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

I have the W230ST (i7 4700MQ, Plextor SSD, 1 TB HD) and have been skimming this thread.

What are the best settings to save power and improve battery life? I'm a little lost when it comes to optimal undervolting settings

Also, I'd like to ask if anyone else has the following issues and if they managed to solve them:
Intel 7260 AC wireless slowing down over time, my network is fine, all other devices work well. I did also have a slow connectivity issue (as in, network taking 60+ seconds to actually connect) but fixed it with a driver reinstall.
LAN device being dodgy: Sometimes when I use the Ethernet port I have to power off and power back on for Windows to even see it, this also affected me under Arch Linux (unfortunately I never tested the WiFi issue under Arch).

 

Better late than never, I was looking in this thread for bios settings advice and I came across your question.. I'm exclusively using Linux on my W230ST, and the gpu management is actually perfect as far as I'm concerned : with a recent distribution/kernel, the GPU is pretty much off all the time, except if you add 'primusrun ' before the program you'd like to start. Say you want it always off except for Steam games, you just have to edit your Steam shortcut and add 'primusrun', and that's all. I play Dota2 or L4D2 having only done this, performances are great (I had an Asus g53 before, no slouch but this clevo is clearly a bit better).
As stated before, battery life is around 4h on Linux if you arrange some things in your linux distribution (laptop_mode for instance, if not already set up), though I'd like to see if it improves with the Prema bios settings.

 

Well now I seem to continouslly get the BSOD with the "nvlddmkm" error.

Not sure what is causing it. I have the latest nVidia drivers.

 

Looks like Clevo has updated their download page with new Windows 8.1 Drivers.

There are drivers for LAN,Chipset,Card Reader, Hot Key, Touchpad and Sound Blaster Cinema. I think that there are also drivers for the 7260 AC card (however I dont have one in mine.)

edit: Airplane driver finally installs!

 

just ordered mine from xoticPC with rush delivery. Pretty standard with 240gb Crucial ssd, 16gb RAM windows 8 , and the bigfoot wireless card.
I also ordered new thermal paste for the cpu that I will be applying myself.
As soon as this laptop arrives what should I do with the BIOS and drivers? Leave as is, upgrade to 8.1, update all drivers?

 

Yay now I can put Windows 8.1 on this beast!

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Their website must be hammered right now or have some other problem... none of the downloads are working for me.

Edit: finally got drivers downloaded. Tried installing the airplane mode drivers and got an infinite loop of BSODs about a page fault in a nonpaged area.

Edit 2: Restored to an earlier point, tried installing airplane mode drivers again but it still doesn't work - still broken (won't start) in device manager.

 

Two things:

1) How have you guys gotten the 8.1 airplane mode driver to work? After installing mine remains broken in device manager.

2) Has anyone successfully installed the latest touchpad drivers for 8.1? When I uninstalled the old ones the new ones would claim to uninstall but didn't actually do anything. The touchpad just showed up as generic in device manager and the synaptis control panel (gestures, multitouch, etc) were missing until I rolled back to the Windows 8 driver from Clevo.

 

Hey guys.... where do I actually download the official BIOS updates? I don't see an official BIOS update on Clevo's website or am I missing something? Yet you guys are talking about updating the BIOS....

 

I installed the Airplane mode driver with no issues, and it shows up in Device Manager however I havent actually tried it out yet from the Clevo Control centre. Did you install the Hotkey update as well? No BSODs though.

The touchpad driver I didnt bother updating, i updated it a couple of weeks ago when someone posted about being able to turn off the swipe gestures with the update.

 

I did install the hotkey driver. That one does work! It's just the touchpad and airplane mode drivers that I'm having trouble with. I'm afraid to try anything more with the airplane mode one since I got BSODs when I tried installing it yesterday.

It's just like the touchpad driver. The installer seems to run fine but nothing has changed with the drivers, even after a restart or if I uninstall the old drivers first.

 

I am having a really hard time getting these drivers from the clevo site, they keep on timing out on me. Is there anywhere else that has them?

 

Got another BSOD today while trying to manually install the airplane mode HID drivers. Pointed device manager to the x64 folder for the drivers, hit OK, and got an instant blue screen that was fixed by an automatic repair to an earlier point. Does anyone have a clue as to what might be going wrong?

 

is this a fresh install of 8.1? or did you do the upgrade? Also have you tried re-downloading the driver? Did you previously try to install the 8 driver before the 8.1 driver?

 

I did the upgrade. I will try redownloading and see if that helps.

I had not updated the driver past what it came with installed.

You used the "setup.exe" and not any of the 32-bit or 64-bit specific .exe's, correct?

Edit: redownloaded and checked the hashes - they're the exact same, so it isn't a download problem.

 

Prema's website has his modded BIOS and the newest official BIOS.

Modded: W230ST / NP7330 | Prema Mod

Official: STOCK BIOS & EC | Prema Mod

Be sure to pay close attention to the installation instructions. I wrote a tutorial many pages back in this thread.

 

frewster, could you add your tutorial to that post or give the post # of your tutorial? Would be a huge help, thanks a bunch!

 

Sure, here it is: BIOS flash tutorial

 

Airplane mode doesn't install for me either, same with the touchpad. It's not a huge loss, doesn't even affect someone who almost always uses bluetooth/wireless.
Win 8 drivers work fine for touchpad though, so I'm not bothered with updating.

 

If you do want touchpad drivers though, use the synaptics driver (16.3.15.1.c). They actually install a driver, or anything at all, unlike the clevo drivers
Drivers | Synaptics

 

The ones from Clevo for Windows 8 are a little more recent and work for some reason. I actually ended up trying the latest drivers from other OEMs (since Clevo only has these older ones that work). Got them from MSI and from Toshiba... none of them worked, so I wonder if anyone has a working install of them. I don't really care - touchpad works fine - but there's a pretty giant changelog for the new ones that looked good.

 

But what is the source for this official BIOS? Is it some "hidden" directory somewhere on clevo.tw or something like that? Why isn't there a proper release? Is it "experimental" or something?

 

That is because Clevo sends the BIOS to the resellers for them to supply it to the customers. Sometimes the resellers will customize it before release. (bootlogo i.e.)

 

Anyone else getting BSOD after installing new NVidia och Intel Graphics drivers? I played Batman for a while and then it just freezes and throws a BSOD on me..

 

Has anyone else fiddled with the GPU yet?

Nvidia Inspector allows Voltage Adjustments, I got through 3DMark11 Performance at +325mhz/+375mv and score a mild P5250 points.

This wasn't maxed out, though

 

Yeah a few have, but quite a few pages back in the thread! If you have a look at HTWingnuts review he discusses it there.

 

I had a hard time downloading them as well, found the Asia servers to the the only reliable ones but they were painfully slow, capped at 50k a second.

 

Asia servers are the only ones that had the files AFAIK, they are painfully slow and capping out at like 5-10kbps... I wonder if I should just wait till Sager gets them or something... unless someone could upload them..

 

Would somebody knows of another laptop which use the same keyboard ?
Or at least have the same keys form-factor... I want to replace mine with an azerty keyboard.

 

I've got the audio, card reader, airplane mode, LAN, and hotkey for 8.1. Which do you want?

 

Quick question about GTX765 OC. Nvidia Inspector shows -6.3 mV as "default". Is that correct? Should the Vcore remain at stock to reach HTWingNuts 1020 Core and 2600 RAM ?

 

Could you upload them all? I am sure that I would not be the only one benefiting from it. My downloads kept on failing on me saying they couldn't read the source.

 

I'll get on it when class is out in a few hours.

 

So I just installed an mSATA SSD inside my laptop. I turned it on and it says the device is working, but it does not appear in my computer.

What do I need to do next?

 

Hi there - I am having a horrible time trying to install Windows 7 in this machine. I got the sata ahci drivers from the chipset driver and I tried loading it during installation but it still won't find the hard drive. Any tips? Thank you!

I have two screenshots from the installation:

imgur: the simple image sharer
imgur: the simple image sharer

 

Might have to format the partition with disk management. It's a little hidden in Windows 8.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/disk-management-windows-8.htm

 

Did Sager or Mythlogic ever fix the fan behavior with the fan bursting in and out randomly even when idle or just web surfing?

 

Not yet. It still burst randomly, even when on quiet mode.


Everyone:

Here is a link to the airplane, audio, card reader, hotkey, LAN, and touchpad drivers for Windows 8.1. No more slow and failed downloads from Clevo. http://sdrv.ms/HLEoC5

If the touchpad doesn't work for you that's because it doesn't seem to work for anyone for this version of the driver. I'd stick with the Windows 8 drivers from Clevo for it.

 

I found a great fix/lag/fps improvement for all you battlefield 3/4 and other cpu intensive game players out there. I was annoyed that even though fraps was showing steady 58fps in some areas game played smoother than others did a little research and turns out that there is something called packing in windows systems which turns some cores off when not in use. You can follow simple instructions here : Coder Bag: Disable CPU Core Parking Utility

I was amazing how much better bf4 ran after I unpacked cpu. 1600x900 res all high ssao on and I was getting from 60- 100fps . Hope it helps for some of you out there

 

Thanks a bunch man!

 

Right click "Computer" > Manage > Disk management. You probably have to enable the mSATA or assign it a path/letter.

 

Thanks,I forgot about core parking. I'll give it a shot later. Although doesn't it make the cpu even hotte

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

I ended up taking out the hard drive and formatting it as NTFS in a different computer and it worked.

 

If you use frame rate limit in your game then i don't think so. I also use throttlestop at 3ghz so my temps are at around 80c with lifted laptop. Could be better when I repaste and clean fan. But still good considering im running a very high overclock on my gpu 920/2500 - pretty much as high as it goes without arfitacts. How high are you running yours mate?

 

Hi, I just joined the w230st club and I have one quick question. I ordered my laptop without a hard drive, since I had a 840 Evo laying around all ready, figured I'd save a few bucks that way. My question is does the laptop come with a hard drive caddy of some sort or are some drive just small? I ask as the drive doesn't sit level with the sata port in the hard drive slot.

 

Your laptop should have come with two foam strips backed with adhesive to use for thinner HDDs to lift them up.

 

Ahh, I was wondering what those were for, I know they look like pads I've seen on the sides of drives. But I've never seen them used on the bottom of one.

Thankies!

One other question, I also received a sheet of plastic with a foam square attached to it, any clue what that is for?

 

That sheet has holes that line up with the mounting holes on the top of the drive. It is mounted on top (facing the bottom of the laptop) of the drive and pressure is put onto the foam by the bottom cover to keep the drive in place.

 

Mine does... which size is yours ?
Maybe you just forgot to put the sheet of plastic discussed above.

 

Guys I know this is random but I just did a performance/cost calculation of the W230ST out of boredom. From where I live, the following are the prices for a comparable desktop system:

CPU: i5 4670 $244
MOBO: H87 AsRock $96
RAM: Single 8GB Kingston 1600 $82
HDD(1TB): $66
Graphics: HD 7770 $125
PSU: 550W Antec $65
Case: Entry level case $75
LCD (FHD IPS): $150
Keyboard and mouse: $10
Webcam: $10
Card reader: $10

Total: $933

For a Clevo W230ST in its most basic configuration with 4700MQ, 8GB, 1TB, default WIFI, it will costs me $1000. The parts and the laptop are not under pricing special or any offer etc.

So to speak simply, the myth that a desktop can demolish a laptop at the same price point is 'busted'? The difference is $70 or about 7% saving from the laptop to desktop. Did I miss something?