Bought W230SS - This is not a review

zalmoxis

Bronze Level Poster
My W230SS just arrived and I already started testing.

So far, here's my list of tweaks:

1. Is your W230SS mSATA hot?

If you download SpeedFan or HD Tune you can see the temperature of your mSATA SSD. If it's around 55 Celsius in idle, that's too hot. The operating temperatures of the drive are up to 70C and if you game, it quickly approaches that.

Solution here: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...eratures-70C/m-p/155126/highlight/true#M43859

I did that and it did indeed lower my mSATA SSD temperatures by 5C and the overall temperatures of all the components by an average of 3C. It helps, and it's merely a software tweak. There is no performance decrease.

2. Some users complained about speakers. This is not true. The speakers are marvellous. This laptop is three times as loud and crisp clear as my previous one which boasted with a focus on sound and fancy HD clarity and all that.

All you have to do is: Go to Device manager > Sounds > Uninstall driver. Go to the PC Specialist website (don't let Windows install its driver, not even update it!) inside your account and download the audio driver for your system and install it. Reboot. Now repeat this step but install the SB Cinema. Reboot.

When you start SB Cinema now it should detect your audio card and you should have different options for configuring. If it states no card has been found, then the whole thing isn't working and you need to redo the process. If it does work, just select the Music or Movie profile and enjoy the sweetness. It actually decently emulates a virtual surround! I was impressed.

3. I'm currently testing the CPU with Prime95 to try and get it to it's peak. Based on that, I will probably recommend undervolting (no performance decrease, no risk, quite the opposite, less current less risk of failure) it to decrease temperatures by an average of 5C-8C. Stay tuned, I will update the thread.

I will also provide a way to increase the fan speed on a curve, as much as needed, as opposed to having 4 steps of noticeably increased velocity all of a sudden.
 
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