*** Official Clevo W230ST/Sager NP7330 Owner's Lounge ***

Talking about BIOS numbers, which mobo BIOS version do you guys have ?

 

BIOS;
1.0.0.3SL3 (or something like that)
and 1.0.0.1 for EC

Also, I noticed that according to the BIOS setup that secure boot is NOT enabled. Did M$ remove that restriction on win8 for PCs? (I missed that if they did...)

...and GAH! They put the Fn key in the RIGHT place on this nb kb, but now I find that I DON'T need it as HOME/END/etc. all have their OWN keys

 

...hate to double post but remembered reading a post where someone mentioned that it looked like some setting were missing in XTU, well I just ran XTU, which took longer than normal to start up(to check on current settings) and noticed that dynamic core voltage was no longer available...

silent update? Nope not there any longer...

 

I get mine in 3 days will do a short writeup when I get it.

 

I just tried to install Skype - but the programme is telling me I don't have a webcam. When I go to Device Manager, I can't locate my webcam anywhere. Nor can I find a specific webcam driver online or on the driver CD.

Do you guys have the webcam identified on your device managers and, if so, under which category? It would be hugely appreciated if someone with a working webcam could let me know - thanks very much.

Petrov.

 

Has anyone been able to install updated nVidia drivers? (Anything that isnt 311.xx)

 

Hey, Petrov, I just installed Skype to test it out and it is working. The webcam shows up as a BisonCam NB Pro under Imaging Devices in Device manager.

Here's a picture of it and the device properties. There's not much to see since it's a generic Microsoft webcam driver. No settings or anything like that.



Edit: forgot to add that my W230ST came with Windows 8 64-bit preinstalled with everything working.

 

Thanks a lot for letting me know - I have no Imaging Devices category at all in device manager. I'm under win7, I wonder if that's the problem. It would be super if anyone with Win7 has their webcam running...?

In addition, does anyone have Clevo Control running successfully with Win7? I cannot for the life of me get the hotkey drivers installed correctly in win7.

P.

 

You mean like the latest version 320.49?
I am a bit confused about drivers - the one on the Clevo website says
nVIDIA VGA driver (9.18.13.1154) for Windows 8 64-bit version
Is that 311.xx? The latest driver on Nvidia website is 320.49. What is the relation between the 9.XX.XX.XXXX numbering and the 3XX.XX numbering?
Sorry if this question sounds very basic but this is my first laptop with Nvidia.

 

Yes, the one of the clevo website it 311.54 - thats what the last 5 digits are on that long number starting with 9.

If you install the stock clevo drivers and then open up your nvidia control panel, click on system information and that will indicate that the drivers are indeed 311.54.

P.

 

^RIght, and I am saying that I only have the 311.54 (Clevo) ones installed. No other drivers seem to work for me.

 

Won't help much, but just so you know, my webcam disappeared from w110er once.
After searching a bit, I concluded that it was OOO and almost forgot about it.
I tried again a few weeks later and it was back, no idea what happened in between.. !

 

Petrov thanks!

I was looking at this too as I will be getting mine tomorrow. I was wondering whether to install the latest drivers from NVidia or install the older one from Clevo. I guess I should try the latest one first? When you say the latest one doesn't work, do you get some error?

 

Been looking for a powerful 13.3" laptop with decent screen and graphics card for some time and at last it looks like I've found something that fits the bill. My only reservation are the speakers. I can accept that the sound quality isn't going to be brilliant on a laptop but the decision to position the speakers on the underside of the laptop seems absurd to me. Surely the sound is going to be muffled when the machine is on my lap? Am I missing something?

 

You have to modify the inf file.
If you're using Windows 8, you have to restart into troubleshooting mode with the driver signature enforcement disabled.

I'm using 320.49.
BF3 does shown quite a big improvement over the stock 311.54 clevo drivers. I think.

 

Oh dear how embarrassing. The webcam is fine in win7. I'd just turned it off accidentally by hitting Fn-F10. <blush>

 

Lol

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

I installed the 320.19 drivers with the help of Lightnin's file.

They seem ok... no real difference in BF3. Might even be worse :/

 

on w110er it's not that bad, while the bottom is flat.
on w230st the bottom is curved on its sides, where the speakers are located, thus allowing for the sound to "breathe", if I'm not mistaking (don't have the laptop yet) =)

 

Thanks lastnikita.

Looking at the pictures of the underside it appears you are correct about the curves though it's difficult to tell exactly how how sharp the angles are. Haven't seen any complaints about muffled sound across the web so I'm hoping that I've been worrying about nothing.

Looking through this thread, I've also noticed that there are 2 possible screens on this laptop, the Chi Mei IPS or the AUO AHVA. I've seen very positive comments about the Chi Mei IPS but nothing about the AUO AHVA thus far. Does anybody know if the quality of this screen is up to the standard of the Chi Mei IPS? If I order this laptop now, which screen is it likely to ship with?

 

Anyone know why the 765m would be limiting the clock to 400mhz randomly? I was mid-game of SC2 when my framerate dropped in half.. I couldn't do anything to get the GPU back to full clock outside of resetting the laptop... It did it twice. I was messing with memory clocks using nvidiainspector.... so not sure if that had any sort of impact?

 

OK, so I decided to repaste my CPU and GPU today after getting failures while running Furmark (MSI version, Kombuster, with the MSI logo) and OCCT at the same time undervolting by 100mV on the cache and the CPU voltage (both dynamic). What I mean by failure is that OCCT has been stopping after I reach 90 degrees on any of the cores. I know the absolute max for these processors is 100 degrees, but 90 degrees is about as close as I want to get. This is on my Coolermaster X-slim cooling pad.

Anyways, here is the factory paste job:





Crappy finishing on the heat sinks:





Looks like they used tons of paste, right? Maybe too much. So I cleaned it off, put some Arctic MX-4 on and closed it up. I used small beads on the center of both the GPU and the CPU. Now the GPU temps seem fine, but I'm getting really crazy deltas between my cores and am still going above 90 degrees. Core 0 is always 10 degrees hotter than core 3. I'm wondering if the part of the die where core 3 is didn't get enough paste this time around since I used a bead and not a line on the rectangular die.



Does anyone else think this might be the case? I can't think of why else one core would be so much cooler than the other.

HWINFO temps:

 

Ok for the Intel Rapid Start Technology for your SSD, did you all create a Hibernation Partition and set it up as mentioned in the Intel document?

http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/rapid_start_technology_user_guide.pdf

 

Mine is coming in maybe today, or tomorrow. After I have everything installed, I'll be posting pictures, temps, and benchmarks.

Be on the lookout for it.

 

The overall temp looks perfectly fine. A core being cooler than others has been a common sight among quad-core units ever since their debut.

 

Oeer.. this looks cool. More feedback please. Advantages vs normal hibernation mode...

 

Take your heatsink off again, and check the paste to see how it set. If it looks fine, then re-do the same way. Otherwise, I'd try the line on both, per HTW's recommendation.

 

Seems to be an extremely common problem. Occurs randomly and hard to reproduce consistently, too. And very annoying.

 

I'm on Win7, with the same card.

I ran it for most of a night with the ProSet stuff uninstalled. I thought I was having issues still, and really despaired of getting it working at all, then my wife said *her* 'net was broken too -- I've been having all kinds of of issues with my router (Linksys E3000) overheating. I gave it a few minutes to cool down then powered it back up and had a more or less solid connection all night, and never had to toggle Airplane Mode once.

It looks like removing ProSet "fixed" it, at least for now. I probably need a new router, though, or at least to buy a fan to point at it for the rest of the summer

 

I use Defender exclusively. A year or two ago I saw that MSSE caught roughly the same percentage of stuff as the other big contenders, but put substantially less burden on the system. To my knowledge, I haven't gotten infected since (though I guess you never know...).

Then again, I don't do much "dangerous" browsing -- if I was warez-ing all the time I might run an extra checker or three...

 

I was worried about the speakers too. I will note that they are on the underside, but they are on a section that angles "up" about 20-30 degrees so they don't face straight down. I've used the system sitting on a table to watch TV, and while the sound quality is a bit tinny -- the sound quality is not unlike a pretty good smartphone, I guess? -- it's loud enough that I can listen comfortably in spite of our high-speed floor fan.

Make of that what you will. I wouldn't use it to sit and enjoy a symphony, but for watching TV or putting on some music in the background while you clean, it gets the job done.

 

Thanks for the info Ghengis.

What about when the machine is on your lap? Does the angle of the underside give enough clearance between the speakers and your lap or does the sound become muffled with less clarity?

I've just realised that my previous post about the screen (post #1123) probably should have included my Country's flag so I have included it with this post.

 

Further to this: there is something fundamentally wrong with the TDP value on intel's chips, not the design of this machine. You should not have to undervolt just to hit stock speeds that were sold to you. You could have vapochill in a desktop motherboard and the system will *still* throttle on stock settings. Nobody buying a haswell MQ has any reason to go over a 4700 unless the VT-d, TXT or VPro are must-haves.

Also, if anyone else has gone on a hunting spree trying to kill windows charms, and they're still being activated by your touchpad, make sure you install the latest version of the synaptics driver so you can disable edge motion ( Drivers | Synaptics).

To reproduce this 'edge motion' that's been driving me crazy and work out whether you're in the same category, try swiping your finger from the right edge of the touchpad to the centre, and observe the charms bar and clock appearing and interrupting whatever you were doing.

Was driving me freaking insane trying to track down how I still had charms appearing after trying to disable them with every method known to man, unreliably.

 

Saw what was likely the same report as you did with MSE. Ran nothing but for a few years but once I started working here was seeing stuff in emails slip by once and a while. Downloaded Avast! like back in the olden days and haven't had an issue since. There was also an article out not too long ago that MSE failed certification of some UK (maybe German) security roundup.

 

Hi guys, can anyone recommend a laptop sleeve? Thank you.

 

Second avast!

...and yes M$ always phails something non-trivial in security testing unless it's one they bought, then they pass with flying colors.

As to avast, I only use it for the basic virus detection/prevention, i.e. I do NOT install all the other crap that comes with it now...

Back to XTU:
I still see dynamic core volt missing on the 7330 now, while last night when I fired up the 8250, it was still present. Very odd. I'll look into it more later.

Temps: mine are pretty decent, although still cool here, i.e. low-mid 70sF max temps during day, but 4800(now back to default settings, see above wrt XTU) are in the 47-52C range, balanced power setting(win8), intel 7260ac, light web browsing mostly ATM. (Have another *cough* large msata SSD on the way now, that hurt my wallet slightly...)

[EDIT]
Reading the review thread and seeing prema mentioned, I coughed up a donation over the weekend to him with a note asking for custom bios for this AND the 8250...
[/EDIT]

 

I poked around a bit today, and it sounds like MSE is really good for performance, really good for removal, and really good for "established" malware. They must do poorly with heuristic search, though, because 0-day performance is really bad. I hadn't seen recent studies -- they seem to have gone downhill in the last year or two. I may switch to something else tonight...

 

Should I modify the 4700MQ if I plan on playing BF3?
Is IC diamond upgrade worth it?

Thanks in advance

 

Ok.. It seems that BF3 was running on diff resolution but stated differently on the settings..
Yup, no difference even on 320.49..

Tried just now.
It takes quite a while to sleep. It also takes quite a while to wake up.
Not a big difference compared to hibernate, if you're using SSD.
Maybe it's my cheap slow SSD.

 

Yeah, I'll take a look at it today.

 

Been trying to unscrew the back of my laptop but the screws just won't come off. I don't wanna strip the screws; I know I have the right screwdriver.

 

Is there a temperature management guide for 13 inch laptop that is available online?

Something more in depth and personalized to the W230ST than this Guide to Cooling Down Your Notebook Computer

Thanks

 

My hotkey drivers stopped working... hmmm

 

Just got my W230ST from Mythlogic. They haven't fixed the fan bursting issue, unfortunately. However, Quiet Mode via the Clevo Control Panel does seem to work. Thank goodness for that too. The fan burst was much too loud for a classroom setting but it's an easy fix

[edit]: Actually, the fan still bursts even in quiet mode sometimes =/ I was installing programs when it happened.

 

Has anyone with a screen bruising issue RMA their laptop?
Mine also have that bruised spot as well as at least 4 visible dead pixels and I'm wondering if replacing the screen will fix all the issues.

 

(1) Repaste with quality paste
(2) Laptop cooler
(3) Intel XTU and limit CPU speed and/or drop CPU voltage

Done.

If you replace the screen it will replace the screen and any anomalies associated with it.

 

I've got to say with the 4702 in undervolted, i never hear the fans anymore, unless i fire up a game or something.
I can't remember if the 4702 was cool enough stock to achieve this as well. CPU maxed out in prime95 barely gets over 70. Usually <70c.

 

Can we have a post on the front of this thread listing the sellers for this laptop by country? I know PC Specialist sells it in the UK is there anyone else? This would mean it will be easier for people thinking of buying it be able to get the information straight away.

 

There's a reseller thread which you can check by country, having it for specific laptops would start getting way too complex. PWN PCs also sell the w230st though, as do overclockers and eventually scan will.

 

any general guides on how to repaste? Just ordered a w230st with stock paste and I want to repaste it myself as it's a lot cheaper. Also what's the news on drivers now?