Lenovo IdeaPad Y410P Owners and Information thread

I just ordered my y410p yesterday, but I am a little concerned about the shipping date. It says shipping september eleventh, but I don't know if it will be backed up like what has happened to so many other lenovo customers. Can anyone help ease my doubts? If it matters, I ordered the least expensive model.

 

Shipping is from 4 days to 4 weeks

Also (in my opinion) you should have ordered the 900p screen but if you don't have the money that's fine, 768p doesnt look bad at all on a large bezel-ed 14incher.

 

I know. However, certain parties thought that sixty dollars was not worth a full HD screen. :|
But you are certain that it WILL arrive, right? If not, I might just cancel and get the full HD one, which says shipping on the twenty-sixth.

Edit:
Just checked Lenovo's website; it now says shipping on the twelfth. Not good.

 

Ordered mine on June 10th, got my UPS tracking info 18th, got it on the 28th.

 

Well, I was hoping to have it before school started, but what can you do?

 

How easy is it to upgrade this laptop? I am planning on putting in 16gb of ram and a ssd at a later date, as well as the future ultrabay graphics card, assuming it comes out. Has anyone else done anything similar, and if so, have you ran into any unexpected difficulties?

 

First you will need to eject the dvd drive by sticking a small pin into this hole (circled in red below).


Then take a flathead screwdriver and use it to push out the small plastic connection piece that is in this slot (circled in red). Be somewhat gentle with it. It takes some force to wedge it down and then out, but you should hear a little click when it starts to slide out.


You can also use the flathead to wedge out the faceplate in these general areas. You'll notice small black lines where I have circled in red.


And finally! You can easily just apply a little force to remove the faceplate from the other slots.


Hope this helps!

 

I live near the Seattle, WA area, and I ordered mine last Friday afternoon. It's arriving today (Thursday) from UPS. Both times I ordered my Y410p, it arrived in less than a week.

Note: I am sending back my other Y410p because I decided to save $50 and downgrade from the 1TB w/ 24GB SSD cache to just the 1TB. This is because I am also switching out the 1TB HDD for a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD, and then, I am placing the 1TB HDD into an optical drive caddy.

 

Lucky you. Apparently Wisconsin is farther away from the warehouse.

I'd rather put in the second gpu than a ssd, but that's just my preference. I assume it'd be easy enough to replace the hdd with a ssd because they use the same SATA cable? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the hardest part would be just getting to the drive itself. However, I don't have mine yet, therefore I haven't had time to take it apart and check it out.

 

I was originally going to do what Turkey said but i plan instead to upgrade mine to a SLI model later this fall if i get more pocket cash.

Will also be working on tinkering with the drivers to get something akin to Alienware 18: The ability to go from Nvidia SLI 750M to Intel, skipping Optimus but helping out my battery life.

The irony is, when you're on battery power, the 750M/SLI 750M goes on low-power mode and becomes inferior than the 4600HD.

I know for one the SLI 750 can outperform the 770 in some games, and outperforms the 765 in just about anything that supports SLI. Maybe if i OC (755=OC'd 750) i get towards 775 level

As for microstutter, people around these boards said as long as you are above 30 FPS it shouldn't occur.

 

@Thunderr

The warehouse is in Kentucky last time i checked.

EDIT: North Carolina, wow im bad with US geography

Also, i live in Charlottetown (PEI), which is quite far from the Lenovo Distrib. centers in Toronto and Kentucky

 

Definitely not haha. It ships from North Carolina. That's almost as far away from Seattle you can get and stay in the continental states!
So I'm hoping it would actually arrive very quickly to you too :thumbsup:

Well if they release the second gpu with it already in the caddy then that's the glory of this laptop! Just swap out whatever optical drive I need to use... assuming that they actually release the second gpu =] And yes I believe so about the SATA cable. I haven't opened mine up yet either, but when I get back from Arizona next week I'll get busy in the OR lol

 

I thought so too?? But both times on my UPS tracking details it said it started Greensboro, NC before it went to Kentucky. Hmmm... suspicious.

 

@Thunderr

The GPU doesn't use Sata, it uses MXM, if you remove your ODD/HDD from the ultrabay you can clearly see the port.


@Turkey

Called 2 Lenovo Reps + Used the official Lenovo forums and they all told me 2nd week of September, finally i got a coherant answer!

 

Yeah, but I'm not faithful considering Lenovo's reputation with shipping.

I suppose! Have fun in Arizona, and remember to always keep water with you.

 

Yessssssss!!!

 

Now, i will need to take a trip to the Alienware 18 forums to talk with them on how GPU switching works! Hopefully we will be able to go from Intel to Nvidia SLI from the press of a button :thumbsup:

 

Okay, one more question. Can you operate the laptop without the battery in, to help extend its life?

 

Yes. *But* theres no point in doing this. Just charge the laptop to 60%, go to Lenovo Energy Management and set it to "Optimised battery health". Your battery is actually better off inside the laptop than outside, since it loses it's charge faster when removed from the laptop. Also, Dragnoak (sorry if i misspelled his name) reported a loss of only 8% maximum capacity of the laptop (an older Y470) being plugged in 100% of the time using Optimized battery health over a period of 2 years.

 

So you're saying I'm better off being lazy and leaving the battery in? Sweet!

 

Yeah, as long as you dont charge the laptop past 60% and let it to "Optimized battery health", which in turn wont charge it past 60%

 

Neat. Thanks!

 

Ordered this laptop yesterday, shipped today and is supposed to be here Monday. A lot sooner than the estimated ship/delivery date. I'm excited to receive this laptop. I have a few questions to people who own the y410p. I've been reading through a few threads that have noted the wifi issues. Do you guys have the connection issues, and if so is the fix easy? Thanks!

 

clinto, I've had mine for 3 days now. No wifi issues. Constant connection. I could just be lucky though.

Also glad to hear I'm not the only one who got there y410p quickly. I've been stupid impressed with my computer thus far. Heard the fan for the first time yesterday while testing out Crysis 2 on Extreme. Though I will admit. I'm going to miss my 1080p display of my old lappy, but for the price I paid 600p is fine.

 

Fix is as easy as Uninstalling Intel PROset and rebooting.

And your display pic scared the poop out of me. Guess i played too much minecraft

 

Thanks for responding, I was shocked to see it had already shipped. I hear you on the display I'm coming from a MacBook Pro. I'm sure it'll take some getting used to.

 

Thanks for your input, I've been reading through most of this thread. Lol, I love minecraft myself, I plan to play a lot on this laptop. Hoping it will run FTB without much lag.

 

TN panel. Not IPS but decent for a TN panel. Manufactured by LG and i think it's the same display as the X1 carbon.

The quad-core CPU in this laptop does not dissapoint, MC should not be much of a problem.

 

A kind reminder to everyone i see wandering about uninstalling bloatware drivers etc... do a clean install guys. Its easy:

1) download win 8 iso ( jobine posted a link 1-2 pages before ).
2) extract win 8 key ( google it its easy )
3) do a full backup of the disk ( i dont think u ll need it anyway ) and copy the drivers somewhere if u dont have the 24gb ssd ( they have the drivers there )
4) boot from the dvd ( win 8 iso ) edit the HDD from there and do a clean install ( format everyhing )
5) boot and install drivers.

i know its not a detailed guide but u can start from here and start googling a bit, its easy, dont stay with all those bloatware .

 

I need a bit of help here guys! No matter what I do I can't get the dGPU to run any APP or game and the manual settings are all blocked... I just got the laptop today but it's already starting to me off with the godawful touch-pad, the incredibly low black levels, horrible viewing angle and now the stupid optimus not working how it should.




Thanks in advance.

 

I'm actually about to do a clean install, just as soon as my Crucial M500 arrives in the mail (I've given up on waiting for M.2 SSDs). Is there a list of drivers that I should be prepared to reinstall? Some of the things it's hard to tell whether they're just bloatware or serve an actual system purpose. Like Onekey Theater?

 

This laptop does not have optimus.

 

Most basic drivers to get your machine working

1. Intel Chipset Driver
2. GPU Driver
3. Wireless Driver / Lan driver
4. Audio driver
5. Hotkey driver.

Those five drivers will get any laptop working properly. Any other drivers can be considered optional.

 

You forgot Lenovo Power management to make sure the battery doesnt deteriorate over time.

 

Yes it does. As long as this laptop does not have a GPU in the ultrabay, it DOES have optimus.

 

Really? News to me.

 

Nvidia Control Panel --) 3D Settings --) Preferred Graphics Processor --) Auto-Select

Boom. Optimus. You're welcome.

 

Could I replace the y410p's hard drive with this seagate drive?

 

Yes. Any standard 2.5inch drive will fit into the main bay. Heres a video on how to open up the laptop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVYvJhlhL8

(it's for the Y400/Y500 but it applies to the Haswell editions too since they are identical)

Alternatively, buy a caddy and just Raid0 both drives. Double the performance! (and failure rate )

 

Meh, I'd rather save it for the second gt 750. Thanks though, I don't know why, but for some reason I thought I heard it didn't use a SATA cable. Thanks!

 

Another question. Is laptop RAM the same size as desktop RAM? I haven't ever upgraded it on a laptop, and I don't want to buy some that won't fit.

 

Laptop ram is WAY smaller than desktop ram, probably like half the size. But also twice the cost to compensate :thumbsup:

However, don't see why you would need more than 8GB... You running VM's or something?

My sister's CQ56 (2.2GHz pentium w 4GB RAM) and Y410P perform almost equally in day-to-day tasks like word and web browsing, and my desktop runs fine on only 2 gigs of RAM

 

From my experience with the Y400 when you Optimize the Battery health, it actually charges to 100% but then doesn't charge agin till it hits 60%. Which messed with the GPU since it was on battery from 100%-60% and it would downclock the GPU.

 

Only thing that bothered me with the Y400 was the lack of Optimus and the fact that Lenovo disabled the iGPU.

 

A couple more questions:

1) So I re-installed expresscache, but I don't see any space being taken up on my SSD. Could it be because I use Ccleaner regularly? Or is something else supposed to happen?

2) How does the always on USB work? I think I read that I have to go to BIOS to turn it "always - on", but if I do, are there any negative effects? For example, decreased battery life?

3) There's a couple conflicting ideas about the Energy Management. How does Optimized Battery Health actually work?
Personally, I've taken my battery out for the meantime because I use my laptop at my desk with an outlet because I never need to move it. However, once I'm living on campus I'll be using the battery cause I'll have to move around a lot with it. How do you guys manage your battery? I'm wondering if Optimized Battery Health is better for the battery than removing it when I'm on AC power at a desk, and I don't really need to move the laptop.

 

Thanks!

I don't know, this is my main gaming machine, so I want to give her the best she can handle. I may be running VM's as emulators, but I wanted the extra ram for better multitasking on multiple monitors.

 

1. Idk. Ill have to go back to you on that one.

2. Basically, when the laptop is plugged in, the usb port can charge devices even when the laptop is on. I have no idea on it's impact on battery life, but i disabled it since i don't use it.

3. Basically, Optimized Battery Health tells the laptop not to charge past 60% if the current charge is under 60%. This prevents long term degradation of the battery, and the effects of Optimized Battery Health are at a hardware level, even if the Laptop is off and this setting is on, it will never charge past 60%. However, if you remove the battery, it will reset the settings to Maximum Battery Life. Also, you are better off leaving the battery in the laptop, for 3 reasons:
---1. The battery drains faster when it is removed from the laptop
---2. Because of the way the cooling is done on the laptop, the battery will never ever get hot, even after 3 hours of gaming. This prevents battery wear.
---3. The battery only wears down when it is used, not when it is left @ 60% and not charging. Discharging a battery to 0% by leaving it in the closet for a long period of time is BAD. Ask Dragnoak for more information about this. He said the battery only lost 8% of it's original capacity after being left plugged for 2 years using opt, battery health. That's impressive, considering my Inspiron 1525's battery fell to 50% capacity after 3 months without such software on it.

Just drain the battery to 60%, set the mode and forget it

 

Has anybody opened up their Y410p yet? I am having an insanely difficult time taking off the cover to access the hard drive. I can get it pretty loose all around it, but it is very much stuck in the area towards the front part of the laptop. The Y500 disassembly video doesn't help at all either (at least with me). The guy says to "slide forward and lift up to remove it". He honestly makes it look as easy as lifting the LCD screen when you open your computer, but I can definitely say it is quite snug.

 

Mine is still shipping, so I couldn't tell ya. Are all the screws loose? Are you sure that you're removing the right panel in the right order?
The third post on this thread might help ya.
Good luck, and remember to get rid of static often!

 

Anything over 8gb ram is total overskill unless you have specific needs for them, ex rendering, VM (lots of them, not few), media editing. Even 4gb ram should be enough for majority of people.