Review One K33-3E (Clevo W230ST Barebones) Notebook

The plastic case of the One K33-3E is 330 x 227 x 31.9 millimeters and weighs 1,990 grams with the battery. The display cover has slightly chamfered edges and is covered with a black rubberized surface that has a soft feel. There is also the One branding. Otherwise the design is very simple; the appearance is dominated by silver-gray plastic and a black bottom cover of the base unit. 

The stability of the device leaves a good impression. You can easily twist the thin display cover, which also has problems with bouncing. But the situation is completely different with the bulky base unit. It is very robust and can neither be twisted nor dented.  

Despite the plastic look, the build quality is convincing. The gaps around the case are even and the display cover is flush with the rest of the case. The display hinges are also sufficient; you can comfortably open the display with one hand and vibrations only result in slight bouncing. The plastic palm rest is conveniently smooth and does not attract fingerprints.  

Maintenance

The maintainability of the One K33-3E is very good. The generously sized maintenance cover at the bottom is fixed with just three screws. Loosen them and you can easily lift the cover.

Once you open the cover, you have access to all the important components. WLAN module, mSATA slot, SATA bay and the two memory slots are very easy to reach and you can easily clean the fan. You can even renew the thermal paste of the GPU (soldered) and the CPU. 

This is definitely a big advantage of the Clevo W230ST barebone; a maintenance-friendly case should look like this. Even beginners will have no problems with memory upgrades or the integration of an additional hard drive. 

The battery can be removed without opening the case, you just have to release two clamps. 

Touchpad

Unfortunately, the integrated touchpad cannot keep up with the quality of the keyboard. It does support gestures and has two separate mouse button. Especially the implementation of multi-touch gestures improves the usability. 

However, the input device is quite small with 87 x 55 mm and the gliding capabilities leave room for improvement; the precision on the other hand is okay. Both mouse buttons are a bit wobbly and have different pressure points. Clicking noises are conveniently quiet, but the gaps around the buttons could be smaller and attract dirt. 

Intel's Core i7-4702MQ is based on the latest Haswell architecture and is produced in a 22 nm manufacturing process. It has four physical cores with a nominal clock of 2.2 GHz. The clock is lower than the 4700MQ (2.4 – 3.4 GHz), 4800MQ (2.7 – 3.7 GHz) and 4900MQ (2.8 – 3.8 GHz), but the energy consumption is also lower with a maximum TDP of 37 Watts. All CPUs support Intel's Turbo Boost 2.0.

Cinebench R11.5 Single shows the expected result with 1.42 points and the Turbo Boost feature is used to its full extent with a clock of 3.2 GHz. The result of the Multi-Test is slightly behind devices with the same CPU. In this case, the CPU cannot always maintain the maximum Turbo clock of 2.9 GHz and only runs with 2.7 GHz temporarily. As a result, our CPU is "only" comparable with a 3632QM, although it should be around 10% faster. The DevilTech Fire DT 14 has a better cooling solution and can always use the maximum Turbo clock. 

Continuous maximum load for the CPU (Prime95) quickly results in the nominal clock of 2.2 GHz. The clock is reduced to 1.4 GHz on battery power but is not further decreased even under load.

The integrated graphics solution based on the Haswell architecture is the Intel HD 4600; it has a clock of 400 up to 1,150 MHz according to the spec sheet. Since the K33-3E is also equipped with a dedicated GPU, the performance of the integrated solution is limited to a maximum clock of 600 MHz. 

Nvidia's Optimus technology can switch to the GeForce GTX 765M for more demanding scenarios. The DirectX-11 GPU is based on the Kepler architecture and is manufactured in 28 nm. It has five shader-blocks but only four of them are active; each block contains 192 CUDA cores. The core clock is 850 MHz and can automatically be raised via GPU Boost. Finally, the GPU is supported by 2,048 MB GDDR5 memory.

A look at the performance shows that the GPU belongs to the high-end segment and that it is comparable to a GeForce GTX 670MX and around 10% faster than the Radeon HD 8870M in the synthetic benchmarks. 

The GPU cannot maintain its nominal clock during our stress test with the native display resolution and reduces it to 797 MHz. The clock remains stable on battery power in return, gaming on the go is possible. 

The One K33-3E gets really warm during idle with a maximum temperature of 42.7 °C in the fan area. This is comparable with the Alienware 14 (41.5 °C), the DevilTech Fire DT14, however, is significantly cooler during idle with a maximum temperature of 27.4 °C. 

The situation is different under load. The temperatures rise up to 54.2 °C, the hottest spot is once again at the fan exhaust. The palm rest is not affected by that and is still convenient. The Alienware notebook is significantly cooler in this scenario with a maximum temperature of 46.1 °C while the DT14 lives up to its name Fire and reaches more than 60 °C at several spots.  

Our review unit is nevertheless a pretty hot notebook. We tried to determine the maximum temperatures of the components with our stress test of Prime95 and Furmark. While the GPU stayed at 83 °C due to the throttling, the CPU temperature climbed up to 99 °C. This is pretty much at the suggested limit by Intel (100 °C) and the CPU is only running at its nominal clock. Sometimes the clock even drops below 2.0 GHz. This scenario is really the worst case, but we still would have expected a better and more effective cooling solution. 

The One K33-3E has both highlights and drawbacks. The gaming notebook in a subnotebook case has problems with the cooling because of the limited space. Not only the surface temperatures are very warm, but the temperatures of the components during our stress test are sometimes extremely high. CPU temperatures of up to 99 °C are almost critical. Especially gaming notebooks can be used in such demanding scenarios, at least for short periods.

We really liked the excellent Full HD display. It was convincing in almost all categories: Rich contrast, high luminance, almost perfect brightness distribution, good black value and high viewing angle stability combined with an anti-reflective panel - great. The only drawback is the slight screen bleeding at the edges. 

The throttling of the high-end GPU is not really surprising since it was already an issue with the rivals from DevilTech and Alienware. However, the extreme throttling of the CPU can be annoying; the clock is even further reduced to 1.4 GHz on battery power. 

As long as the device is plugged in, the One K33-3E does deliver the required performance. If you can live with the high system noise under load, you get a capable gaming notebook that is easy to maintain and to upgrade.