W530 Owner's Thread

To true,, my wife lost her hard drive back around 2000 and I paid about 1k to have it recovered. More recently I realized a HDD was failing and was able to have it cloned and put on a new HDD at minor cost and saved the hassle of trying to rebuild from my back up devices.

Do you all have a favorite back up system that is easy to re install? I use a Seagate on site and MemoPal for offsite. I know my data is saved but how easy to re install is a mystery and one I hope never to learn.

 

I guess you mean easy to restore right?

A number of the consumer backup solution make it easy to restore an image. I and a number of the people on this site use Acronis True Image 2011-13. It is well supported by the Online community and easy to use.

I often restore from complete disk clone images. I also make a habit of taking a new clone every couple of weeks or before making any significant modifications to my system.

There has been a few times when I have installed upgrade software that I haven't liked and rolling-back to an earlier version would of been a pain of a process, in these cases I have simply re-cloned the whole disk again and that's it.

It may sound extreme but it honestly normally takes a few clicks, about 15mins and a reboot. Then your back in business like nothing happen, that is assuming you have a recent clone.

Backup restoration is nothing to be afraid of.

 

You should have written "restore" instead of "re install." Technical terminology.


If you are using Windows 7, you can pick up some basic information on Windows 7's built-in Backup & Restore capability. This allows the user to make backup of the system image and regular backups of user files, and to restore from such a backup.

• Backup & Restore - Overview
• Backup & Restore - Frequently Asked Questions
• Back Up Your Files

By the way, Windows 7's Backup & Restore functionality is fully SSD-aware. The user can create a system image backup and eventually restore that image onto:

• the current system's main drive (when Windows 7 is running), or
• a new drive (as in the case of upgrading from HDD to SSD) by booting from a Windows 7 installation disc and selecting Restore option. The .ISO file for burning the Windows 7 installation disc can be legally and freely downloaded.

Everything is there for you to use.

 

Is the same true with Windows 8 too?

 

I would think so, backup and restore has been getting more attention on every new version of Windows, don't see why they would change that in W8. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if the backup/restore features in W8 are even better.

I have normally found Windows build-in backup options to be just OK. It's normally a watered down version of commercially available products. I would still recommend a specialized product.

 

I just copy/paste important files to multiple drives that I have. I should really do a full backup that I can restore from, but I don't care much about having to reinstall programs in the event of a drive disaster. So long as I got my data, I'm good .

 

Right. There is a spectrum of needs and tools.

 

Hi I'm about to buy a w530. How cool does it run since I'll have it on my laptop quite often. How is it with virtual machines and 32gb of ram? Is there a vt-d option in the bios. Thanks

 

When you're not playing any intensive games, the laptop runs cool and pretty quiet. If you start playing said games, or otherwise stress the system in a similar manner, you'll hear the fan kick in a bit, but a TV (at a reasonable volume) can drown out the fan noise.

It'll run your virtual machines well, especially so if you're planning on stuffing 32GB of RAM in your W530.

VT-d is processor dependent. If the processor you have in your W530 supports VT-d, then there will be an option in the BIOS to turn it on/off.

 

Hi

I've just purchased a ThinkPad W530 (i7 3720QM, K1000M) and am looking to add some general after market upgrades to get the most out of this laptop.

So far, I have ordered 4 x 8GB 1600Mhz Corsair Vengeance Modules and I am still in search of a good 128GB mSATA module.

I am primarily looking at 2 products:
Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD3 mSATA 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Which one would you guys suggest for use as a boot disk with Win 8 X64 Pro, Adobe Production Suite, Autodesk AutoCAD & Inventor and MS office? (I'll be mapping User Directories to the 1TB Spindle HDD.)

Since the WWAN port supports SATAII speeds, both the drives should be able to saturate the available bandwidth. The only thing that I am concerned about are the reliability and random 4k write speeds and IOPS rates of these drives. (Read somewhere that mushkin drives tend to heat up..and the sandforce controllers are supposedly not as good as marvell ones used by crucial. However, the superior R/W speeds and 4k random IOPS of the mushkin drives are making it difficult for me to take the decision.)

I'd really appreciate if you guys would be kind enough to suggest the better drive out of the two keeping in mind the usage I will subject the mSATA drives to.

Thanks.

 

I finally got my W530 last week, but had a chance to open it only today. Very disappointed to see some ugly scratch marks on the top of the lid. Planning to return it.

Lenovo's return policy says 21 days from the invoice date. My invoice date was on the 2nd of Dec 2012 but the product shipped only on 19th and I received it on 27th. In this case will Lenovo not accept my return?

 

Mine seems cool (fan doesn't kick in) running one Linux VM. Works insanely well, especially if you put the VM on SSD.
Don't think there's a vt-d option in the BIOS...just VT. There's not much of a point in vt-d anyways unless you're running a server w/ pci-e iSCSI cards or something that you want to dedicate to a specific VM. I don't see a use-case for vt-d on a laptop whatsoever....I didn't even think it was needed on my desktop so I picked up a 3770K chip for it.

Surprised so many people want the Samsung 830 still...that's what I have in mine and I wish the 840 Pro were available back then just for the ridiculously low idle power (

 

The Samsung 830 is a good drive and are reasonably priced, not to mentioned the reliability record of these drives are very good which makes them still sought after in the SSD market. The Basic 840 uses TLC NANDs which are reported to have inferior write endurance compared to the MLC NANDs used in the 830 and 840 Pro. When you factor that the 830 is priced roughly the same to the Basic 840 personally I would go for the 830 just for that peace of mind, otherwise if your budget allows go for the 840 Pro instead for the step up in performance.

 

Never be a paying beta tester. Buying a first-gen product of any item is a risk, something the "older" tech doesn't have (as explained above). Also remember that old doesn't mean bad and can actually be a good thong (see the Crucial M4).

 

I wouldn't worry about VT-d on a laptop. Unless you plan to run a Type 1 Hypervisor like VMware ESX on your laptop. If you plan to run your VMs from a typical type 2 hypervisor like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox then there is no point in having it, first of all I don't know of any type 2 hypervisor that actually fully supports vt-d, the only one that I know has made some mention of it is VirtualBox and I believe they have a way to go before it's working right.

Sure if you want to try make a proper bare metal virtualization server out of your laptop... but who does that... First you're going to need to make sure all the hardware on the W530 is supported by the type 1 you choose, then you need to ask yourself how many VMs are you going to run at the same time, do you have any hardware devices that you want dedicated to a specific VM - remembering that other VMs won't be able to use that device while it's dedicated to a VM.

I normally use VMs on my laptop for testing, I don't know anyone that uses a laptop to run a proper production environment. Are you going to be demanding so much out of your test VMs that you really need vt-d?

By all means if you have a clear need for vt-d on your laptop, go for it. I see little use for vt-d on a laptop but that's me. Most people I see asking about VT-d are interested in it because it's something new to them hence they are curious about it without having any real application for the technology.

 

That's why people should almost always pay the extra $40 for on-site warranty. I would hate to have to send my laptop back and wait for a replacement after having just received it.

It sounds like the 21days you talk of are for a refund. First of all I can't see how it can be from invoice date, seeing that they invoiced you on December the 2nd and you didn't even receive it till the 27th, that's already over 21days from invoice date before it was even delivered to you, can't see them enforcing that.

You have however waited over 1 week before deciding to return it but being the Holiday season, with people being away, I can't see them giving you much of a problem.

So do you plan on returning it for a full refund just because of the scratches? I can understand you asking for an exchange.

I think this type of thing will fall under warranty, which is normally 12mths minimum and being so close to the purchase date they will probably just exchange your unit for another. Even if they simply replace your lid for a new one, your laptop would still be good as new.

 

The x230 has vt-d so I'd be surprised if the w230 doesn't. I use it with KVM on Linux. Virtual box on linux also has decent support for it. I use it to pass my wireless card to a separate vm. This allows me to be sure that all my vms are routed correctly through a firewall or be forced through a vpn. It's a bit overkill, but I found it to be an interesting project. I'm not real sure what else you would use vt-d for on a laptop.

 

I'm planning for an exchange only. I'm sure I can't get it for the same price again, so a replacement is probably the best option for me.

 

Hello;
I have recently purchased a new lenovo w530 laptop Windows 8 and i am having some issues, and was looking for some advice. The DVD-RW drive will only work if i boot up with a disc in the drive, if i take the disc out the computer can no longer see the drive and i have to restart to use another disc. i cannot find a new driver for this optical drive PLDS DVD-RW DS8A8SH and have tried the reg edit fix (no sucess) i have only had this laptop for less than a week,should i return it or try to get another DVD-RW

 

The optical drive is not "visually shown" until it contains a CD or a DVD (a bootable disc or a data disc).

Try to eject the tray, put in a known disc (say, a music CD) and see if Windows "recognizes" it.

 

Sounds like a power setting issue to me. Least that's the first place I would look.

Looks like the drive is being turned off to save power hence the OS is not seeing it any longer. I don't have my optical drive connected but see if you can go to it's properties and look for any mention of it being turned off after X amount of time or to save battery.

Same for Lenovo power manager, select a maximum performance power plan and see if it helps.

 

Hello all,
I am new on this forum, but have been reading it for a while. Lots of useful information to be found here.

I got a w530 last summer, I mostly use it for photo editing. I have had 3 different laptops the past 3 years, but none of them has satisfied my needs. Until the W530, now I finally feel I have a laptop that I can actually use!
It has FHD screen, 256 GB Samsung 830, and an Intel 80 GB mSATA SSD (for cachefiles and pagefile). Windows 7 Pro.
According to Disk Manager, the Samsung SSD has three partitions: One 100 MB EFI system partition, one 225 GB NTFS, and one 14 GB Lenovo recovery partition.

What I want is to clone the whole Samsung SSD with all partitions to another similar SSD, to have as a spare in case of failure, with all my programs and settings. Just swap SSD's and continue working (all my photos are on external drives).

I have been looking at clone programs like XXClone, EaseUS and Paragon DriveCopy 12. But I am unable to find information if any of these support the EFI partition, and are able to clone the SSD exactly as is - including the EFI partition. I am reluctant to install and try them until I know for sure it will work.

Does anybody here have experience or some good advice?

Thanks,
Bjørn J from Norway

 

Bjorn the best and easiest is the CloneCD. It makes an exact copy of your HD. I do multiple changes to my OS and the safest solution is something like CloneCD.

 

Acronis True Image Home 2013 also claims full GPT and UEFI support. I have not verified it personally but I'm sure you can research that in the various forums. See http://www.acronis.com/download/docs/ti2013/datasheet for the datasheet.

 

Godt Nyttår! Velkommen til ThinkPad forum.

No need to clone to another SSD. Do a system backup. The backup file is saved on an external USB HDD that is large enough (1TB or 2GB) for you to maintain a discipline of regular backups of your personal files, as well.

Windows 7 Professional itself includes the tools for you to accomplish what you need.

Click Windows orb, type "backup" (without quotes) in the search box and select "Backup and Restore" program at the top of the list.

​

Click on "Create a system image" on the left panel.

​

Select an external hard drive to save the system image backup file.

​

Check the boxes to select the partitions you want to be included in the system image backup file. In your case, there are 3 partitions: System Reserved (boot information), Windows_OS (system files and user files) and Lenovo_Recovery.

Just go through the steps...

​

Good luck.

 

Thank you for the replies.
jedisurfer: On the CloneCD website there is no information that it's possible to clone an SSD (or HDD) directly to another SSD (or HDD), only CD's and DVD's. But you have succesfully cloned harddrives with it?
Thors Hammer: Acronis is an option I have considered, I used it some years ago with good results.
Kaso: Godt nyttår til deg også Maybe the built-in Win 7 backup/restore is the easiest and safest option. I could first make a complete backup and the boot-CD, then remove the SSD from the laptop, insert the new SSD, boot with the CD, restore all content to the new SSD, test that it works, remove the SSD and insert the original one. Then put the new SSD somewhere safe. That should work?
Bjørn J

 

Veldig klok.

What exactly is "the boot-CD"? Do you mean the Windows 7 installation/repair disc? (The .ISO file to burn such disc is freely and legally downloadable.) Please clarify.

 

The only issue I had with Windows 7 backup was that you could not restore to a target smaller than the source. For instance, say you have a 256GB SSD that is in a machine but you are only using 80GB. You decide to back it up and use it in another machine. You are thinking the restore will be fine on a 120GB SSD. Wrong. Windows 7 won't do that.

Acronis will. It's one of the prime reasons I use True Image Home 2013. It just works.

 

Let's say I save the Windows backup file to an external USB harddrive, and the SSD in the laptop crashes. I insert a new, empty SSD, but to be able to restore the backup I need something to boot from. Or can the W530 boot directly from the USB-connected harddrive with the backup, and then start the restore process? (I hope you understand what I mean, my English is very far from perfect )

 

Scenario 1: The in-use SSD crashes. You boot the W530 from Windows 7 installation/repair disc. On the main screen, select “Repair your computer,” followed by “System Image Recovery.” Then point it to your system backup image file on the external USB hard drive. Sit back and wait for the system restore to complete.

Scenario 2: The in-use SSD functions normally. For some reason, you want to go back to the system backup image that you created the week before. In this case, you can do the restore right in the active Windows 7 environment.

 

Thanks Kaso, very clear and helpful. Scenario 1 is most relevant for me. The windows 7 installation/repair disc is what I called the boot-CD.

 

hey sorry I meant clonezilla. Google it, it's free and basically everyone raves about it. I use it at work even with other ghosting clone options.

 

Thanks, i did do the power manager settings when i got the computer and set it to max, when i click on my computer icon i see hard disk drives (2) with my C: and E: hard drives

Devices with removable storage (1) DVD-RW Drive(D) after taking out the DVD or CD after about a minute Devices with removable storage (1) vanishes and is replaced with Other(1) DVD-RW (D)

(Powered Off) this icon has the red circle with the line through it and when right clicked it gives the option off turning it on or ejecting disc - neither works

The only solution at that point is to reboot with any kind of disc in the drive and it will be recognized, if i reboot without anything in the drive the computer only sees Other(1) DVD-RW (D)

(Powered Off).

As of 5 minutes ago it is showing both hard drives my DVD-CD and this phantom drive, i have tried several discs and they all play so am keeping fingers xed, Thanks for your suggestion

 

Thanks, today it seems to be working better i will try to insert 2 snips of what i am seeing.

 

i finally got my new w530 over Christmas and so far I'm loving it, but I'm wondering if anyone has had issues with the wireless not working properly. I had no problem with it at my mom's place over the holidays but since I got back to my apartment I'm having issues connecting to the internet. Works fine for everyone else at my apartment, just not my computer

I have the Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 card and it will connect to the wireless at my apartment but then webpages stop opening. I try repairing the connection but once the wireless gets turned off it will not come back on no matter what I do. I can turn the switch back to on, I can Fn + F5 and click the thing to turn radio on all I want and it just will not turn back on.

Anyone have a similar issue or any ideas of what to do?

Maybe something else is interfering with it?

 

May be worth going to RUN: and type "services.msc"

Go down to "DHCP client" and select restart. Do the same for "DNS client". Sometimes this can help, it's worth a shot.

When you say the Wireless gets turned off, do you mean that it simply stops working hence you are assuming the Wireless NIC has been powered down or the Wireless card actually powers down?

If the wireless is powering down, then it would have to do with your power management settings. If the wireless card doesn't power down, it simply losses connection, then it could be a DHCP or DNS issue hence trying to restart the services.

 

The suggestion Kaso gave you looks like one of the easiest free options.

The easiest option I know is to have software like Acronis True Image create a Recovery USB stick, clone the whole drive with Acronis (Plus version supports GPT) and save that clone image in a safe place. Make a new clone every time you make significant changes to your OS.

If something goes wrong, like your SSD stops working completely. You simply pull out your Recovery USB stick, boot from it. Point Acronis to your cloned image and hit restore. You will normally be back up and running in less than 30min, depending on the size of your clone.

I haven't tried the Windows 7 system image recovery option, I am not sure if it will take a copy of all the partitions on the disk or just the OS partition (C:\). For the minor cost ($70) involved in buying a good backup solution like Acronis, I don't think it's worth stuffing around. I like to use something I know is cloning my whole drive, including all partitions the MBR and signatures if I need them.

 

Hi everyone. I'm new to Lenovo. I'm considering ordering either a T530 or a W530 to replace my Macbook Pro that stopped working (screen doesn't turn on, no chime, probably because of a defective NVIDIA graphics card that Apple stopped replacing last month...I will never buy another Apple product). I just finished reading through all of both owners' threads. Thanks to everyone for all of the helpful reviews and advice.

I plan to use the laptop mainly for music production with Ableton Live 8, an AKAI MPK49 midi-keyboard, and a firewire audio interface (Desktop Konnekt 6). I definitely want a quad-core processor. I might end up doing some Photoshop and video editing down the line. I definitely want the FHD display. I don't anticipate much gaming on this laptop, though I suppose having the option to do so wouldn't be bad. I'm also definitely going to spring for a 256 GB SSD for the main drive.

I have a few questions:

1. The most important issue for music laptops is usually the DPC-latency. Could somebody please download this DPC-latency checker, run it for a while, and let me know the results? It helps to disable the Wifi and Ethernet adapters during the test to avoid spikes.
DPC Latency Checker

2. I'm not sure whether to get the T530 or the W530. As far as I can tell, the main differences are the limit of 2 RAM slots on the T530 vs. the 4 slots on the W530, and the different graphics cards. 16 GB of RAM seems like it would be plenty. What RAM-intensive applications would require more than 16GB? Also, how much better is the NVIDIA Quadro K1000M (with 2GB memory) than the NVIDIA NVS 5400M (with 1GB memory)? Paying $250 extra for the K2000M seems like too much. Are there any other important differences between the two Thinkpads? I noticed that for some reason right now I can only get Windows 7 on the W530, while the T530 has options for Windows 8. That seems weird to me.

3. As for the Firewire audio interface, I think the T530 has built-in FW, but it is a crappy Ricoh chipset, which is known to have problems with audio interfaces. Does the W530 have a FW port? Either way, I'm probably going to have to buy an ExpressCard adapter. Has anybody used his/her laptop with a FW audio interface?

4. I see that Lenovo periodically has sales of 20-25% off. Does anybody know how frequently these sales happen? I'm inclined to wait, if the next one is coming fairly soon. I could just go with the Barnes & Noble discount, which is roughly 15% right now, but obviously I would much rather save 20% or more. Using a normal student discount somehow results in a MORE expensive order, which makes no sense to me. What is the best way to get a good deal?

That's all I can think of for now. Thanks!

 

Hi Gradyoactive,

I'll run the DPC latency check for you and let you know results.

Regarding your questions.

1. DPC latency is actually fairly good, around 100us on avg but gets one spike of approx 4000us every 30secs, must be some driver in the background but on avg it looks good. Is that spike an issue?

2. I'm not sure between the K1000M and the NVS 5400M, I believe they are very close in performance with a slight edge to the K1000M, however I do know that the K2000M is almost twice as fast as either of them so if your going to do video editing using Adobe Premier, any programs that support CUDA or play some games etc, it's may be worth the extra cash, if not the Intel HD4000 is not a bad GPU for an integrated card, very quick on video encoding. I have heard some forum members say they try to stay away from Nvidia NVS cards, not sure why. I personally wouldn't move to Windows 8 yet, let the drivers mature for another 6-12mths and give Microsoft and developers time to iron out the bugs. Performance wise it looks like a decent OS, I just think it's wise to wait around 12mths when any new OS is released, especially when Windows 7 Pro is still a great OS.

"What RAM-intensive applications would require more than 16GB?" - Virtual Machines is a big one. Emulators like GNS3 which run multiple routers/switches can easily use over 16GB, Microsoft Exchange loves lots of ram, even Adobe Photoshop will use plenty of memory if working on large images with some 3rd party plug-ins like fluid mask 3. In other words there is a number of apps out there that will use close to or more than 16GB of RAM but they are normally specialized applications.

3. <strike> No Firewire, Use the Express card as you mentioned. </strike> - edit: There is one FireWire port.

4. Seems to be around once every 2mths that they have a decent offer. During the holiday period they were having offers fairly often.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. That spike in DPC latency is definitely a problem, as it causes audio dropouts. Did you make sure to disable Wifi and the Ethernet adapter before doing the test? Also, can you try the test again while using ASIO drivers for the onboard sound? If there isn't a specific ASIO driver available, you can get a generic one at ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver. Using ASIO drivers is supposed to help the latency considerably. If it doesn't work, then I'm going to have to find a different PC. Thanks for the help.

 

Apparently the DVD drive can also cause latency issues, so could you try disabling that before the test too?

And I heard NVIDIA is notorious for having bad drivers. Could you try disabling the NVIDIA driver and letting the system run with the built-in Intel chip? Sorry for asking for so much. I just can't buy a laptop without confirming that the latency is manageable. Thanks.

 

Hi Gradyoactive,

I tried the test with the Wifi/Ethernet disabled and DVD drive removed. I could see a large difference between running the test with the Wifi Enabled and disabled, lots more spikes with the WiFi enabled.

I agree the ASIO drivers should help.

Looking at the results, I get that 4000us spike every 30secs but apart from that it's consistently down at only 80-100us which I believe is a good result.

Sorry I don't really want to go around messing with my Audio drivers, don't feel like doing another clone recovery . I run Optimus drivers so the NVIDIA gpu shouldn't fire up with this test, but it can easily be disabled in BIOS so the laptop will only run on the integrated intel gpu.

Looking at the difference between the test with and without wifi enabled and the avg low results, it would seem like it's just a matter of finding what driver is causing that spike once every 30secs but the baseline looks healthy.

You can always order it and I believe Lenovo have a 28day no questions asked return policy?

 

My w530 purchased last month has a firewire port. Do/did they make ones without the port?

Chris

 

Your right Witzgall, my mistake there is a firewire port on the left side, got it confused for the mini display which is on the other side of the USB ports, my bad. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

I recently purchased a W530 for pretty much identical reasons. (ableton live laptop)

I got 8 gigs RAM, and the 500 gig 7200 rpm hard drive. Windows 7.

I have a focusrite USB audio interface (scarlett 8i6) I also use an arturia labratory keyboard as a midi keyboard and a livid ohm64 as a controller

I disabled the built in sound via device manager, I turn the wireless radio off via the switch on the side.

I uninstalled some of the lenovo bundled software, other lenovo utilities I kept but disabled at startup.

Both Latency mon and dpc latency checker give me smooth readings in the green, no spikes whatsover. I have my Asio buffer size set at 2 ms via the focusrtie mix software.

ableton displays this as 89 samples buffer size and gives me input latency of 4.94 and output latency of 6.96 with an overall latency of 11.9

My liveset that I use for performing is fairly large (500 or so samples split across around 8 tracks, I also send a guitar signal into the focusrite and use ableton to process this signal by adding tempo-synced delays and sending it to a looper on a return channel.

On my old system (Core 2 duo 4 gigs ram) I had a little bit of latency with the guitar signal, it wasn't a deal breaker, but I had to learn how to play with it.

I would have about 20% of cpu usage before no matter what (due to the guitar processing) now I have around 5%.

So far, it has been absolutely rock solid. I will continue to test it this week and my first gig with the new system will be Thursday the 17th.

Let me know if you have any other ableton / audio specific questions, I'd be happy to help answer them. I know my system is slightly different (USB audio interface) so I don't know what sort of quirks the FW may bring to the table.

 

Was just wondering if the Nvidia Quadro cards in the W530 can be overclocked? I know it's difficult to OC the Geforce cards in Sony Vaio laptops unless you use a modified bios. Is this also the case for Thinkpads or is the clock frequency unlocked?

 

Yes, the K2000M can be overclocked. I've done it with MSI Afterburner. However, it cannot be drastically overclocked, and the benefits of overclocking, while there, are minor. As an example, Batman: Arkham Asylum gets all of one more frame per second average on the benchmark with all settings maxed (19 FPS vs. 18 FPS stock). This is with the GPU core running at +40 Mhz and the memory running at +100 Mhz. I found that if I increase the core clock beyond that, issues develop with some games. However, since overclocking is definitely possible, you are welcome to try. Maybe you will have a better experience.

 

Thanks so much for this helpful reply. It's a relief to hear somebody using it successfully for the same thing I will. Can you list your full system specs? Which processor and graphics card did you choose? etc.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply djembe. Interesting that the core could only be OCed by 40Mhz before you started exp issues, I would of thought we could of got at least 100Mhz out of it without problems as it's based on the same chip as the 650M which runs stock at approx 850Mhz, depending on version. The K2000M apparently runs a core speed of 745Mhz, hence why I thought a 100Mhz core OC wouldn't even be pushing it.

 

Processor Intel Core i7-3630QM
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64
Operating system Language Win7 HP64 English
Total memory 8 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (2 DIMM)
Hard drive 500GB HDD 7200rpm
Optical device DVD Recordable, UBE w/SWR
Battery 9cell LI Battery TWL70++
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 w/ antenna
WiFi wireless LAN adapters Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205
Wireless WAN accessories Mobile Broadband upgradable
Warranty Type 1 Year Depot/Express Warranty
AC Adapter and Power Cord 170W Slim AC Adpt US (2pin)
Camera TW530 720p HD Camera Mic
Color Sensor TW530 No Color Sensor
Display Panel TW530 15.6HD+ Anti-Glare, WWAN
Keyboard Language KYB (Backlit) US English
Pointing device TW530 UNav w/ FPR
Publication Language Pub; US English
RAID Setting Internal RAID - Not Enabled
Security Chip 2 Security Chip Enabled
Shipping Country USA
Storage Adapter No Micro Solid State Drive
System Unit W530 NVIDIA Quadro K1000M 2GB
System expansion slots TW530 Exp CS & 4-1 CR