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

Hit F2 on startup.

 

Hmm Maybe HT could put a video up for us noobs on how to flash a clevo bios :thumbsup: like he always does

 

either redownload the package or use another usb stick (or even usb port), something's wrong

 

Was just in the process of doing as you said, have so many usb sticks but cant find them when you need them, but just dug one out gona try an see what happens

 

I'll try and write up a tutorial unless someone else beats me to it.

Full Walkthrough for flashing the BIOS from USB:

1. Download latest version of Rufus (1.3.4)
2. Choose your flash drive.
3. Mark partition scheme as MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI computers
4. File system: FAT32
5. Default cluster size
6. New volume label: Whatever you want. Keep it reasonably short.
7. Make sure “quick format is checked”
8. Check “create a bootable disk” and change the drop down to MS-DOS
9. Leave all else as default and click start.
10. Once you have done this copy all of the files from the rar you have downloaded from Prema’s website to the root of the flash drive as shown.
11. Plug the flash drive into left USB port (USB 2.0) and boot into the BIOS by pressing F2 during startup. Go into the boot options and turn off UEFI booting.
12. Next you can either boot into the BIOS again after saving and set it to boot from your flashdrive or you can use F7 during startup to go into the boot menu once the BIOS saves and select your flash drive to boot from (again, after UEFI has been turned off).
13. You will boot off the flash drive into MSDOS type “update”, follow the instructions, and remove the battery and unplug the PSU for 30 seconds after the laptop has finished flashing and shut down.
14. Plug the battery and PSU back in, enjoy your new BIOS and splash screen.

 

Thanks Frewster, i managed to do it using another usb stick, first one was dodgy (thanks Nikita), anyhow i'm sure there are plenty of guys on here, who will find your tutorial very handy :thumbsup:

....Zombie you wouldn't by any chance have a screen shot of your overclock of the GPU i wanna see if i can overclock to something similar to yours?

 

Thanks, is this also good for installing the Clevo stocks Bios and ec as well? I assume the rar linked from Prema's site is all I need in one package?

 

Thanks, but I am unable to locate the said 640MB driver you mentioned. The largest size file in regards to the 7620 module is 350MB. I downloaded it and attempted to install it. Still no cigar. I'm gonna try installing Windows 8 Pro this weekend if time permits and see if that remedies the issue. If not, then I'm just gonna throw the thing in the bin (the 7620, not the W230ST lol) and get myself a Killer-N and just use the bluetooth dongle (which I should have done from the start).

Thanks for the replies though. Really helpful community

 

I plan on it. Just really busy with other things in life at the moment.

 

what sworng wit your machine? i had a clicking hard drive. i got it RMA'd and took a few days. in the process of getting it done i asked them about bios's they (PCS) said we can only use there bios as it voids warranty should any problems occur... how we gonna combat that lol.

 

It should be about the same but the commands for MSDOS might a little different. Read the readme file in the rar to find out.

Yes, Prema's rars have both the ec and the BIOS.

 

PWNPCS for example ships directly with their version of the Mod.

 

Prema, Sisqo is talking about PC Specialist in the UK , i dont think they do a modded bios, i could be wrong

Also prema what are the major differences between your Mod an the stock bios?

 

HTWingnut you were right, 160 MHZ OC with stock voltage was stable with 3DMark, but in the games it kept crashing. I'm being a little adventurous, played GRID 2, Dirt 3 and Crysis 3 for a couple hours with +200 Mhz OC and +220mV OV. temperatures seem stable, no crash, hope the GPU isn't melting, fingers crossed . In general this card can take a lot of pounding as it seems.

 

I know this a little off topic, and I am new here, but has anybody used the Clevo with duel external displays if it is even possible? Also, what resolutions can you expect?
Thanks.

 

Zombie don't pound this card too hard lol, anyhow what are you using to oc this card a screen shot will be appreciated, thanks

 

I just got that new Shadow Warrior game and it is SOOOO FUN, you guys seriously got to try it. It runs perfectly on this laptop.

You get to chop people up with a samurai sword, watch body parts fly everywhere, cut 3 people in half with 1 swing, its amazing!

only thing is it doesn't seem to detect the GTX so you need to go to Nvidia panel and Enable it.

This game is just sooo hilarious and fun, you all have to try it.

 

Is there any news of an audio update? I'm considering buying it but I heard the speakers/sound card aren't very good. How about the key board? Is it flimsy?

 

Got a new mSATA drive today, still gets disconnected randomly. Either I got one more crappy mSATA drive OR the SATA controller is faulty on the motherboard and I have to send it back AGAIN..

Crap..

 

I'm using NVIDIA Inspector. Here's a screenshot.

 

I´m running on 2x 24" Benq Displays @1920x1080/60Hz, (G2420HDBL on VGA and XL2410T on HDMI) without problems atm. At first i had issues with blurriness on the desktop, but they are gone. Don´t know where this came from and what i did to get rid of it and i also don´t ask why. Some problems disappear as quick as the appeared.

I think it should be possibe to run 3 displays also (with the integrated one) because of the 2 GPU´s, my old M11x r3 was capable to do so, but i haven´t tested on the W230 yet.

 

The keyboard is superb! Can't say anything else about it. Well it's illuminated, but that's pretty obvious.

The speakers are really a pain. When they are trying to compete with the cooling fan in their high pitch sound, I really get a headache. But that's pretty much the only downside of this machine. For the rest it's an outstanding notebook.

I just bough a pair bluetooth speaker. At first I tried a cheap one, but now I ended up with a pretty sophisticated model. However it doesn't matter which model to get, they will all sound better than the internal speakers.

 

LOL. Reminds me of Duke Nukem.

 

Yep, they really are disappointing.
My LCD broke. I've just been informed it won't be taken under warranty, so I spent the shipping fees and lost 2 weeks without my laptop for nothing.

 

Is it posiible to disable hd4600 in bios? And set a ahci hdd mode?

Anyone tried install and run macos?

 

AHCI of course, but disabling HD4600 is not possible, as it's used to display everything.

 

Can you still use the notebook? Or do you have to plug in an external monitor?

 

ext. monitor.
above all I have to swap the lcd !

 

At least it's not TOO expensive a replacement if you do it yourself.

 

Thanks. Despite the battery and sound, I think I will get it!

Do people recommend any upgrades? Thinking of buying from Xotic with the upgraded cooling paste and maybe the 1TB HD at 7200 RPM (7200 at 500 gb to 1TB at 5400 RPM "upgrade" is free)

 

If you are relying at all on the HDD then getting 7200rpm is a no brainer as it makes a huge difference.

 

I dont now that prefer 320 or 470?? ((
470 better but keyboard problems(((
320 is not thin....

 

I think you mean 230 and 740? *facepalm*

 

So I got the i7 4700MQ model. After some research i found out that reducing the voltage of the CPU doesn't really affect the idle temperature of the laptop (haven't actually tested it yet, im new to the whole undervolting-scene)
My question is now, can I actually lower the performance/capability of my clevo W230ST to obtain lower CPU idle temps? (i heard something about lowering the ''multipliers'' ? Or are there any other ways?) I'm really not satisfied with the 60 degrees idle temp... feels too high.
I don't really mind giving away some power from my i7, I came from a ULV i5 ivy bridge cpu that ran photoshop/illustrator fine...

with kind regards,

maarten from amsterdam

 

Hi there, what's wrong with that ?

 

Hey Lastnikita, I just think it's too high for an haswell i7 to run at 60 degrees idle... I would just wish it was running lower than that =) for the sake of coolness

edit: btw, it runs between 60-70 idle...

 

Problem with temps happens when they are high (90° +) for a long period of time, thus making the cpu throttle.
While Haswell as other CPUs are perfectly fine @60°, you should be getting around 60° @idle, not between 60 & 70.

You can repaste to lower the temp, as I suspect your current paste application is far from optimal.
Undervolting is also an option, it won't change much though, what will change is the speed of the fan.
Or blast your fan full-speed (Fn+F1) if you want it cooler, but I just don't see the point.

Clevo target those temps on purpose to get a quiet laptop, that is really nice and there's nothing wrong with it.

 

I know, just saying for people that plan to buy from the UK that there are alternatives (like PWNPCS) who ship with unlocked BIOS, so no worries there...
As for the second question: You can clock RAM above the stock 1866Mhz, secure your SSD/HDD, OC you iGPU, have no OC limit on dGPU, change TDP values, undervolt the base CPU voltage (not just the offset) and the list goes on and on...HTWingNut will walk us through the Mod sometime in the near future, if his kids permit so...

You could flash my Mod BIOS and lower the TDP in XTU or disable a few core and make it a triple, dual or single core.
Or you disable HT, or lower the voltage, or limit the multiplier, or disable Turbo, or...you are getting my point

 

Hehe, yeah, I'm kinda getting your point. There are alot of ways to lower temperatures.
My point is, what is the easiest solution for a tweaker-noob like me?
Also, I'm noticing my fan isn't even on/rotation UNLESS I play a game... Even when CPU cores hit 75 degrees, still no sign of
spinning fan. Also, the bursts people are ''complaining'' about dont seen to accure at my model.
Is there a way to manually set the fans to like 20% of there capability? Seems to me that would be the most logical way
to keep the system cooler... I only know the full burst mode FN+1 ...

 

Thanks Prema, understood, cant wait for HT ( no rush HT kids come first :thumbsup to do us a walk through of the changes an how to make the beast more efficient lol, my temps in BF4 hit 99 on all the cores yesterday keep forgetting to under-volt again after it crashes in game sometimes, i wish it wouldn't reset the under volt after crashes

 

Yay!! I just installed your v5 Mod Bios on my w230 and i have to say WOW! There are nearly as much options now as on my desktop board! Thanks a lot for your great work. The 10€ donation was a very good investment, i think ^^ So, i´m gonna test some OCing now, i think ^^ Like i read here there is some room for the dGPU now. Theres one question left for now: Hawkforce shipped my machine with a pair of Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600ers (KHX1600C9S3P1K2/8G). I´m currently running them @ DDR3-1866. Do you guys think these sticks can handle 2133?

Now i think i´ll...

stay calm and keep testing!

 

Hey guys,

what kind maximum CPU frequency are you guys getting while on battery? I'm on the 4702MQ here and I'm getting less than 50% of my peak CPU on battery (I get 3.1 GHz maximum on AC power, and 1.4 GHz maximum on battery).

Can this be changed in stock BIOS? Is it dangerous to change it?

 

when on performance mode, I'm getting maximum freq., ie 3.3Ghz on 4 cores.

 

Has anyone had issues with the cardreader detecting SD cards in this lappy?

P.

 

Sometimes i need to remove and reinsert before it gets detected. Same behaviour for you?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

I believe on battery they are limited to some low tpd on the 4700 I think it runs at 1.6ghz on battery. I believe with prema you can adjust that. It will be harder on your battery pack.

 

^ as I wrote, it doesn't change on battery.

I'll test again when it comes back next week, but my memory should be good enough
When the dGPU kicks in, it might lower because of the battery power draw limits.
But if on iGPU, no problem to get the maximum freqs.

 

Check your Clevo Control Center settings, if the power conservation is set to Energy Star (see screenshot attached), then the processor will always be UCed to 1.6 Ghz. I actually use this feature on battery to get some more juice out of it.

 

When on battery, I cannot select performance in the Clevo control center. It's grayed out (how about for you?). I can select balanced, but CPU still gets throttled to 1.4GHz Max when on battery. Sounds like BIOS might be treating my 4702MQ differently from the other CPUs.

I will check with Mythlogic and see what they have to say. It seems a pretty aggressive throttle, 50%... I can understand trying to save battery life but I'd like to be able to go to 3GHz when needed.

 

If you want full speed on battery just remove Clevo Control Center from the startup options and use Windows directly to set it to power mode...Clevo Control Center is just to Control the User...