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

I have changed the paste. Looks like it doesn't, at least not to the extent I can clearly distinguish.

I'm attaching the "stable" GPU-Z stats with Furmark running. In this state, it doesn't seem to either overheat more or throttle more, at least for a few minutes. Can I conclude from that that the heatpipe is failing?

 

Do not use Furmark! This has already been mentioned. If you need more convincing:

Use another benchmark, or an intensive game, then we can come to conclusions. Your heatsink may be to blame, but we cannot be absolutely sure unless you use a more realistic benchmark.

 

Ok. I have played Witcher 3 for 15 mins, with CPUID HWMonitor in background. This program shows max GPU temperature, and that was 89C. Still pretty high, although I think I might have seen higher temps in games with the previous paste.

 

In addition. I have tried CPU burner to load CPU to 100%. As I said, it doesn't go above 85C. And the air from the fan during high GPU load is noticably hotter than during higher CPU load. Which means that both heatpipes work with roughly the same effectiveness, i. e. either both failing or both good.

And 85C seems normal for CPU, which makes me think that they should be both good.

 

Not true. As for me, the GPU warms up to 80°C after an extended period of gaming because of the GPU's proximity to the CPU which is also under load with Witcher 3. If only the GPU is loaded to maximum, it should not exceed 75°C.

Yes, 85°C is normal for the CPU because Haswell runs hot, but not for the GPU. Maxwell is a very cool (in terms of temperature) architecture. Your heatsinks are failing. At least, the GPU heat pipe certainly is. Do not confuse your CPU and GPU temps.

Once again: when both the CPU and GPU under load in the W230SS, the GPU ought to be at least 15-20°C cooler than the CPU. Typical load temperatures are 65-75°C for the GPU, and 85-95°C for the CPU.

If both temperatures are equally high, then something is wrong.

 

Well, I didn't. I just got the impression that, since the fan blows hotter air from the GPU load, the cooling of GPU was just as effective as CPU.

But I was wrong, and hotter air was an illusion (probably because of fan speed). I looked at power consumption in CPU-Z and noticed that CPU consumes significantly more power than GPU (45W at 100% CPU against 30W at 100% GPU), and hence produces proportionally more heat. If GPU runs way hotter under less power, it can only indicate cooling failure. You are right, thank you.

 

Don't take TDPs to heart when looking at power numbers, however the GPU should not be getting hot like it is and I would suggest replacing the heatsink from what you have posted.

 

I think my GPU is failing. I see speckling and shimmering in heavy 3D games; if there's a sudden scene change, then there's a short after-image of speckles. This isn't a screen after-image. The previous pixels themselves get stuck in the same colour before changing to the new colour.

I haven't got a decent screenshot or a video that effectively displays this problem. It's most obvious in Witcher 3, as well as GTA. A bit less obvious in games that are easier on the GPU, like KSP and COD BO.

 

What happens if you back off the overclock?

 

I got a video of the phenomenon on my phone, since screen capture does not appear to reproduce it:

https://goo.gl/HthfEo

Doesn't appear to change anything. The shimmering and speckling still appears. It's very obvious in the video above, especially when changing screens in the menu.

 

Does it do it on an external monitor?

 

I haven't got a monitor, but I plugged it in to my TV and played a few games. The issue certainly shows up still, and once again, most obviously in Witcher 3.

On a side note, playing Witcher 3 at 4K and 10 FPS feels epic . I want to get a P870DM just so I can hook up my laptop to my TV and play in full 4K glory and at least 30 FPS.

 

@HTWingNut and @Prema,

I believe HTWingNut has mentioned this before. I just noticed that the overvolt sliders on Nvidia Inspector don't work, except for one position: all the way at the right, at + 375 mV.

So, basically I ran the GPU Render Test built-in to GPU-Z to keep the GPU under load while I tweaked parameters:


All clocks and voltages are stock:


Then, if I tweak the voltage slider up to some arbitrary value between the lowest and highest, looking the Voltage value on the left panel of the window, the reading does not change and remains at 1.112 V):


Now, if I change the voltage offset to +368.8 mV, then the Voltage reading changes to 1.200 V:


So, the voltage slider can only change 0.088 mV of voltage to the GPU regardless of what the values actually say, and there's a fixed 1.2 V voltage cap to the GPU. Hence liberal overclocks to the core and memory make the card unstable because there's not enough voltage feeding the GPU. Is it possible to remove that 1.2 V cap?

 

1.2v is likely the limit of the chip they have used to provide the voltage.

 

Hello people.

I installed Windows 10 but i have facing sound problems.
My speaker is working very well but sometimes i didn't have any sound come from headphones. Sometimes a simple restart fix that error and others don't i'm not sure what causes that.
I just use realtek driver for W10 on laptop driver page. I notice on Device Manager it just detected 2 hardware: speaker and mic not headphones at least when i can't listen sound from earphones.


Please help. Because this is only problem i've been facing on Windows 10 and maybe i would return to old W7.
Cheers.

 

Do you have the realtek audio manager installed?

 

No i don't have installed because this model just need VIA sound drivers not Realtek. Or i am wrong?
But if i need to install what type do i need? Can you put download link.

Thanks.

 

Ah I forgot they use the VIA chip, try getting an updated set from VIA.

 

Yes i tried two drivers one from VIA website and another from Clevo and both have same problem. I saw some people have this error but they just say to (re)install default drivers which in my case don't fix problem.

 

It sounds either like a jack detection issue or default audio output selection. You may have to play around with the settings to see what impacts it.

 

Already try that with no sucess. I think is not related to jack because on both Windows 7 and 8 i have sound from headphones. I will gonna test some others solutions and i report when i find solution.

Cheers.

 

Hi,

I signed up for this forum to chime in with my similar issue. Yesterday I noticed that Windows simply didn't recognise my using the headphone jack any more. Now, I mainly run Debian, and headphones work just fine, so I'm not sure when the headphone jack broke on Windows. The one thing I did recently notice is that it isn't auto-detecting the jack being used or not in Debian, so perhaps I have a hardware error that I just can't get around in Windows? Either way, as it stands, I can use the headphone jack just fine in Debian, but when I switched to Windows to game yesterday evening, it suddenly didn't work!

I have now spent hours uninstalling and reinstalling the VIA HD driver software in various ways, and have pretty much given up getting it to work. I tried a system restore to a time when I think the headphone jack was working (but can't be sure), and it still wasn't detected. Now I've gone and bought cheapish USB DAC to get around the issue until some update will hopefully just come along and fix it.


While I'm here, I should probably give a rundown of a few issues I've had with this laptop in the past couple of years. It works surprisingly well, but the audio has always been its downfall. My main issue running Linux (Ubuntu and Debian) was that the headphone jack wouldn't work after a suspend. The only other issue, and one that's becoming more evident with age, is that there are a couple of cracks in the plastic, especially one at the bottom left corner of the keyboard, that are harmless enough for now but may develop into something more problematic. But I guess that's what you get with a few years of rather rough use.

So I guess I'll watch here and see if the audio issues are fixed somehow.

 

Found solution please read this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-no-sound-from-headphones.785410/

 

I had previously come across that thread, and didn't previously try what was suggested. This time I tried uninstalling and reinstalling both the VIA drivers and the Hotkey driver, and that has come to nothing as well. I might very well have a different problem.

I'll outline a few more of the quirks. Firstly, when using the HD VDeck application that comes with the driver, plugging in headphones are simply not noticed, while using the microphone jack gives me a pop-up and acknowledgement that it has been used.

Secondly, and this is something I noticed when installing different versions of the VIA HD drivers, with some versions I only get speakers in the 'playback' tab of the sound options, and with other installs I get both speakers and headphones, but the headphone option (while being default) is not at all functional when I use the test function.

Thanks anyway for the link. I was quite optimistic that the Hotkey link might fix it. Anyhow, it will only be a minor inconvenience for me at the moment.

 

Hum... It's really strange so your problem maybe is different from mine. Could you have possibility to try with Windows 7 or 8 besides Linux? Just to be sure.

That situation with VIA Deck i noticed that too on my laptop sometimes even with same version just a simple restart and 3 devices appear (speaker, mic and headphone) again. And between drivers installation remove unnecessary files with driver cleaner application.

I'm 99% sure is driver problem perhaps not related to Hotkey but any other driver. Good luck!

 

@Prema -

Do we W230SS users get one final PremaMod update? Anything cooking? A while ago you'd mentioned that the W230SD had some fan control that could be ported to the W230SS. Also, the current PremaMod is based on a rather old version of the stock BIOS, isn't it? Hope an upgrade is in the works...

 

oh yes, I'd love to!

 

I think he's busy with the P870DM and other new machines... Leaving the old ones behind. Already tagged him, but he doesn't respond...

 

So yea or nay, should I install windows 10?

 

There are so many new machines requiring work it's not that surprising to be fair. If you feel like getting together and sponsoring him though then that's fair enough.

 

I just booted up my computer today morning and it's like the Nvidia GPU vanished. In Windows 10, I can't see it in the device manager, even as an unknown device, and in Linux, lspci does not list the GPU. I have tried using Display Driver Uninstaller to completely remove the Intel and Nvidia drivers, but only the Intel ones I could reinstall - the Nvidia driver installer could not find the GPU, so it would not install anything. Anyone know what is going on?

 

It could be the chip is dead and the system is not detecting at boot and just running with the IGP.

 

That's what I had feared. I even tried running nvflash --list from DOS, but that failed to show any Nvidia GPU.

Do you have any idea what could have caused this? Last night I was playing CS:GO on it (actually, the first time I had used the dedicated GPU in the past month or so) and then this morning it seems to be completely gone. In the past I was also having problems with the GPU causing BSODs whenever it was powered up, but that all went away when I upgraded to Windows 10 in October. Up until now there have been no other problems.

 

It could have been an internal solder joint, you could try heat treating it (if it's out of warranty) to get the solder to reflow. The more permanent solution would be to send it for repair where they solder a new chip on (reballing only replaces the package solder, not the solder between the die and package).

 

It is out of warranty now. Do you know about how much it costs for a permanent repair?

 

I'm not sure how much it costs for a re-solder, but I experienced the same problems a while ago and my reseller simply swapped out the motherboard. It costs about $230 USD.

This is a recurring problem with the W230SS, amongst others (sound detection, 3.5 mm port issues, CPU overheating and weird current limits, etc.). If you can afford it, I strongly suggest you just live with OCing the iGPU to eke out a little bit more performance, and set that money instead to buy a P640RE which is superior in most ways. I feel $200 just isn't worth it for the 860M (despite it being a decent GPU, it won't cut it for future games).

True, and perfectly fair. Maybe if I donate $20 to him... Hmm. How about it, guys?

 

In that case I'll just live with the integrated graphics for a while. Next computers I am getting will probably be a more portable laptop and a more powerful desktop.

 

Flash my BIOS Mod (even if you are already using it), make sure to remove AC Adapter for 30s after the flash has completed and the system shut-down.

Good Luck!

 

People's requirements change, but in the grand scheme of things the W230ss is pretty portable.

 

I would readily donate $50 to Prema if fan control were included. Lack of fan control on the W230SS is my only problem with this little machine.

Is anyone else interested in adding to the pot? Maybe we can make it worth Prema's while.

 

I suggest you get together an approach him

 

I am looking for replacement mobo (for w230ss) or perhaps barebones Sager NP7338/Clevo W230SS.

new or used. Just gotta be working and reasonably priced and can tie me over for 6-12 months.

Anybody got any suggestions. Found a mobo at R&J for about 425 -- a bit more than I'd want to spend. Poked around other sellers; most have moved on and don't list w230ss anymore.

Any suggestions or leads?

 

You could keep an eye out for a 2nd hand machine or contact your original reseller.

 

can you game at qhd? and how does 1080p down scaled look on this

 

Older games yes, more modern ones would struggle. 1080p looks ok, not quite perfect but when gaming should do just fine.

 

Hey friends, my first post here. I have a Sager NP7338 whose Nvidia GPU has stopped working - for the second time! I verified with the company that the motherboard was replaced last time (instead of being repaired) back in August 2015, and now it has happened again - this time 1 month out of warranty, and they told me it would cost $340 to fix.

To be clear, the GPU became disconnected somehow - one day the Nvidia control panel would not work, saying there was no Nvidia GPU installed, and device manager reflected the same. Since it is soldered to the motherboard the entire thing had to be replaced I guess. At least that was Sager's solution.

Last time this happened, I installed the Prema BIOS for this model and the GPU came back briefly before disappearing again. Does anyone know what is going on here? Why does this keep happening? I rarely use the laptop for gaming - I purchased it as a compact business PC for running virtual machines and other high-performance programs. What are my options? Does anyone know where to buy replacement motherboards? Thanks in advance...

 

I can't really tell you why this happens - it's a recurring problem with several other people (just go back a couple of pages) and I faced this issue once, myself. We can only boil it down to bad manufacturing on Clevo's part.

Try to re-flash his mod. Otherwise, there are instructions for removing the motherboard and 'baking' it in an oven so as to melt and reconnect the solder joints, but removing the motherboard will require you to strip your machine down altogether. I feel it's more worth trying this than spending $340 on reviving an old notebook (by today's standards, yes, the W230SS is fairly old). I'll PM you the W230SS service manual which includes instructions to replace the motherboard.

 

Just wanted to report the same issue here. I'm actually getting my XMG P304 (Clevo W230SS) back today, let's see if the problem is fixed. "Luckily" it was still inside the warranty time frame... (Don't know if I'd consider myself lucky if the GPU vanishes after only a year and a half, but oh well... "Always look at the bright side of life", right?)

 

@SRSR333 - Thanks for the feedback! Look forward to getting the manual. I asked the service rep at Sager for it and he told me there isn't one (which I never believed). By the way, frikisama, I wouldn't trust the repair - From brand new condition, it took my laptop 8 months to fail, then another 4 months after that repair to fail again. If you get yours working again, you might want to sell it right away.

 

You can get the manual from Clevo's site, which I'm not sure if that was the same thing that you were thinking of.

http://clevo.com/clevo_down.asp?lang=en