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

I understand it also manages the iGPU frequency to save battery, maybe it handles some other stuff too ?

 

Thanks Prema----but are you sure? I quit out of Hotkey.exe and the CPU Freqency still wouldn't exceed the boundary. Is there another process other than Hotkey.exe to remove, and if so, how do I set things up so that it's completely gone and windows is managing power?

 

Quitting hotkey won't help, you have to stop it from loading when Windows starts. So just remove it from the startup folder.

BTW: Remember when I said my W11 IPS screen was so much brighter than my W23, well just measured it and it is 238 (W23) vs. 337 (W11) Candela. The 238 is a surprise as the screen is advertised at 350...

 

If those truly are the figures of our screen then that is disappointing, don't get me wrong the screen is beautiful but it could have been better with the advertised figures as Prema has stated.

 

I guess screens will be replaced soon, perhaps to a higher res one in few months, some brave soul will take the first leap(not me )

Sent from my SGH-I317M using Tapatalk 2

 

I nominate Zombie's W230 as a test dummy .

 

PCS got my RMA delivered back to the wrong address. I have to get it shipped again to me, losing more time & money.

As for customer care, do not trust those guys !

 

I feel for you Nikita , i am glad i jumped ship when i had the chance, otherwise i would have been in the same predicament, i hope you receive it soon buddy.

as for PCS they have gone from bad to worse, don't they understand that treating customers this way is just gonna lose them business, seems like they don't care

 

Hi, I remember some time ago people were having problems with the touch pad on their w230st.
I ordered mine through Hidevo and got it shipped to the UK, great service I must say, problem was only top left corner of the touchpad was responsive, not ideal if you are a bit of a road warior and too lazy to break out a mouse every time you use the lappy.
I spoke with Hidevo who were pretty cool and agreed to replace/look at the lappy but I didnt want to send it all the way back to the US for such a small issue - Anyway...

I ordered the SYNAPTICS 920-001019-01 E164564 TM-01146-004 WJ943-070 from ebay, it works like a charm, not the exact model listed in the service manual, but it fits and has worked ace from the beginning, I can only think it was a bad touchpad in the first place.

Just a heads up if anyone else has a flakey touchpad.

 

does it look & feel the same ?

 

Hey Hanuman, just curious as to why you ordered from the US when we have sellers here in the UK who are selling the W230ST for decent prices, i bet it was a lot more expensive what with delivery and import charges???

 

When I did this the system started up locked at maximum 1.4GHz and wouldn't accept the high performance state until I loaded hotkey.exe again and selected performance.

So it seems that something else other than removing hotkey from the startup folder needs to be done in order to wrest control of the CPU scaling from Hotkey and give it fully to windows.

 

Is there some place I can find the service manual?

 

Go to Run > services.msc > Disable the PowerBiosServer service.

 

Here's what I did. I tried disabling Intel SpeedStep in BIOS. And voila! The CPU is at 3GHz even when on battery.

So, something is implementing a software policy that when I'm on battery, the CPU is capped at low GHz. Whatever it is, it loads on Windows boot. And it ain't Hotkey.exe. Do you have any idea what it is?

To recap:

• Windows is set to High Performance (I edited this to require 100% minimum CPU use on both AC and battery)
• When on AC power, maximum CPU speed is 3 GHz
• When on battery, speedstep on, maximum CPU speed doesn't exceed 1.4 GHz and performance mode is grayed out in Clevo Control Center
• Erasing Hotkey.exe from the windows startup folder and rebooting has no effect on this.
• Switching speedstep off in BIOS causes the speed to go all the way to 3GHz whether on battery or on AC power.

 

That did the trick, thanks! Had to remove Hotkey.exe from the All Users Startup folder, disable PowerBiosServer, and then reboot. Now the laptop obeys my Windows profiles and goes all the way up to 3GHz on battery! Awesome!

 

Thats' strange, maybe it is different from Win 8. In Win 7 I just have to set the system to perf. mode (in Windows settings not Control Center) and remove the Control Center. Then after reboot it boosts all the way.

Clevo Service Manuals

 

it may depend what was your power profile before you removed hotkey.exe, also might be different for a 4702mq.
Either way, if you want to get rid of the control center, you must disable the associated service (powerbiosserver)

 

Well, PowerBiosServer is authored by Clevo, and Clevo may not have tested the 4702 MQ to go into this device. I found its behavior quite erratic---at times it would throttle the CPU to to 800 MHz (that's a throttle to 30% of Max speed !) and the system would become dog slow when on battery, with no way to override.

My recommendation is to turn off the damn thing if you're running the 4702. It doesn't do anything other than override Windows's own power profile and Win-X functionality.

Thanks to all for your help! I've updated my review accordingly.

 

I wouldn't be so sure of that... A battery test to compare both scenario should be useful.

 

Currently got a W110er with the spec in my sig. I'm going to be in Hong Kong in a months time for 5/6 days. Would I have time to pick a W230st? Also do I have to install a 4th gen Intel CPU or can I put my 3rd gen one in? Are there any shops that would part-ex my W110er?

 

Hey guys I'm looking forward to buy this. I hope you guys would be able to help me choose.

- What are the pros and cons?
- If I don't get the SSD now, will I be able to add one later?
- Any suggestions about parts or upgrades
- I am using MBNA Platinum Card to purchase it which gives an extra 1 year manufacturer's warranty to any electronics. Will it work with Sager?
- Anything else you would wanna suggest.

 

You will be able to add a SSD later. Keep in mind this model only has one hard drive bay but 2 mSATA slots so you'll want to add a mSATA istead of a standard SSD.
Suggestions on upgrades really is to get a mSATA drive in there. If you're using it in a place where you may be away from the access point like a school campus a better wireless card could also help out as it will pick up weaker signals better and hold them better.
You'll want to ask your credit card company if it will work with Sager, i dont see why it wouldnt.
Make sure you get Windows on the computer if you dont have a copy already to install, most places sell it without it preinstalled.

 

I seem to be able to overclock my core to only about +200 with the max OV If not, my games will crash or my graphic driver will reset. Am I doing it wrong?

 

Mine arrived Saturday morning ... really impressed so far, BF3 at 1080p runs on ultra (No MSAA) averaging 45 fps in caspian border!

 

HTWingNut.. have you flashed prema's bios?

 

You're not doing it wrong, every chip is different. A rule of thumb is, increase voltage by a small step, then increase clock till it crashes. Then increase voltage again, and repeat the process. You'll find the sweet spot then. Don't think sliding the ov all the way to the max will help in terms of stability.

I've been doing extensive testing, and found that 250mv and 200mhz is the sweet spot for me. Some higher settings passed 3D marks/furmarks fine, but crashes in games.

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Since months...

 

Hey thanks for the reply. I will make sure I would get that.

I heard that the sound quality is bad. Right now I'm trying to make up my mind between this and Lenovo y410p.

Another question, Is there any way I could add another GPU (2 GTX 765M) to get SLI on this system? I know I can do that with y410p.
I appreciate your help.

 

Exactly. I really want to share my thoughts on it, just so freaking busy lately. Work and kids are kicking my butt. I'm getting more actual use out of my laptop than just playing around with it or testing it.

 

The sound really is not bad at all. I have read quite a few complains before receiving my laptop but was very surprised. The quality may not be amazing but what do you expect from laptop speakers? The quality is totally fine and is very loud; I can play all my games with the laptop speakers with no problems what so ever hearing anything. My brother actually keeps yelling at me to turn it down from all the gunfire.

I was expecting some weak poor speakers that i could barely hear.

 

There is not even a comparison. You will love the 1080p screen on the W230ST. And it weighs a pound less. And it has the 765m.

You can forget about SLI though.

 

Based on my experience so far, there is little difference. With the Windows power profile on Balanced (CPU allowed to go to 3GHz when needed, but down to 800MHz when not needed) the battery life is about 15% lower compared to when I had Clevo Control Center + PowerBiosServer on (CPU throttled to 1.5GHz no matter what).

So overall I'm a happy camper without the old Clevo Control Center. It just made the computer too darn slow on battery.

 

Tbh, I careless about how loud the sound is. Some ppl were complaining about some buzzy noise but all the youtube reviews proved it wrong.

I am leaning more towards W230ST. But are you saying that SLI on W230ST is not possible? My goal is to buy a laptop and not worry about upgrading for a long time as I'm selling my M14x which I bought with few upgrades

 

How's everyone done for overclocking the GPU (Nvidia GPU)?

 

Doesn't Control Center also manage hotkeys and OSD ?

 

Well i cant speak for everyone else but i had my GPU overclocked yesterday an was playing BF4 (temps were in mid 80s) an all of a sudden i started getting this very annoying beeping in game it got so annoying i tried to lower the oc but to no avail an had to set the GPU to default in Nvidia Inspector, and the beeping went away, anyone have an clues to why it did that?

....i was using the same settings as Zombie to over clock my GPU...

 

I actually don't know what hot keys it managed. Fn-1 (fan ultra mode) still works, and all the other Fn-controls still work (volume, brightness, LCD dim, etc). It's true that OSD when you push them no longer works, but---small price to pay, in my view. When I do live demos I need max CPU.

I'll experiment to see if you can keep CCC running but keep off the PowerBiosServer.

 

Fan control question:

I have noticed when i play League of Legends that the fan will spin its usual fast speed, but every 10 or so seconds itl slow down, and then immediately speed up again. This seems a bit annoying, i imagine it is due to LOL not being the most demanding game.

Is there any way to fix the fan speed or keep it from constantly slowing down and speeding up? I know you can do the FN-F1 but that just seems unnecessarily fast. This speed / slow down just seems like quite a bit of wear on the fan.

 

Ordered mine from Mythlogic a day and a half ago.

After my 1 year old MSI GT60 died, I started looking for a new laptop. Some thing way smaller and lighter but with high performance. Narroved my choises down to two laptops. Than had an agonizing week of trying to decide between the two. W230ST - some what better hardware, 2 mSSD vs P34G - 1mSSD, way better thermals, at least according to the few reviews I've been able to find. W230ST has only one fan / heat sink vs P34G which has two. Looking at the pictures, however, the fan / heat sink in W230ST is way bigger then the fan / heat sinks in P34G. Again, looking at the pictures, I would expect the air flow volume from one fan and the total heat sink surface area of the W230ST to be very close to that of the two fans in P34G. Assuming that, I could not understand why P34G would have so much better thermals. I could not find any actual benchmarks for the P34G to confirm the claims of way better thermals however, and so I was stuck between the two.

Two days ago I finally cam across this review: GIGABYTE P34G Detailed Product Showcase Unboxing & Review - YouTube
To summaries it, P34G...
Idle temperatures: CPU around 55 C, GPU around 45 C.
3DMark Vantage, maximum temperatures: CPU 92 C, GPU 68 C.
3DMark 11, maximum temperatures: CPU 92 C, GPU 68C.
FurMark, maximum temperatures: CPU 92 C, GPU 76 C.
Do not know if it started throttling to keep CPU temperatures from going over 92 C, but either way that is not what i would call way better thermals, compared to W230ST.

After finding the above review and watching it over a number of times, I ordered my W230ST from Mythlogic.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4800MQ
Thermal Compound: Free IC Diamond Thermal Compound
System Memory: 16GB (2 x 8GB) , PC3-12800, 1600MHz SODIMM
Video Adapter: NVIDIA 765M 2048MB GDDR5 DX11 GPU with Optimus Technology / Embedded Intel HD Graphics
mSATA Solid State Drive1: Samsung PM841 (840 Pro) 512GB mSATA Solid State Drive
mSATA Solid State Drive2: Samsung PM841 (840 Pro) 512GB mSATA Solid State Drive
Hard Drive: None (REQUIRES mSATA for Bootable Drive)
Network Card: Onboard Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem
Wireless Card: Intel Centrino Advanced-AC 7260 2*2 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n + BT 4.0 350/867MB Total Bandwidth
Operating System: Windows 8 Professional

Will under-volt, slightly under-clock it once i get it.
I have also ordered:
SLAPPA Ballistix PRO-TOUR 15.4" Laptop Backpack
SLAPPA Ballistix PTAC Matrix Laptop Sleeve 13" - Do not know if W230ST will fit in it, if not I'll try to find another that fits just right. Any one found a good sleeve that does?

As my W230ST will be spending a lot of time in the backpack, i wanted a cooling pad, which will be in the backpack along with it, similar in size to W230ST. I've ordered NotePal X-Lite II - Cooler Master
NotePal X-Lite II is 330 x 251.2 x 28.2mm vs W230ST 330 x 227 x 31.9mm. I think NotePal X-Lite II will be sufficient, and I should be able to fit both in the backpack with plenty of room left over for other things.

HTWingNut, thank you for your amazing reviews and videos for W230ST
Prema, thank you for your prodigious work with the BIOS for W230ST
The two of you were a big part of my decision to purchase my W230ST

 

As for a sleeve, can't say if it's "good" but I ordered this one which does the job for me (wanted a shoulder strap)
eBay | 13 inch Laptop Bag Carry Case w.Pocket,Shoulder Strap Fit 13.3" Sony Vaio Duo 13

 

That's weird, I play LoL for several hours each day on this machine, and it mostly stays at the "moderate"/second speed-step, rarely going into the idle state on long death timers.


----

Does anyone here have problems with turning off the machine on battery? After using it for a long period of time [1-3+ Hrs] the machine does not turn off properly (Happened 3 times now), it seems windows is shut down completly and it just stays on a black screen. I don't think it is windows, because windows' irregular-shutdown recognization usually works pretty well, and windows has no log entry about the system shutdown beeing forced (holding the powerbutton to forceshutdown).
Weirdly I only have this behaviour on Battery, on AC it works flawless.

+I'm on Premas mod. It worked without problems on battery a month ago, it might be due to smth I did in the bios Q_Q

 

Very weird, beeping as in how it beeps during bios flash? I haven't had any such issue yet, don't have bf4 though.

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I can't help you with the reason it is beeping [so far I found out it does this erratic beeping on: fan missing, failed to spin the fan up, Battery close to empty. I could also imagine it beeps on: Too high temperature, Problems in power-drain (too high) ], but you can disable/mute the Mono-Speaker by using the VIA HD Audio Deck, there is an control-option for the Systemspeaker. Setting it to anything below 100 disabled it, so there only is on/off despite it being a 0-100 option

 

Did you turn off hyperthreading? I found out that hyperthreading doesn't really work well when on battery mode.

 

I'm planning to order a W230ST soon.
Can anyone estimate the odds of getting a dead pixel? This is a big concern for me, but if it's only 1% then I won't bother with insurance.
Which seller would you recommend? I am in the US (contiguous 48) and am considering ordering from Xoticpc.
Thanks

 

Buy the Dead pixel warranty. In that way there is a good chance they'll check your panel before shipping.

I'd recommend mythlogic, only cuz I've had amazing experience with them. But then again I have never purchased from xotic

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Any company will check a panel on a zero dead pixel policy, the cost of shipping a return makes it a must.

 

If you get the 0 dead pixel guarantee Sager will have 4 techs visually inspect it and run a program specifically made to look for them. If you dont get it they are rare, I'd say less then 1% but if you get one your eye will always be drawn to it.

 

Man, I haven't checked this thread in ages. We had guests after our big vacation so I'm just getting a chance to really settle in now. Looks like no major problems have cropped up, which is encouraging. I need to do some serious/demanding gaming to break in my little beauty!


I did have a question about BIOS, though. I got my system from hawkforce.de, and as far as I can tell it's straight up Clevo original everything, plus the SSD, hard drive, RAM and CPU I ordered. Given that, is there an official BIOS update that I can flash? I want to keep my warranty intact, so while I appreciate what Prema is doing I don't really want to mess with it.

There's not any specific thing I want to see "fixed", but if they can stop the fan bursting and/or improve battery life, I'd definitely be happy to update.