ST have been addressed.
There's only one thing left that I need to confirm: that games don't lose too much image fidelity when downscaling to 720p. I know that 720p results in pretty decent ppi on 13.3 inch screen, but as far as I understand, running at non-native resolutions results in loss of image fidelity, regardless of ppi.
Can someone who has a W230ST/SS confirm or deny my fears?

Sent from my HTC6500LVW using Tapatalk

 

The downscaling will always have the same effect on any screen regardless of model, if you find a 1080p screen and run it at 720p you will see it for yourself.

 

Well, there's no loss of quality with a 1440p or 1800p model as it's 1:1 scaling (1 pixel becomes a square of 4).

Things should still look great. I bet the only way you'd notice is if you got both a 1080p and a 1440p model side by side to compare.

 

Don't know how much this has improved in newer laptop monitors. I remember in my old Inspiron with a 900p monitor how awful 720p looked for games. Output the same image to my plasma TV, and things looked a lot better. Obviously would look even better @ native res, but at least 720p looked respectable on there. It seems like HDMI out to an HDTV with better resolution scaling may be the route to go if you want to play @ 720p.

 

I am choosing Sager after using MacBooks for the last three years. I have some reservations. I hope I am surprised.

 

Not sure if you will be surprised with the build quality compared to a MacBook. I've never owned an Apple product but have checked them out. I wouldn't say the build quality is bad on the Clevo, but it's definitely not as refined as an Apple product. This little Clevo has some pretty solid specs for the price, but I think the engineering cost goes into a laptop that packs a lot of power into a small space and still manage the heat at acceptable levels. On top of that it is very easy to disassemble and tinker with. I'm pretty sure most MacBooks are pretty much glued together to make for a very solid nearly impossible to work on laptop. The other thing is there are a few little annoyances I have found with this model, but I still love it. It certainly puts my 2 year old HP dv6t to shame.

 

Can you expound on those annoyances? My Asus is destroying batteries and I need a new laptop this one is exactly the same dimension +- a couple of mm. I really like the size. I'm wavering between this and a lenovo y50 (if they come out soon). This would have the size but the lenovo has a bigger screen so it's a bit of a wash at the moment, pricing dependent.

I'm liking what I see here so far in the expandability and tinker ability.

 

On my HP the function keys on top of the keyboard that dims the screen, volume and backlight control worked with one button. On the Clevo I have to hold the Fn key PLUS the desired function I want using two fingers. I know it's minor, but I find it annoying. Another thing while we are talking about the function keys, Clevo though it would be a great idea to put the sleep button right in between the volume down and mute button. So if you're not paying attention you put your computer to sleep when all you wanted to do is mute or turn down the volume. One other gripe I had was the the somewhat sharp edges around the bottom edges. Typing when it is on a table or my lap s fine, but at night in bed and I have the laptop on my chest the sharp edges rub the tender undersides of my wrists. Again, not major, I just wish the edges where a little more rounded. The speakers, as they point down under the laptop vs on top do not have the greatest sound quality but if you wear headphones for the important stuff, this won't matter as much. The last thing I can think of is the lid/screen is quite flexible. It just doesn't have the rigidity I'm used to and the bezel is flexy and creaks if you pick it up by grabbing the edge of the screen.
These are all small problems in my opinion. I still like the power this little laptop packs and the rest of it feels very well built. The keyboard is nice, trackpad is pretty decent, screen itself is nice, battery life is great...not MacBook Air great, but still pretty good and the GTX 860m with a i7 4810mq rocks the house with the power it has.

 

There are Clevos with similar specs and a 15" screen. XOTIC PC | Sager NP7358 (Clevo W350SS) - 15.6" Gaming Notebook this one is very similar, same series, just 15.6". Two 2.5" drives, one mSATA, vs one 2.5" and two mSATA of the 13". Also, 3x DDR3 RAM slots vs 2.

They also have the NP8268 and NP8258 which are 15.6" and have a Kepler based 860M 4GB. GPU upgradable to 880M with 8GB RAM. 4x RAM slots. 2 mSATA, one 2.5".

I haven't found anything in 15" as thin as the y50 for <$1300 though. To be fair we don't even know what the y50 will cost... might be $1500 with the "optional" 860M.

 

Yep that's why I said dependent on cost with the y50. The 4k panel doesn't really interest me. But the 15" clevo is a bit clunky for my taste, looks too much like a wedge. I like the look of the 230. There isn't that instant look of a gaming rig.

 

Is it possible to make the high performance power option be the exact same as when the laptop is plugged in? I've set all the settings to maximum performance (the plugged-in options are the exact same) but my W230SS can't go full power unless plugged in.

Also, anyway to fix the "Run with processor" context menu lag? If I have it in my context menu right clicking applications takes an extra 1-2 seconds, gone if I remove it. Had the same problem with the Intel Graphics context menu for desktop but I don't need that so I just removed it (and its delay).

This latest beta NVDIA driver sucks, too bad it's the only one that officially supports the 800M series according to their site. It breaks things like MPC-HC.

 

just got told that the QHD+ screen was not available yet. How good is the 1080p? Very Good?
I'll buy it anyways, but I'm a bit disappointed, wanted that ridiculously high def panel

 

I love the 1080p, it's small enough ...

You gotta remember the size of the screen, I'd never get anything other than 1080p at this size.

 

There's good reason for this. Imagine draining a sustained 100W from your battery, talk about a fiery explosion!

 

CyberPower PC had their X3-9100 on sale over the weekend, picked one up with the i7-4810MQ, 4GB of RAM, and 1TB 7200RPM HDD for $850 AR. I have two Crucial M500 480GB mSATA SSDs laying around for RAID 0 and I'll pull the 16GB of RAM from my Alienware M14x R2 to load up this little monster. Can't wait to game on something that fits comfortably inside my European Shoulder Bag...

 

I went with that deal as well. I'm excited about this laptop. It's going to be a fair upgrade from g46vw that I've had for year and a half now. anything that people can suggest to keep the temperature lower? Also cyberpower didn't offer extended warranty so I'm highly considering squaretrade for coverage.

 

Undervolt the CPU with Intel XTU. htwingnut has a video for doing it on the w230st, the predecessor of this model. Upgrading the thermal paste can help if you're comfortable with that.

 

Will the undervolting values be roughly the same with the 4810MQ compared to the 4800MQ he uses?

 

So mine came in yesterday, lets say my experience with W230SS hasn't been quite golden. I have a 256gb samsung 840 evo. Its fast, hella fast. I am upgrading form a 2.0ghz Core 2 duo. So anything is faster than that .

Touchpad is not very responsive. Although disabling the 2 point scrolling and other gestures in Synaptics has made me satisfied with the touchpad and increased overall responsiveness.
Something is a bit off with dark colors. From what I'm seeing black can sometimes be dark grey.

I'm having issues with the fan ramping up speed. These temperatures that HTWingNut is experiencing is a lot lower from what I'm experiencing. I'm not going to bother comparing since I haven't replaced the stock thermal compound yet. I did manage to undervolt to -80mv, maybe I can go lower but I haven't had time to test stability.

I'm having a hard time adjusting to 1080p on a 13.1 in screen. Text and icons can be a bit small. I'm messing around under Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display but still haven't found something I quite like. I'm currently using "Larger 150%" if they had a setting halfway between 125 and 150 I think that would be perfect.

Wireless has been cutting in and out on stock drivers that came in with the CD. "Windows update" updated the driver and so far so good (using windows 8.1)

The worst part about this laptop but I'm sure you guys wont have this issue (gonna toss it up to bad luck) , Is one of the screws on the bottom side of the laptop was completely stripped!!! It was the bottom middle one underneath the touchpad. The other ones came out fine but they were really tight. I take it they drilled the screws in. Luckily I was able to work my way around the screw to install the msata ssd. I'm hoping this weekend I can drill the stripped screw out and be able to replace the thermal compound.

Gonna go ahead and attach a picture of my idle temperature. I take it the thermal compound wasn't installed properly?

 

Each machine is different. Just baby steps. So far I have been able to undervolt the 4810MQ in the W230SS about the same. I can easily go to -60mV, once I go -70mV I start to get some instabilities. But YMMV.

@mozo88 idle temps are about 50-55, so that's about right, mainly because the fan is barely moving air. They chose silence over thermals, and that's a good thing. But peak temps are what's more important. Can't hurt to change thermal paste though. CPU is only running in low 80's and GPU in mid 60's with BF4.

Sorry to hear about your stripped screw. Is it just turning and not coming out? In those cases, I usually try to get a small flat head screwdriver under the head and pry up while I'm turning and it gives enough pressure to get the theads to bite.

 

Thanks for the response HTWingNut! This is my 2nd post long time reader. Its all good, I'm sure I'll be able to get the screw out this weekend. When running the cpu stability test I was getting about mid 80's. I guess thats worse than yours since I only stressed the cpu and got that temp while you stressed both the cpu and gpu.

I mainly bought this computer for dolphin emulation. I ran the benchmark from https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-new-dolphin-cpu-benchmark-no-game-required

With my 4810mq I got 9:47 sec. 14sec slower than the 4700mq listed https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ0UzJyTFAxbzZhYWtGcGwySlRFa1E#gid=0

If its not asking too much can you run the benchmark on your W230SS when you have some free time?

 

Alright thanks alot! Also does anyone have a guide or anything on how to replace the thermal paste?

 

Is it possible to experience thermal runaway with cpus? I was attempting undervolting after watching HTwingnut's video on youtube and had some strange things occur. It was the first time I played with Intel ETU on this laptop since I first got it. The first times I played around I did not notice this happen. This time however, After my initial -50mv undervolt I did the stress test and CPU frequency was hovering at an unfortunately low 3.19ghz at right around 70c +/- a couple degrees for about a minute. Then the temp shot up to 98-99 within a couple seconds and the clocks started ramping down over the next 20 seconds all the way down to an eventual .8 to 1.2ghz, yet the temp remained at the 97-99c range. I shut it down, reset values to default and this time it hovered at 2.99ghz for the first min at the 70c range and then sharply rose to 99c and clocks went back down to .8 to 1.2 ghz for the remainder of the test. Any ideas?

On Edit:
I just wanted to add, these test where all done with the underside of the laptop sticking straight up with it resting on the screen for max airflow.