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

To be honest I don't find too many issues with this laptop. Primary one to me is temperatures while gaming, and then it's only with a handful of games that it's really borderline. Third party stuff like Intel XTU would be nice if we could make the undervolt stick to help address that. Otherwise one mighty fine lapotp.

 

I'm getting some super erratic CPU behavior running FFXIV.

 

What's the stock color of the backlit keyboard on the w230st?
Some resellers offer it with custom backlit colors, wondering what's stock.

Thanks in advance.

 

To those who have undervolted the 4700MQ, are you guys seeing over 4 hours of battery life on power saver mode?

Thanks.

 

White backlight is stock.

 

Ht, I know you've taken your laptop inside out already, for the good of the community and we appreciate it.

Do you think it cost $50 to get a custom color instead of white? Does it consist of changing some LEDs or are the led integrated with the kb?

Thanks in advance.

 

As far as I know it would be a unique keyboard built with those colored LED's. Since it isn't stock, and Clevo ships with the stock keyboard, it would mean they'd have to scrap the existing keyboard and manually replace it with the new one. There would be no reasonable way to change the lighting on the existing keyboard.

 

How are my temps?
I think my mSSD is too hot and it is located under the HDD.
Those are after 30 minutes of internet browsing only.
What does the first temp stands for?

 

As always sir appreciate your prompt and excellent responses.

Thanks.

 

What programs were you running when those temps reached their peaks?

 

I ran 3-5 chrome tabs, none of them was youtube or anything like that.

 

That's a bit high. Do you have Intel XTU or Throttlestop 6.00?

 

@papote: also means it could be of other quality.

@everyone: Do XTU settings stick under windows 7 ?

 

I'm wondering why i'm not getting an estimated time of remaining battery life in windows 8. I'm only getting the % level :/ anyone knows why?

 

My Plextor M5M doesn't have a temp sensor but I can say mine is hot to the touch in either mSATA slot location. I don't know that it's the laptop, just mSATA drives I think tend to run hot.

XTU settings reset after suspend to RAM sleep.

Because that's the way Windows 8 rolls.

 

Here is a review:

Test One K33-3E (Clevo W230ST Barebone) Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

The results for the Chi Mei screen are quite good.

 

Hi, could anyone confirm if they're experiencing any of this issues? It will be greatly apreciated.
Particularly on the headphone and speaker static. And have the fan profiles been fixed?

 

No, don't even know how to.
The things that i'm worry about are the HDD and the mSSD temps because the rest are fine.
BTW, what is the first temp in HWmonitor stands for, is that the motherboard?

 

Has anyone fancied with putting some heatsinks on the copper plate that cools the CPU. Like placing 1 pair of something like these: http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/1463579/21535752/0/1306209586/aluminium_heat_sink.jpg

 

I don't get spacebar misses, though I do find myself holding my hands kind of deliberately sometimes -- my left thumb tends to rest on the very top corner of the touchpad if I don't pay attention, so this makes me think about hand position more than I'd otherwise need to. I expect to "settle in" more over time.

I have not heard any static on the speakers, but I have 3 small kids so it's never actually *quiet* when I'm using it

About the fan: if you're just web browsing and whatnot, put it in Quiet mode on the Clevo control panel, and (in my experience) you very rarely get a few second burst on the fan; it's not enough to bother me at all but of course YMMV. If you're gaming, yeah, the fan goes from on-but-quiet to kind-of-loud; always better than my last gaming laptop (17" desdtop replacement). No grinding for me (touch wood!).

I have very small backlight bleed on a totally black screen. Why are you looking at your screen when it's totally black? I don't notice any at all when, for example, the bottom is black from a letterboxed movie.

I have only used headphones for a few minutes, but didn't have any complaints at the time.

 

No Spacebar misses here. Keyboard has been pretty solid for me overall. Better than my NP9150 actually. I do find though if I have an app that constantly polls the 765m like a temperature program or something, it can cause some missed keystrokes as it polls the dGPU.

No speaker static noted to date. I hopef you can get that fixed.

Fan profile is a little annoying but for me not a big deal. Quiet mode seems to keep it under control. Sager is working on a BIOS update for it though.

Backlight bleed - yep, mine is as bad or worse than that. My first one was great, with a tiny bit of bleed in the lower right corner except it had that LCD "bruise" in the center.

Fan grinding. Had a very slight noise at idle in a completely quiet room, otherwise no issues.

Headphone whine - my limited time with it there were no issues, but I use a USB headphone anyhow regularly.

 

I was just wondering, when Sager does eventually come out with the updated BIOS, would it work on any w230st laptop, or only the Sager version specifically?

 

If you flash it at the same time with the right ec (and dont let it restart) it will work for sure.

 

@HTWingnut you've gotten confirmation that a BIOS update is in the works? Any more information on this?

 

hey guys, i'm thinking about swaping my 4700mq for 4702mq tomorrow still deciding. I need some convincing. Well my cpu i running at around 92-95c with full fan on (F1+1) in game. I'm running my laptop on flat surface and don't want any cooling pads or lifting it up. My question is how much of a % drop in power when gaming am I going to see when going for 4702qm ? I want to have a cooler cpu so i'm going to underclock it as well and o/c the gpu. The way I see it is, because I have to stop clocks at 26t with throttlestop to keep temps lower therefore i'm not using the true power of 4700mq anyway. I will be doing some intensive video rendering on it as well so in a long run i think it would be a wise choice. Also is there a possibility of overclocking 4702mq if i need some more power for video or upcoming games like bf4 and gta5? Please if someone or HTwing could convince me to go for 4702mq because tomorrow I would replace it. also which cpu in ivy bridge is adequate to 4702mq?

 

It's a Clevo thing in regards to hovering your cursor to the battery icon to check levels and estimation. It's working fine on other windows 8 laptops when I had the GE40, Samsung Chronos, Alienware 14 and Asus N55JV but it just won't show on the W230ST and all it shows is the percentage.

 

I've looked back to the forum but could not find an answer to this post...I'm thinking of getting the W230ST but was waiting for drivers/etc to mature a bit.

Have people tried the new drivers on the sager website under support? Software Upgrade

It looks like the drivers were updated on Aug 14th and there are now windows 7 drivers on it.

Thanks!

 

Go ahead and do it! Seriously go for the CPU with the lowest heat production.

Most likely none at all. The 4702 is still a very strong CPU plus the bigger ones can't use their Turbo all the way so it's pretty useless getting on of these, at least for gaming. And if you are really lucky, the GPU will make better use of its Turbo with a cooler CPU.

The 4702 is as fast as the 3630 Ivy, which was the successor of the entry 3610, which was fast as heck. So don't worry. When that thing perfoms at 100% you will be completely up to the task in terms of gaming.

 

thanks for a reply. I've been playing with XTU and set multipliers on all cores (with underclock -90) to be adequate to 4702mq and the TDP i'm getting is 37W which is the same as with 4702mq. So there is no real reason to go for 4720mq if I can slow it down and temps with full fan on (FN+1) are around 75c. Or can I go even lower when I go for 4702mq with it undervolted ?

ps. Also tested on flat surface with default clocks x34 , x33, x32 , x32 and temps are max 80c. GPU not active.

Question - can I raise values on each core in 4702mq ? I can do so on 4700mq to x36, x35, x34,x34. What would be the max on 4702mq ?

 

The 4702 should behave identically, just clamp the 4700 and undervolt it.

You can also I think undervolt the 4700 by -100mv and still be good which should be a big drop.

 

Hmmmm...I ordered mine with a 4800MQ. Can get the temperature down enough to hit the 3.7 GHz turbo clock speed when needed? Or was that just a waste of money over the 4700/4702?

 

The 4800MQ will likely be a higher quality chip, you can try undervolting it too.

 

I've noticed that biggest difference in temperatures is when I hit the fan to full speed before gaming, temperatures are very good now. Hit Fn + 1 and its good to go, loud but cool. Full speed fan only comes alive when temps on cpu go above 94c therefore its good to force it before the game and turn it off after.

P.S - just played a 20 min session on BF3 with cpu speeds at 3.1ghz undervolted -90 and overclocked GPU +135mhz /500mhz and frame limiter to 58fps with laptop flat on the table and temps on cpu were at 78c and gpu 69c, full fan on of course. Hmm i'm starting to like haswell...

 

Nice to see it works for you too! I don't even turn on full fans and temps stay below 82C.

 

I see a lot of overclocking/undervolting etc. and I have used XTU for the CPU but I am wondering about the GPU
This may be a dumb question but here goes: What utility/program are you using to overclock the GPU?


thanks, Chris

 

I recommend MSI Afterburner. You can adjust the clocks and it has a nice overlay you can turn on for FPS, temps, usage, etc.

 

Once i was playing in BF3 in power saver mode ( on 1400MHz) and didn't even notice that. So it's a really strong CPU.

 

And this is good news I'm still waiting for my little "RoadWarrior" It is almost a month

 

As I said. For gaming it pretty much doesn't matter. If you have a demanding application which uses the CPU, you will benifit from the 4800MQ as soon as it can perform at a 100% Turbo.
But in demanding games there might be so much throtteling, that all available CPUs will use the same frequency.

[EDIT] Even if not throtteling the difference between the CPUs in gaming is marginal. The performance even of the small models is already impressive. In this review they test the 4702 vs. 4700 in CoH 2 a pretty hardcore game in terms of hardware requirements. (Sorry it's only in German.) If you scroll down to the table where it says "Company of Heroes 2 - de" you can see comparisons between the two processors. The performance gain from 4702 - 4700 is between 1-3 %. Due to the low framerate that's even after the decimal point.
The extra 500 MHz (of the 4800) will be noticable though when using CPU intensive applications in windows.

 

Just raising the back of your notebook an inch -- hell, half an inch -- will do more for your temps than any hardware or software change you could possibly make. Seriously, this system is not designed to run flat when working hard.

 

I use nVidiaInspector. Simple to use. You can use MSI Afterburner too. Just make sure you update the cfg file with the eula statement and turn on overclocking. Just google for it.

I think you will be severely disappointed with the 4702MQ over the 4700MQ. Not sure why you wouldn't at least prop up the back with anything, it drops 8-10C at load. If you are going to underclock then might as well stick with the 4700. From what I've read the 4702MQ doesn't run any cooler at same clocks. And if you are doing some intensive video rendering, just propping up and undervolting I am able to maintain 3.2-3.5GHz all four cores. You won't get past 2.6-2.7 with the 4702MQ, likely less because of the lower TDP. Propping it up and undervolting are both free and easy changes that will improve performance instead of spending $350+ for another CPU that will give you less performance.

They were uploaded on that date, they aren't new, same ones that came with the system, well except those highlighted in red.

 

Are these newer than the ones that came with our computers on the discs?

 

They were uploaded on that date, they aren't new, same ones that came with the system, well except those highlighted in red.

 

hey guys I'm thinking of buying this along with the laptop, would appreciate any expert opinion on the matter =)
Sumvision Universal External Portable Laptop Battery Charger wth 11 Tips | eBay

 

Why not buy a second battery for about the same price?

 

Played BF:BC2 about an hour ago, with max everything. Started a new campaign, and about halfway through that beginning cinematic, my computer shut off. Must've reached the max 100C or something, cuz I didn't have my cooler turned on (but the laptop was placed on top of it). So I rebooted, and turned on the cooler. Played again, and got through the first mission/level with no problem. GPU-Z logs showed that the GPU got to around 69C max. HWMonitor showed the same, with CPU temps reaching max of around 89C or something. Not bad, not bad for max everything Outside temperature is whatever it is in LA right now, so around 68F? Feels like 70ish in my room though.

 

@ECKS: I'm curious, I've had really good temps on everything for all my benchmarks, gaming, etc., except one time when I was playing with XTU I'd go to start a stress test and it would rocket up over 90 in like one or two seconds -- *crazy* fast, not exaggerating -- and stay there until the test finished. Undervolt, didn't matter, read as super, super hot. I stopped playing with XTU after that, but I've been getting cool temps and good performance again since.

I'm wondering if sometimes the temp sensors get glitchy for some reason? Anybody else have one-off "flukes" like this?

 

Does Prime95 do the same? If so, good! It's doing its job.

 

That's just it, I did Prime benchmarks before I started futzing with XTU, max temp was like 71c, then I started undervolting, similar results with higher clocks, then the next day I opened XTU, similar settings, and suddenly it was at 91! I got so freaked out I actually haven't undervolted since, but I'm hoping it was a strange one-off type thing. Day to day performance (browsing + gaming, basically) has been great.

 

Taetertot, could you please check your screen to see if you have the chi mei screen? Curious because I just send order for review to mythologic. Gotta have the low heat of the 4702 CPU.

Thanks in advance.