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

Awesome, you guys rock !
I'll test that asap =)

 

Neither will really affect battery life. It will just take longer to process tasks with the slower speeds, likely consuming more energy in the process. With what maxexcloo has that will just reduce peak temperatures is all. The CPU will idle and run its lowest state regardless.

 

Will it really affect battery life or not I don't know, but the cpu @turbo draws way more energy than without turbo, for the same task.
That is because voltage is raised a lot to achieve those turbo states. What you said is true for cpu @8x though, it will not be more power efficient than @24x.

 

As long you're using the clevo control center power settings, my cpu doesnt pass 8x anyway, neither does the IGPU pass 4x on battery :| So, why not optimize voltages for it

 

Looking forward to your feedback then!

 

So this EC doesn't require the official 1.03.02 BIOS? I want to test it out and I know you said it would work with any BIOS, but I am using Prema's modded BIOS and am used to flashing the EC and BIOS together.

Thanks!

 

Ouch, here is prema's reply when I asked him if it's safe to flash over his bios mod:

So.... I'm not so sure I want to test it anymore, are you confident this one is safe ?
Do you have a forum where one can see your customers test it ?
Or... is this board like guinea pigs for this release ? =D

 

Well, I decided to take the risk. I flashed it over prema's bios, and it booted fine (good start).
The new EC does seem to provide a smoother fan gradient (you can hear the fan ramping through many different speeds) However overall I found it to be much more noisy than the previous fan situation. Rather really quiet with than the odd burst of high fan speed, I now get consistently "medium" fan speed that smoothly ramps up to high fairly easily even in "normal" use. Fan speeds seemed to get really high even when cpu temperatures were high 50s/low 60s.

Cant really give much more feedback than that, other than I've flashed back to prema's EC now because it was definitely a better experience overall.

 

too bad. really hope clevo will sort this out soon..
makes me wonder how hard it is to make a fan table right...
thx for trying and reporting to us though.

 

CyberWalrus, thanks for your feedback. Can you let us know which CPU you have installed?

EDIT:

The fan speeds at high 50C to low 60C are actually just over 10% lower with the revised version!

We are continuing to test this revised EC and the reason for releasing it here is to open the testing up to the wider community. We can then collect feedback from other user's setups, operating environments etc in order be able to collect and pass on a more comprehensive data set!

 

Obviously that's for beta testing, no need to explain that

I wonder why you won't hear the fan before 65-70°.
Either your laptop is special, or you have a hearing problem
See below as an example.

 

Hey, not sure if you figured this out yet. I had the same issue when I upgraded to Windows 8.1. One of the users here gave me a recommendation and it worked!

I tried the install with the latest Nvidia drivers. The "cannot detect" error showed up and I immediately rebooted then tried the install again right after windows restarted. For some reason that fixed the problem, the card was detected and the drivers successfully installed. It is super simple and I have no idea why it worked, but it has worked for two of us now.

Give it a try and let us know if it solves your problem!

 

If anyone else is still having issues getting the new Windows 8.1 drivers from Clevo I just noticed that XMG/Schenker/mySN has them up on their website. They call the W230ST the P303.

mySN.de | SCHENKER XMG | Schenker Technologies

 

Is there a way to enable vertical scrolling with this trackpad, either on the right side of the pad or with two-finger scrolling?

 

I flashed it earlier today and have been using it with my 4700MQ. On high performance mode it idles at 55C and actually seems louder than before with the older EC Prema provides. Rather than turning on and off the fan is constantly on at idle at a medium but still loud speed. It is definitely louder than a laptop should be at idle.

However... there are signs of improvement. If I use Fn + 1 to max out the fan and then press it again to go back to automatic control the fan will go down to a barely audible speed and then slowly ramp up through many levels before settling on a medium one. This is much improved over the jumpiness of Clevo's EC where there only seem to be four fan levels and it'll go straight to full throttle from idling!

I will update this post after I spend some more time in quiet mode where the CPU is limited to 800 MHz. If it doesn't randomly burst their then I'll be pretty happy with it.

UPDATE: The fan performance in quiet mode is both an upgrade and a downgrade. While there don't seem to be any more random bursts there's also no more silence. The fan continuously runs at a medium-low speed while web browsing in quiet mode to keep the CPU at 48-50C whereas before it would be silent most of the time with some random bursts.

 

Nice to see that you are seeking feedback and aiming to improve the notebook. Thats better than the reseller i went though.

 

I'm using the 4700MQ, same as frewster. My experience is pretty much in line with his as well. It definitely feels more noisy, the fan is perceivably on more, even if it ramps up and down better. Definitely wouldst say that the fan sounds 10% lower at below 65: On the stock/prema EC, there's no perceivable fan noise at below 65, with the updated EC the fan is definitely there, and definitely noisier than an idling/light use laptop should be.

 

Thanks again for the testing everyone.

We will be straight into the labs again tomorrow and will have a further revised EC shortly. Hopefully, but not promising, we will be able to post it here for the comming weekend. Just a case of integrating various adjustments from other BETAs into one single improved EC!

 

My laptop must be special other opinions will concur, the fan is not spinning when dGPU is turned off and CPU temps are below ~65 degrees C - I'm monitoring them live using Core Temp.

 

which bios/ec are you using ?

 

I too would like to share my experience with the new EC, and as stated I believe it does a very good job of ramping up and down, but the curve is too steep.

There is no need for the fan to run so loud below 70c, the curve shouldn't be a straight line either.

Still, I'd like to thank the people over at MySN, you're doing a great service to the community!

 

A curve definitely shouldn't be a straight line! Otherwise it would cease to be a curve.

 

Hello Everyone, I am about to make the leap in purchasing this laptop form Mysn UK. Before I do I was wondering if anyone could tell me if the laptop supports SED SSD's?

 

SED? Sure! Got the Samsung EVO and the secure erase Option is available in the Samsung tools. But I never tested it since this is my system drive.

 

For the proper use of SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) you will need a TPM chip which is not included in the XMG P303 (W230ST). ATA Password functionality is not supported as well, due to (less) obvious reasons.

 

Just use truecrypt.

 

Thanks for that! The TMP chip was going to be my next question.

 

Will truecrypt work ok on a SED?

 

My Mod has ATA Password function to activate SED, no problem.
Some P37xSMx motherboards include a TPM chip.

 

I don't know, but it works fine on any SSD, and has many options, like hiding the crypted space, or even install a 2nd operating system in case someone tries to get the passphrase from you. You give another passphrase, and that other OS (with fake non-confidential data) is loaded instead of the valuable one =D

 

So it's between this and the MSI GE40 for me. Any reports on the battery life?

 

Expect about 4 hours for the W230ST and about 6 hours for the MSI.

If they put a 765m in the MSI I would have strongly considered that one. As it stands, 765m is borderline for my personal gaming comfort levels with details and FPS at 1080p.

 

GE40 is a good choice but from where I live the price difference is like $500 for 128GB SSD with no HDD. Plus it has a less powerful CPU, even though the GPU can be easily overclocked to match the 765m. The 16x9 screen will actually be better since you can play at native res at a higher graphics fidelity and at 14 inches that isnt bad actually.

 

All depends on desire for desktop space too. I like 1080p for managing desktop stuff, windows, apps, etc. But for gaming 900p would be better.

 

Should turn on by default assuming you installed the drivers for the trackpad. At least that is what mine did so I had to go about turning it off in the settings. Tons of tweaky settings in the trackpad drivers just gotta play around till you find a setup you like.

 

I installed Win 8.1 last night (I finally got "prompted", so I just said yes) and I think everything except the Airplane Mode driver seems to still work. I used GeForce Experience to update my NVidia drivers, but I haven't touched anything else. If I don't notice any adverse symptoms, is it worth the risk of updating other drivers? I downloaded them all from Clevo but before I pull the trigger I thought I should ask.

 

It's in the Synaptics control panel, there are several ways to set it up. I don't recall if mine worked that way out of the box but now I have two-finger scrolling enabled, plus a touch zone to emulate middle mouse. At some point Windows 8 gestures (switch apps, and that annoying "tray" on the right side of the screen) re-enabled themselves, but I think those options are hidden elsewhere.

 

If you're not having any issues I would not bother with the drivers. The only ones you really need to update often are the video card drivers and thats really only when you may be having slower then expected performance on brand new games. For the rest of the drivers, if they are working good, just let them continue to.

 

Quick question for anyone else hooking up the laptop to an external monitor via hdmi. Does anyone else find that when the laptop turns off the external monitor for power saving it doesn't do so properly?

Example,
In my case it just turns the monitor black, similar to just setting a screen saver to a black screen. This leaves the monitor's back light on displaying a black screen rather then telling the monitor to go into low power mode.

Trying to figure out if it is just my setup or some driver setting.

 

I dont think it ever will turn the monitor off. You have to push the off button on the monitor to do so. I know thats the case for me here at work and at home too. Sounds like it is doing it correctly.

 

it should not turn it off of course, but put it into standby.

 

Yeah I did some more digging, it sounds like some monitors when connected via hdmi do not toggle to standby mode correctly. Mine being one of them, Yay! Mildly annoying fix is to push the power button when I walk away from it.

 

For those with Windows 8.1: Clevo added a driver for Airplane mode (Airplane mode AP (1.3.0.0) for Windows 8.1.) on November 4th.

Hope it solves the airplane mode issue.

 

Nope, not for me

 

Hey Guys

Is it possible to install hackintosh on this laptop? Getting the discrete nvidia to work is not necessary.
anybody got experience with this? I'm thinking of buying this laptop and that would be a major advantage in my decision.

Thanks

 

I know it's been done in the past on other Sager models. It should be possible with experimentation on drivers that are available but I don't believe I've seen anybody report even trying on the 7330 let alone success or failure.

 

I think it's possible but i couldn't do it.
Here it´s a laptop with same specs. Haswell early reboot, Mavericks, locked MSRs, and HP Envy 15-J063CL (i7-4700MQ) - Page 2 - tonymacx86.com
I will try next month again , now i haven´t got time.

 

I like your new EC. It really is noisier overall, but it keeps the CPU at 50°C on light load (office and such). I am going to be in the library all day tomorrow. So let's see if the fan table is doing better there than last time with those unsteady blows.

Just one question. If I am unhappy with the EC, can I roll back to 1.00.04TR without problem?

Regards
onkelosuppo

[EDIT] Airplane mode finally works with the new BIOS 1.03.02. Nice! Also there is an indicator icon for Fn + 1.
[EDIT 2] I still like the temps with the EC, but the constant noise is a high price to pay. Also when exiting a game it takes several minutes for the fans to spin down. In my opinion the 1.00.04TR was better.

 

So I just got my Sager 7330 from XoticPC (customer service was very helpful by the way), and I had some questions to ask you guys.

Can I download Clevo w230st BIOS updates for this laptop? I've noticed the "fan bursts" which seem to be a symptom of the laptop idling around 50-55 degrees so any type of spike of the cpu can cause it to rise to a point where some fan action is needed, but it really doesn't bother me much.

Also, I followed HTWingnut's guide for undervolting this laptop and with my 4700qm I was able to get it stable at -78mv with the clocks set to 32 31 30 30. My temps top out around 75 and the idle temps are in the low to mid 50s. Idle temps seem high but the laptop is still very comfortable to use and under load it doesn't get much hotter.

Do I have to keep Intel Extreme Tuning Utility open all the time to keep these settings? If so, is it possible to move it to the bottom right of the taskbar instead of just leaving it open like any other program? Seems intrusive for software that's supposed to be used long term.

And sometimes the temperatures will just skyrocket to 95+ like just now when I had netflix running and opened the Hearthstone installer. Is it that hot because it's using only 1 core clocked at 3.2ghz? I can't think of another explanation.

 

I've been experimenting with both UniBeast and the Clover UEFI bootloader. Unfortunately I have so far been unable to get Clover to boot at all (it simply flashes me back to the menu when selecting the ISO) and UniBeast starts loading but reboots after loading all the KEXT files. If anyone is able to get to the install screen please share, I'd love to muck around with Mac OS X on this machine (I do have it in a VM but it's obviously a lot slower ;P).