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

It is unbelievable how expensive those models above are, I am honestly a bit shocked that people would spend that much on a 13.x" model. They should all be well below 1k...

 

The only real replacement ive seen so far for the w230ss is the razer. Its the only small form factor still packing a battery able to give you four hours of light use. Clevo jumped too far into the "thin" game. Some of us like a little meat on their laptops! Its a shame that razer warranty support is horrendous. I saw one in the microsoft store by me and it was a great looking machine....if it works.

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Well, I spent roughly US$1530 (today something like $1550 already) on my W230SS back in July 2014... I remember how expensive the other GTX 860M models were, back then, as well. Now the 1050 Ti is dirt cheap. The N850HK1 isn't even $1000 on XoticPC. I paid as much as what a GTX 1060 15" notebook costs today.

This why I vehemently said that the 1060 replaced the 860/960M, and not the 970M as many others claim. Forget the GP107/106 thing. The price is what makes/breaks a deal, 90% of the time.

 

I was holding out for that set up. And as prema said it should be below £1k and that's what I held out for. In the end got an aw13 because of form factor and I wanted more than 1080p. The aw13 was the next cheapest for me above the aero 14 and aorus x3.
If the aero was cheaper than my aw13. I'd prob of bought it. But I still think the aw13 is better. It's very solid. It actually feels worth the value coming from the clevo


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Got my barebone W230SS without CPU/SSD/RAM for like 500bucks, just re-used my W230ST components and then sold it (the W230ST) for 500bucks.
Free is what I can barely afford!

EDIT: BTW, that's my reason to prefer socketed chips over BGA.

EDIT2: When the W230SD was released I then customized my 860M vBIOS to surpass 960M speeds by default. Free upgrade!

 

Well said!

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Wat. That is really nice. I want to get a new system without SSDs so I can use mSATA to M.2 adapters. Who needs PCIE speeds? I'm not transferring terabytes of data everywhere.

 

I did this on my w230sd. It had to have those things in but went bare minimum and then bought my parts and i7 myself. Kept it a year then sold it for the total cost of the unit and upgraded parts, so no depreciation on my model




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Same here; bare-bone, swap and pimp.

Maybe that's why there's no successor; they were hardly making any money from us .

 

Well to be fair you are less able to do that these days as intel only produces mobile BGA parts.

 

Lol a little bit true. They make their money because clevo is a bit like a vendor. They sell to companies as barebones. And the manufacturer then sells it a little bit higher and adds the parts in a make the majority of profit from that to make their money.
And besides they already used that model 3 times. And most importantly for the design. They stopped making rPGA cpus at the 4th gen. it be mad to reuse it for a 4th time when 7th is out. No one would be interested really.


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Intel would be losing money with non-BGA cpus as well; it makes upgrading possible using 2nd hand, cheap components. This extends the life of old laptops, postponing buying the eventual new replacement for several years (inc. the new cpu). Just did so for a T4300 system, dropping in a cheap, used SSD + T9900 at 7.5% of the original cost.

Thus Intel too benefits by going all-BGA.

The same thing would apply to ram and hdd/ssd manufacturers, so when these wake up to market mechanics then the situation will change again, at further detriment to the consumer. They might nudge the system builders in that direction by offering serious discounts to BGA parts and an equivalent penalty markup to their replaceable counterparts. If Intel is smart then that is what they are doing right now and considering the size of the company there's bound to be some 'savvy' marketing creeps lurking around there ...

Not sure how this could be stopped. We can't rely on the (99% non-informed) consumers, who will simply keep buying the cheapest option (and who can blame them?). That leaves government intervention. They might mandate minimum 5-year transferable warranty, for instance, which would make repairs excessively expensive for the system builders. Sure, a $10k BGA station is sufficient, but you'd need more time and better-trained personnel, rather than the low-paid, often ham-fisted types they use now.

 

Then again the difference between generations is far smaller than it was back then, a CPU remains relevant for much longer at the moment.

 

I've actually thought this couple days ago. I think the last major upgrade was 2nd gen. everything from then has been minor. But the difference between even the barely existent 5th gen and 2nd gen is a noticeable change.


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Was just talking about this a couple days ago. Anybody with a system that has a 4th gen Intel and 800 series Nvidia, it's really not that expensive to upgrade at this point.

Edit: Ever just load up a page, reply, then realize there was like three more pages after that? I quit.

 

Another happy user of the W230SS currently, although I don't post much. It is still going strong and is my daily driver. I might end up getting something like the P640HK (I think that is it) when reviews are out, but who knows. I love this little powerhouse.


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Yes the forum has a habit of hiding posts.

 

Has anyone upgraded from the W230SS to a P65xRS(-G)/P65xRP6(-G) as I'm very tempted? How is the increase in size? Is it still ok to travel around with and do you miss the W230SS?

 

Is the 3k to FHD route possible as plug and play? (e.g. no need to get screen cabling converters,etc)

 

No, afraid not; you need the fhd cable as well (6-43-W2301-010-K).

Bought a ~$90 3k from aliexpress some weeks ago; zero dead pixels and declared customs value $10. Gotta love these kinds of sellers ... but also received a $100 marked package yesterday and paid nothing at all. Yet a different $100 from aliexpress got me $80 import duties (based on the official +20%), go figure ...

 

It can depend what is declared on the package and where it is coming from on the inspection rate and charges.

 

I don't suppose it's easy to source the 3K panel without spending an arm/leg? many sites still do FHD - though most QHD+ version seems discontinued.

 

@t456, I'm looking for a 1080p-1440p panel with better response times. My current Chi Mei Innolux CMN1343 panel looks great, but the stock colour calibration is terrible, and the response times are equally bad. I can see the contrast changing as I go from a dark scene (say, in a game) to a white one (like a webpage). OLED would be great, but I'm fine with LCD, so long as I get MacBook-levels of quality.

 

Generally, low-response means high Hz's and vice versa. Unfortunately, I've already overclocked my 1440p (flashed firmware to override Intel HD) and the result was just as bad as any other IPS at +5% or so, regardless resolution. The only alternative is a TN and there do exist some that would be more-or-less compatible. Narrowed them down to just two that are actually very good, especially that B131HW02 V0 is promising. Amazingly, that is supposed to be a 98% Adobe RGB screen (easily beating the 13" Retinas, if you like). Seems it was used in the premium, $2k models of the Sony Vaio VPC Z11 series.

There's even two moderately-priced examples on ebay. Hm ... will give this thing a try myself. Not sure about losing the 1440p though, kinda gotten used to the real estate.

Two issues:

1. It's a 13.1", so the lid needs some minor work.
2. We can't use the fhd cable 'as is' since the pin-out is different.
3. There's no brightness pin, according to the sheet (perhaps an error).

Will splice a Z11 cable to the W230SS's wqhd cable. Don't have the SS's fhd version, but the wqhd and even the short qhd can be used for this specific panel; both have more wires than the panel needs and it is a bottom-right connector panel, same as the qhd. See, the fhd and wqhd have longer cables since they needed to reach the bottom-left of the panel, traversing from the left hinge, trailing underneath the panel. If you have a fhd already then it is easier; snip and swap the wires around mid-way and resolder them.

If that's a bit too excessive a mod; run down the the complete TN list and search for their specification sheets. Verify their pin-out against that of the SS's fhd panel, your Chi Mei N133HSE-EA1.

In theory, yes. But in reality my country's customs department works in an entirely random fashion. That's also why they have the worst record in the EU. Still ... it beats Italy, where you have about 50% chance of the parcel arriving at your home, rather than being 'lost' somewhere along the way by the Italian mafia postal services .

 

You've got to be kidding me. I just searched Panelook, and there isn't a single Adobe RGB 13.3" 1080p display? I'm really unwilling to mod my W230SS so extensively... And the N133HSE-EA1 starts showing scanlines at 75 Hz, and completely derps out at 80 Hz and above.

 

Still using my W230SS daily since late 2014, on my second motherboard after a GPU vbios issue, second top cover/screen, still have a year of warranty left too . Picked up a second battery toward the end of last year so I can get about 8 hours of productive work with the CPU undervolted. For those wondering, it's still a capable machine. Runs both CSGO and Diablo at fluent framerates, sucks there's no DP out as i'd love to be able to cart it to a LAN with me and hook it up to my 144hz monitor. Hopefully it holds up well for the next year or so until it's time to replace it, to be honest I think the build quality will render most of these devices obsolete before the specs do.

 

Do you really need high-gamut? You haven't got one now, so you might settle for ' just as good, but much lower response time'. The other TN panels might fit that bill.

Now, if you insist on high-gamut and low response time; if mine works then I wouldn't mind modding another cable or two. That way it'd be just a small matter of a few changes to the display lid.

How did you manage that, btw? Did Intel finally release a fixed driver for Haswell-Optimus or did you change the firmware too?

 

Usually the demand for colour accurate 13.3" panels is low as few people do such important colour work on a small display.

 

I dunno... Thing is, I'm quite sure that this machine has not more than another year and a half of active use with me, that's it. Then I might move to something else, or just build a desktop, because none of the new laptops have anything particularly interesting. I don't want to invest in something that I might not actually use for long more.

The former. Refer to this post; the driver linked enables CRU to write to the EDID. We still can't create custom resolutions from within the Intel control panel, though.

It works, tested with the Blur Busters UFO test. But on my display, 75 Hz looks horrible, with horizontal black lines everywhere, a very obvious white-to-yellow tint going from right to left of my display, and overall gives me a headache with slightly prolonged use.

 

Anyone have a recommendation for a wireless card upgrade for the W230SS? I have the original card it came with and would like to upgrade to an AC card.

 

You've got one option: the Intel Wireless-AC 7260. It's an mPCI-e card.

If you want to use a newer card (which are all M. 2), you need an M.2 to mPCIe adapter.

 

I used to run Windows 10 and Linux off of their own SSD's without a problem. I repurposed the SSD with Windows on it about nine months ago. Now yesterday and today I've spent many hours trying to install Windows 10 and I just can't get it to work right. Yesterday after installing and reinstalling drivers, windows, and steam, I could get everything working right. But then the computer decided that some games would just freeze. I reinstalled windows again but this time the entire computer would freeze as soon as I tried to open steam. Then after trying again, the computer would freeze all the time after installing graphics drivers. It boots into safe mode just fine though. The bottom cover is off and I can feel the processor get super hot after the freeze and the fan spins up to full speed. I've tried letting windows install the drivers automatically and I've kept the computer from connecting to a network and tried installing everything manually, but no luck.

 

I noticed one thing about the W230SS—its cooling system is extremely vulnerable to mild knocks and bumps. I put my notebook in my backpack and carried it around, and when I got back home and launched Ethan Carter, the GPU went up to 88 °C, and crashed. Tried it again with Witcher 3, same thing happened. Had to open up the heatsink and reapply CLU, temps went down by 20 °C.

Serious pain in the neck, this notebook. Clearly the mounting pressure is horrible.

 

What paste are you using?

 

Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra. I notice it dries up.

 

I would go with IC diamond as it is less prone to such issues. If you keep pumping the liquid metal with some air it can do that.

 

I'm not sure what the rules are on this here but I feel like I've payed my dues to this thread since I got this notebook in 2014. Maybe one of you guys will be able to fix my W230SS - you can read about its struggles in this thread a few months ago:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/182459968634?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

 

I get a feeling your CPU is overheating (or there's insufficient voltage), which means it's a heatsink issue. Consider using HWInfo to read your individual core temperatures as you use the CPU. If it gets exceedingly high disproportionate to usage, then we have your problem.

 

I thought the same myself but using RealTemp, I had a shutdown when it was no more than 50 degrees. My guess is there's a power regulator somewhere on the motherboard that overheats but I don't know how to fix that. Also, running Prime95 or playing a game doesn't trigger it to shut down any more so than would Word or Chrome, and the time it takes to reach a first hard shutdown is not consistent from cold boot.

 

Another owner here, thought not as happy as most of you...
both of the screen's hinges broke, or rather the piece that holds them to the plastic back..
Repurposing the laptop as a desktop s also a problem since hdmi and vga outputs are intermittently blacking out, and its really a pain to work like that.

im thinking about extending the eDP cable somehow, so i can fit the screen on something. Has anyone here done something like that?

 

I don't remember where (probably in this thread somewhere), but someone pulled their W230SS apart and used nuts/bolts to hold the hinges together. Someone said it had a steampunk look and they were right, but I would do the same to keep this baby running.

Edit - let's see if this works. I can't see all the images, but hope this helps

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/w230ss-xmg-p304-broken-hinge-dented-frame.768856/page-4

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Some plastic glue might work too.

 

i tried glue, it broke too. The problem came from the hinged becoming waaaay to hard to turn, so the pressure of closing the lid came down on the smallest point where the long metal bar goes up.
Anyway id much rather making this machine into smething elese, do you have any experience with those screen cables?

Argg the right side of my keyboard isnt clicking very well ether

 

Then you need to grease up the hinges a bit most likely before repairing the connection to the top panel.

 

Hi all, I was wondering why my laptop was getting so low fps, CPU ID Hwmonitor says my cpu and gpu are at 90+ C, it does not feel this way, even as soon as it boots up it says 90+ C. I have made everything to performance mode in battery and nvidia settings.

 

which operating system are you using?

Most probably you need to resit the heatsink.

 

1. Windows 10
2. I will try this, if I just take it off and then I put it back on will I have to repaste it?

 

I say do a full repaste. If that doesn't fix it, you might have a bad heatpipe.


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Inspect the heatsink itself for dust too

 

Thank you. I always seem to forget to mention that, but it is always part of my repaste.

This laptop was the first one that I have undervolted and used CLU on. With that combination it runs great temps.

I still can't seem to find a suitable replacement for it for my use. It goes to work with me most days, and then gets mild gaming after work.


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