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

Just ordered my W230ST from LPC today with a 256GB mSATA SSD for the OS. It'll be interesting to see if it has a Chimei or an AUO screen. I'll let you guys know when I get it.

 

Oh, come on play some classic cRPGs FFS!

 

When I had a netbook it made me revisit a lot of classics. Freelancer is the best game for netbooks. Great game, plays well on pretty much any hardware, just have to find a way to get ahold of it. I believe it requires a cfg edit or a little finagle to get it to run on 16:9 or 16:10 displays.

 

My order from is still "In Build Queue" from last week. I ordered it on the 11th. I am guessing either they are still waiting on parts to arrive, or have been so busy that they can't build it yet. Just sold my M6600 too, so no gaming for me either until it arrives.

 

Hmmm... I'm hoping that I don't have to wait an extra long time since mine hasn't gotten to the build queue yet.
Time to get another hobby I guess.

 

Would also like an answer to this! this is my major hold-up on buying.

 

I am having the same problem as you. I think they are just waiting on the Clevo shells to get to their store so that they can build them. They said that they are going to have Chemei screens though on all of the ones that are shipped out from the original orders.

 

Throttlestop does not work with Haswell yet as far as I know. Although Intel XTU works fine, and that's what I've used. Nice thing about XTU is set it and forget it.

 

so does intel xtu achieve the same sort of reductions in temperature and consequently fan activity as the having the 4702 would?

also another point.. would i be better off just buying my own copy of windows7 and making a bootable drive as opposed to buying an os every time i purchase a new laptop?

 

HT---how do you plan to fix the fan profiles? Does this require a bios mod?

 

Haha, I've just been playing Puzzles and Dragons on my phone, and checking NBR whenever I get on the netbook. Actually, sometimes browsing on the phone is better than on this netbook LOL.

Hmm, good idear. Might reinstall my savefile for Super Mario World and pick up where I left off on the Alienware...



Oh, by the way. I was just curious about how the resellers stress-test/burn-in/etc laptops that weren't ordered with an OS (like mine)? Are there apps that are run through the bios or something?

 

Dookie,
Iirc the ordering site will say that it has to have os for those test to be done.

 

So I pulled the trigger yesterday, and I just went with the 4702. I think the seller I'm buying from (hawkforce.de) builds their own, from scratch, so it's no more work than using the 4700 and they only charged €40 more. I figured, which is more likely once I get the laptop:
* "man my CPU is just *not* keeping up, wish I had a faster one", or
* " this thing is hot, I wish I could do something to make it run cooler"?

In my long experience with "powerful" laptops, it's absolutely always the latter. If I can invest a tiny bit extra to alleviate that problem, I'd be stupid not to.

 

I actually ended up changing my order to go for the 4800 (4702 isnt available in the UK as far as I can tell). Given I didn't want to cut corners on this laptop, my thought was to go for the 4800 - that way I can underclock it to 4700 frequencies if heat is an issue, but still have the flexibility to run at the higher native clock speed as required. I also speculated that a 4800 should be able to run at a given clock speed at a lower voltage than a 4700 (but I don't know whether this is true or not...?) given I assume its a higher rated chip...

Petrov.

PS I use 2 nespresso capsules to raise the back of my laptops - works a treat as they can "mould" around the base of the laptop and are super cheap obviously to replace if you lose them!

 

For the record, I was told by Mythlogic that their machines have BIOS modifications that fix the wonky fan profiles.

 

I agree.
Stock users will benefit from the 4702, but still, I think experienced users will prefer to tweak the 4700 to run cooler when desired.
Let us know if you get a word on the panel, I'm planning to buy from them also.

 

My y470 lenovo with 550m is still going strong, but i might just sell it, and gonna go to Poland and buy w230st. The thing is, i live in Scandinavia, so its non european union, that means i can claim VAT back, which is at least 15%, so i should save at least 200 bucks. Flight is cheap (35-50usd) round trip, and will have fun in capital Warsaw for a weekend. The store called x-kom.pl and they have offices in about 7 major cities of Poland.. They have 7 versions of ge40 (price range 1330-1570usd), but they don't know when will have w230st. If there are a lot of europeans on this forum but their countries are not in european union, or scandinavians, or even british (because that store tends to have low prices) should contact them about w230st, and then they would be interested in getting it, due to a fact we would generate heat with our requests i know one british guy who a year or so back went to buy 14 inch asus with at a time one of the best available gpu, 555m or whatever. he said, its much cheaper than in uk, and because flights are cheap with ryanair, he went there for few days and got it, plus had fun

 

I'm hoping that since the 4702 starts at a lower TDP, I'll be able to underclock / undervolt more than I would have with a 4700. As for a panel, the exact quote was

(Hey, his English is still miles better than my German)


When I get this, I'll make a post here with some details / impressions. If I can figure out the screen details using e.g. the Windows management console, I'll post that too.

 

I don't want to be nitpicking, but you mean Norway? As Denmark, Sweden and Finland are part of the European Union.

 

I woudn't be so sure.. since the 4700 also has higher frequencies for a very low voltage increase (25mv I think).
But I really don't know, a similar thing could be said about the 4800. I thinks its mostly about luck.

 

yeah my bad... tired, sorry for mistake. by the way, BLUEMOBILITY ... polish reseller and it also has customization too... i think i'll be off to poland next month

 

I don't know for certain if the 4700 or 4800 will run as cool, but likely the fan activity will be the same. As far as OS depends on how often you upgrade your laptop. If just one laptop every 2-3 years might as well get Windows with it. If you frequently upgrade then it might make sense to buy a full version because you can transfer the license to a new machine.

I don't plan on fixing it, just hoping a BIOS mod or actual update from Clevo or Sager fixes it (they have in the past).

I'm sure they have a pre-loaded hard drive or SSD they just plug in and test the system with.

I wouldn't doubt it. Hopefully we get something similar soon for Sager notebooks.

4702 I think is the no fuss CPU. But yeah if you like to or don't mind tweaking you can probably get a little more power out of the 4700 when needed. I don't know if the 4702 even has any XTU overclock potential either. It would probably benefit the most from it.

I think you're right. Luck plays a big part. Some users may not be able to undervolt nearly as much as others. But you can always underclock. As long as people understand that. I'm curious if / when Sager will actually offer the 4702 though.

 

I think past few years cpus had the least improvement... mine 2+ year old 2630qm (sandy bridge?), is still kind of on the same level with these new haswels, especially 4702 and 4700. I literally went to intel web site and did comparing of new 4 haswels and mine sandy bridge. All i would consider is GPU... and still with this 13 inch baby, ya'll be good to go for next two years for high-medium gameplay.

question, is it worth it to spend 94 extra usd to upgrade from 13.3" HD+ 1600 x 900 LED to 13,3" Full HD 1920 x 1080 LED? i dont do any kind of graphic design or whatever, and i guess i rather game on 1600x900 with more high settings on than 1920x1080 with lower settings AT AROUND SAME FPS. Is it good logic-thinking or not really?

 

While CPU's have only marginally improved, the low end quads have improved considerably. I7-2630QM vs i7-4700MQ improves about 40-50% in general. You can't just compare clock speeds either because the architecture can make a difference.

As far as LCD resolution, it's entirely personal preference. Your theory is sound, it's just if you want/need higher resolution for desktop work or not.

 

Can I ask what reseller is offering the HD+ option? I think you're crazy not to take all the pixels you can get, but apparently a very large number of people would rather have the lower-res screen than use hardware scaling to "simulate" that when needed...

 

Ordered one from hawkforce.de that should hopefully ship by the end of this week.

Plan to do a review when i get it if there arent any more in-depth reviews up already (will there be HTWing?) .

DISPLAY: 13.3" FullHD LED Display 1920x1080 NonGlare
PROZESSOR: Intel Core i7-4700MQ 2.4GHz/3.4GHz Turbo 6MB L3 Cache
GRAFIKKARTE: NVidia® GeForce™ GTX765M - 2GB GDDR5 - DX11 - Optimus
ARBEITSSPEICHER: 2x4 GB DDR3 1600
FESTPLATTE: ohne Festplatte
mSATA SSD: ohne mSATA SSD
LAUFWERK: ohne Laufwerk
WLAN: WLAN INTEL® ADVANCED-N 6235 (300Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
BETRIEBSSSYSTEM: ohne Betriebssystem
SERVICE: 24 Monate PickUp Garantie
TECHCHECK: ohne TechCheck

Oh and a little birdie told me the i7-4702QM doesnt support any XTU tweaking.

Mythologic already fixed the fan profiles? Does anyone already have one to confirm that?

 

But average users, gamers, wont feel/see a difference though...? even a bit needier users wont see it. I guess only hardcore users that uses some kind of software like cad or whatever, and that work with big projects that requires huge calculation will see/feel difference? aint that right? for most users the best investment is towards ssd and gpu, at least thats how i see it.

http://www.bluemobility.pl/laptop_customization.php?products_id=24894

by the way i have 14 incher with 1366x768... suits me well.

 

Not quite true. If you scale your CPU speed and run a few benchmarks you will see a measurable difference in performance in many games.

 

what kind of difference it gives in games? loading times better by 1 second (still thats mostly hdd/ssd job)? because it does not effect fps. i guess maybe rendering big map looks, still its more of gpu duty, since its graphics.

 

See this quick comparison I did a while back with Just Cause 2. It's a primarily GPU limited game, and varying clock speed of i7-3610QM resulted in 10-20% FPS reduction: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...amd-trinity-notebook-list-66.html#post8954759

 

Can't leave this thread alone without have 2 or 3 pages of new posts to sort through

Yeah there are a number of ways that testing is still done. Live CD's and stock HDDs with the software preloaded, none of us want to have you ship the machine back simply because it wasn't tested before being sent out. You can be sure that machine will past QA checks before leaving.

 

Anyone else notice an odd screen flicker? It seems to happen every few minutes for me sometimes. I don't know if it's just the pixels refreshing, or if there's some sort of setting I can change to prevent this.

I received mine yesterday and so far all I've done is install windows 8 and a programs (office, steam, VLC, etc).

 

Can someone confirm Logical Blue One use australian dollars ? (I'm 90% sure...)

Because after conversion in euro, it's very interesting shipping in France

Envoyé depuis mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

Wow, I didn't realize that they threw WiDi onto the wifi card. That's good news... I did opt for the Intel 7260. I was so busy looking at the 2x2 vs 3x3 that I missed WiDi completely. They "should" list that as a feature. They list AC, Bluetooth 4.0 but not WiDi. If it was Apple, you bet they'd be all over the "Airplay" stuff. WiDi is not prominently listed anywhere.

 

HT, have you had a chance to mess around with GPU overclocking? If so how far have you been able to push your 765m whilst maintaining stability?

 

I think you forget the oversea taxes you may pay if buying from Australia. I'm also from France and I'm considering buying from UK resellers (PWNPCS or PCSpecialists). Their prices are lower, no taxes shipping to France and very convenient for support service. Imagine you have to RMA to Australia

 

Try disabling the new power saving feature of the Haswell IGPU.

On the MSI GT70 i tested that power saving feature caused some annoying screen flicker.

 

The faster the CPU, the faster it will complete the jobs, and save you time, even if you don't see it
Games aren't just about graphics, a lot of work is done by the CPU.
Still, I wouldn't get anything else than 4700 because of the price difference, and the 5% perf difference.

I would get full-HD over HD+ anytime, and lower the details (or scale to 720p) if needed.
I prefer a bigger resolution over complex graphics. When things go fast, I don't have time to notice geometrical complexity or these sort of things, but I can for sure notice the resolution (think of a racing game, with low res you can't anticipate the next turn because you don't see it well)

+1, VAT (TVA) and customs too.
Are you sure there won't be any, ordering from UK ? Since they aren't UE members ?

At last, PCS told me they don't have any FR keyboard
I'm still looking to order from them, and get the keyboard some place else, since their prices are much lower than those of clevo.fr

 

Does anyone have idle and load temps for both the GPU and CPU?
NM I saw HTWingNut's review, excellent and answers all my questions
Thanks!

 

Hey HT, been scanning this post since you posted the link to Clevo's drivers. The links on Clevo's websites still don't work. On Sager's website they don't list the W230ST yet. Anywhere else we can get drivers?

 

The UK is still at least for now part of the EU lol, so yes the tax paid there does count.

 

Thought of EUR members, my mind then slipped
Ok, first one to find a place to buy parts wins !!!

 

The Asia links seem to work, just use those for now. It may take a while before they populate the Europe and USA links.

 

Okay, okay---has anyone here received their unit and not had an issue with the LCD? Screen blemish, flicker---it would be reassuring to hear from someone with no issues. Or is this par for the course for this manufacturer?

 

Message to UK buyers. The w230st that PC Specialist are selling does not support mSATA drives, and is the reason why they do not offer anything other than the 2.5" drive. I have no idea why this is... I had assumed all machines would be able to fit 2 x mSATA SSDs. I'd be grateful for an explanation if anyone knows why there is a different version to the US and Asia machines... hopefully it's not all UK w230sts.

 

Maybe they just blocked off the ports...? Not sure how though because I'm pretty sure after you pop open the service panel, everything is exposed.

Sager NP8250s have their 2nd MSata slots sealed off with a metal shield that has VOID WARRANTY stickers over the screw holes.

 

The screen flicker seems to be a driver issue for me. The problem I have now though is driver issues and specifically, difficulties in detecting my graphics card. It was working for a while, then I updated the Intel integrated graphics card driver and installed a few other drivers and all of a sudden couldn't get graphics card detected again. I'm currently doing a clean reinstall of windows 8 and will try using the driver install utility disk, and hopefully it will work again. Since there's no optical drive, I've been transfering drivers from the DVD manually, but maybe the order I'm installing these is causing the GPU detection issues? Once I had Intel HD4600 driver installed though there was no screen issues and I don't have any issues with dead pixels or blurs so far.

 

Regarding the service panel, that's what I was thinking. I have contacted another UK seller that is curiously offering 1 MSata (as well as the 2.5" drive). I wonder why they blocked the 2nd MSata port on the NP8250? There must be a reason for it...

 

hope this msata nonsense is not true for some uk stock cos i thought knew who my reseller was once i was ready to buy. if that is the case then.....Erm. erm lol

 

Follow up - I have just checked back to PC Specialist, they have updated their site and are offering 1x mSATA, putting them in line with other UK competitors. Sadly It's still not 2 mSATAs... however (although curiously, RAID1 and RAID0 is still offered)?