Lenovo IdeaPad Y410P Owners and Information thread

General tips to make your devices last longer:

1. Be sure to do a quick analysis of the system upon receiving it. Open it up. check for loose screws, loose cables, and possible errors in manufacturing. If those occur, send the laptop for a replacement ASAP, if they cannot be fixed manually. Repasting your CPU also helps.

2. Be careful with them. Laptops are not kiddie-toys. Try not to spill coffee on your laptop.

3. Buy a new battery every 2 years or so. The standard battery that comes with the Y410p is a 48w/h battery. However, Lenovo sells a 72w/h battery you can purchase, which can essentially 1.5x your battery life. This is a good option if you intend on keeping this laptop in your production setup for more than 2 years.

4. PC optimization. Defrag, clean, repair and optimise your PC to get the most performance out of it.

5. Upgrades. You can always upgrade things in the long run, and the Y410p has TWO great advantages over it's rivals. First, it packs an upgradeable GPU, which can equal a 770M in terms of performance. Maybe in a few years, you won't be able to game on Ultra, but expecting tomorrows games to maybe run on Medium to Low settings using a Dual-GPU setup is very possible. Finally, this laptop was blessed with an M.2 connector. In case you haven't read the news, all the future SSD's will be using this technology, because with a special connector like a NVM handling the data instead of being limited by sata allows M.2 to reach speeds of 3GB/s, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

 

What are normal/acceptable temperatures for this laptop while gaming? I was playing Battlefield 3 for about an hour, and my GPU was hovering in the high 80's and CPU was in the mid 70's. Is this a cause for concern? I'm using Speedfan to monitor the temps. Please let me know if there are any other good programs for monitoring temp/controlling fan speed, etc.

I ask because my old laptop's video card crapped out from overheating. Also, the left side of my laptop seems to get overly warm. I know that's where the vent is, but sometimes even the keys on the keyboard there get hottish.

Thanks, guys!

 

Mine tops at 83, and stays from 75-83 during BF3.

 

Are you using a cooling pad? What brand? I forgot to mention I'm not using a cooling pad right now

 

Thanx once again jobine... What do u mean by repasting? Can u please tell and how to do it...

 

No cooling pad whatsoever and my gpu's overclocked

 

It's not something for the faint of heart. Completely dissasemble your laptop, remove the CPU from it's socket, apply an extra coat of thermal paste, and re-assemble. This can improve temps.

 

Oh okay thank u jobine will ask u more if need anything...

 

just installed my new Samsung EVO SSD along with replacing the opticial drive with a disk caddy to hold the original 1TB drive. Now I'm looking at the drive space, and I'm wondering if you guys have any tips to how I can create more space. For instance, do I need all those other partitions on my caddy HDD(highlighted below in image).

 

Shoot, is there anything else I can do for the high temps, besides a cooling pad, then? And does anyone have any suggestions as to a good cooling pad for this laptop? I see the big vent on the bottom.. not sure if a specific type of cooling pad would work better for this laptop. Thanks!

 

I just use this Targus one cause it's comfortable and does a decent job.
Amazon.com: Targus Lap Chill Mat AWE55US (Black/Gray): Electronics

Amazon has a nice list of best selling laptop cooling pads though so I'd check the reviews there!
Amazon Best Sellers: best Laptop & Netbook Computer Cooling Pads

 

HI, where can you buy the 72 whr battery! Thanks!

 

@magc seems to be some Chinese eBay sellers selling it. What you can search for is: L11S6R01

 

Those temps aren't too high, CPU and GPU are manufactured to withstand up to 95-100 C without any issues, and realistically don't fail until 120+ C. I wouldn't be too concerned about it running anywhere below 85. A cooling fan is always an option, but honestly just make sure you keep your laptop on a flat surface without anything blocking the left side so air can ventilate well. No need for a thermal repaste at this point, and to do that you just remove the heat sink, dissolve the current resin with an ether/alcohol based organic solvent, then add new paste and reapply the heat sink. You have to be careful though. I've even seen people add custom copper plates to help with the heat dissipation, but not with the y410p which seems to do a really good job (so far) at sucking heat away from the GPU and CPU

 

So I'm sure this has been posted somewhere within the past 127 pages, but I'll be damned if I'm going to read all of them.

Regardless, is there a video (ideally) I could find anywhere that details how to properly take apart the y410p? Or really an in depth tutorial. I want to do the HD/SSD switch and I have the caddy and SSD ready and raring to go, but the problem is that somehow, when taking the casing off the back of the computer I managed to break something badly enough to completely ruin the display (the standard coloured lines, etc etc). Lenovo's fortunately going to fix it as I had the foresight to get the accidental damage warranty, but I still want to do the SSD/HDD swap in the future and don't particularly want to ruin my laptop again. I'm fairly confident it had something to do with me screwing up the plating on the back, and I'm not entirely sure what the proper way to open that back plate is; taking the back plate off seemed to take a great deal of force, which probably caused me to break something.

Are there any details y'all can give me or (best of all) a video that exists somewhere that shows how to actually open up the computer? I'd be much obliged.

 

You've probably already seen this video then? It's a disassembly for Y400/Y500 models, but it's generally the same idea. Only problem is, he doesn't show how REALLY difficult it is to remove the back panel.
Lenovo Y400 Y500 Full Disassembly - YouTube

However, I videotaped almost my whole process of switching out the HDD for my new SSD yesterday. Sadly, my internet download speed at my house is around 200kb/sec, and I don't even want to check what my upload speeds are haha. I'm going to be moving into my new place for college this next week so I should have it uploaded by then. It's not the best filmed video but I just wanted to do some sort of guide that might help other Y410p/Y510p owners.

The panel IS very hard to remove. I have been lucky enough to add enough force in the correct areas, though. The worst part is that once you get closer the front part of laptop, the panel really likes to hold on to the next layer of plastic that is under it. I nearly thought I was going to rip both out, but I used a flat head screwdriver to pry them apart. I'll start editing these videos as soon as I can cause I know it will help some people out; though like I said, it's a pretty poorly shot video hah!

Sorry to hear about your laptop man =(

 

IdeaPad Y400/Y410P/Y500/Y510P 6Cell Battery | Lenovo | (US)

 

Never buy batteries anywhere except off the manufacturer's site in NEW condition.

 

What is the benefit to having a higher watt battery, just increased battery life?

 

More battery life and you can run more things at once, it's like having a better PSU. With a 72W/h you might be able to have more power from your GeForce while gaming on battery.

I'm not 100% sure about this, can someone back me up?

 

Hmm, I played BF3 and was monitoring temps, and it peaked and stayed at 96-97ish C. The left side of the laptop became pretty hot to the touch, even the keyboard area. I am playing on a flat surface with no blockage of the vents.

Is there a step-by-step guide (maybe with pictures) for reapplying the thermal paste? I've never done it before, so kind of nervous. Also, is there any brand of paste that would be optimal?

One last thing. I was looking into Speedfan and MSI afterburner to see if I could increase the fan speed or make the fans start at lower temps, but couldn't find the setting anywhere. Is there anyway to change the fan speed settings? I already have the cooling set to active under power options for High Performance.

Thanks again for all the help, guys. I'll be looking into cooling pads soon as well.

 

Lenovo's Ideapad BIOS are locked down so you won't be able to increase the fan speed. It is done automatically depeding on CPU temps and load. MSI or SpeedFan won't be of any help except for overclocking which you don't want to do given that your Temps are almost at the threshold. For me DOTA 2 is just as CPU intensive as BF3, spiking my CPU temps to a never reached 98 degrees Celsius on Core 1 and 93 degrees on the rest of the cores. GPU usage is of course at 99% load and GPU Temps are 90 degrees yet it does not throttle at all. CPU doesn't even throttle and is still running at Turbo Boost frequencies at 98 degrees Celsius.

 

Lenovo Y410p / Y510p - unlocked BIOS / wlan whitelist mod / vbios mod

IT'S HERE! FORK YEAH!

 

Oh snap, might have to see how much I can OC the 750M with some extra volts this weekend.

As for cooling devices, I have a HeatShift and think it is a great product: Amazon.com: ThermaPAK HS15A HeatShift Laptop Cooler for Laptops Up to 15" (Black): Electronics
Not really gonna drop your temps much but evens out hotspots and saves your lap, and is easily portable.

72 Whr battery will just get you a longer battery runtime, shouldn't affect laptop performance while on battery.

 

If anyone buys the 72w/h, can they test to see if they could hit 6 hours?

That would be epic.

 

Just flashed my y410p with the BIOS mod and everything is working fine - extra features in BIOS was unlocked but I don't have any other WiFi cards to test.

 

Sweet! Will try it after work

 

Some of you definitely need to repaste and get good cooling pads. You laptops are running too hot. The 750M throttles at 97C and the i7-4700MQ either throttles or performs a thermal shutdown at 100C, my money is on the latter. I'd be worried if anything went past 90C on a regular basis as that's cutting it a little too close. I repasted my Y500 and can play BF3 for hours on end with GPU below 80C and CPU below 85C, and that's with ThrottleStop and a 42% overclock on the GPU.

 

I might repaste mine, but not now. I have some spare Cooler Master paste lying somewhere, if only i could find it :/

 

Hey guys, I just refreshed the Lenovo model listings and noticed some changes made to the lineup. The two base models now have GT755M's standard. This is interesting to me because Lenovo China's models have the GT755M standard but only have 4GB of RAM... Perhaps they ran out of GT750M boards due to the demand?

 

Having WI-Fi issues.

Was working fine for a few weeks till today, maybe related to the new windows 8 update, not sure.

Uninstalled Intel Pro Wireless thing, went to the 14.8.8.75 drivers. Still was disconnecting every second.

I tried some new drivers too, nothing changed.

Refreshed PC. Now instead of disconnecting, when I try to connect it doesn't ask me for the Wifi password and it just says "Limited" and then disconnects.

This is why we cannot have nice things.

 

Yes it does. I'm using it to watch videos and play games using my TV & Sound System (which accepts toslink input). I got a cheap 3.5mm adapter for a few bucks and it works great without any issues. You do have to change the sound output using the Reltek Audio Manager from the internal speakers.

 

I was at Target the other day and found these little rubber stoppers about an inch in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick (height) sold in packs of eight for about 2 bucks. It gave me an idea. I got a pack and took some spare card board to make a little platform for my laptop to sit on. I stacked two of the stoppers at the corners for the feet of my laptop to sit on which raises it about an half inch off the desk. I didn't take any before/after temps but there is definitely a lot more space for air to move now underneath.

 

Hi,
I have been reading through this post and finally decided to order my y410p. I got it refurbished with a 900p screen and a 24gb ssd off of Lenovo Outlet for $750. It just arrived 2 days ago and I played around with it a bit.
This is my first laptop (besides a y500 I owned for about a 2 weeks a year ago) Here are my initial thoughts:

1. Build quality: Not the best, but pretty solid. Mine has one to the right of the touchpad. I noticed that right away when pulling it out of the box. The palmrest attracts oil from your hands which is pretty hard to clean off. Also worth noting, mine didn't have any sort of film protector and it had little particles of dust/hair/fibers. I cleaned it off, but when powering it on there was a some stuck to my screen. I thought they were scratches but with some rubbing they came off. I had ordered a y500 a year ago (I returned it due to really poor battery life) and I clearly remember there being a plastic film on it, so this is most likely due to it being refurbished. Besides that it looks to be in perfect condition.

2. Size/weight: Honestly, remembering my y500, I was expecting it to be a lot bigger and heavier. The 14 inch screen for me is great since it makes it a lot more portable. For games and movies I will be using a second monitor, but even then, the 14 inch screen works for me. I put it on my scale without the battery and it weighed in at 4.5 pounds. With the battery it jumped up to 5.5. Worth noting is that my scale is not very reliable, it is a digital scale for measuring your weight, and it seems to fluctuate a little bit. I'm pretty sure the battery doesn't add that much weight, but I could be wrong. Overall I find the size and weight perfectly suitable for me. It isn't as big/bulky/heavy as other gaming laptops making it good for college.

2. Screen: Its glossy, but overall, I like it. Everything seems pretty crisp and clear to me.

3. Keyboard/touchpad: So far the touchpad has been working perfectly for me. I have the synaptics driver preinstalled. The keyboard is great (as with all the other lenovo laptops I have tried) I also like the backlit red keyboard. It is probably the only part of that laptop that actually makes it look like a gaming laptop, which for me is a plus since I will be taking this to and from college nearly daily.

4. Performance: So far amazing. I will be purchasing a few games shortly, but so far I have tried it out with Sniper 2: Ghost Warrior and Black Ops 2 multiplayer (free right now on steam for a few days) Sniper 2 definitely isn't close to as intensive as other games out there, but I maxed out all the settings and it ran perfectly (no lag whatsoever) and looked amazing (with all the textures and details) on the built in display. Black Ops 2 also ran really well. I maxed out details and was able to turn on 2x MSAA and FXAA. It was running at 60fps until I got into close quarters. I would see fps drops as low as 25-35, meaning that everything was going smoothly. At 4xmsaa I would get some lag when in close quarters (Nearly playable but I turned it off.) When I had Geforce experience optimize the game it turned off MSAA and FXAA but I didn't really see too much difference. I was playing with a wireless Xbox controller and did pretty well (I know, FPS is much better with a mouse, but I have mainly played console games and haven't bought myself a decent mouse yet) Even with the Xbox controller and the 14inch screen I was able to score 1,2,3rd place on Team deathmatch a few times. So overall I had a great experience so far gaming with this and I can't wait to try out Splinter Cell and Battlefield 3.

5. Sound: Sound quality seems great, a bit lacking in the lows, but its really good for a laptop. I will be buying myself V-moda Crossfade M-100's and will test out the laptop with those. Once I do, I will repost or update this post if possible.

6. Other: Some things I don't like:
The lack of USB ports. There are only 3 ports, 1 of which is a 3.0. My phone+mouse+keyboard will take up all the USB's. Of course I will have a USB hub, but still, a laptop this size (nearly as big as 15 inch due to the large bezels) could accommodate at least one more port, especially since this is a gaming laptop. It's not that big of a deal, but its an annoyance
The lack of certain functions for media and volume. A lot of the function keys don't have any alternative function when the Fn key is pressed. There are enough keys to include a play/pause, skip, previous, mute function. I will have to download a program and do it myself (another annoyance)
I had some problems with Windows 8 and linking it to my Microsoft account. I ended up factory resetting through the one touch recovery and then everything worked.

7. Some things I like:
There wasn't that much bloatware. (a bit of Lenovo photo viewers and DVD and backup software, which I kept. Mcafee and some game application I deleted)

The SSD cache. For some reason I am not using expresscache but rather some Intel program (forgot which one, and I don't have my laptop with me to check right now) Everything seems to be extremely fast. I load up windows from a cold start in seconds, my games also load pretty fast. I might switch to just using the SSD as a dedicated second drive, but right now caching seems to be plenty fast for me.

I haven't yet had a chance to do a battery life test (the laptop has been plugged in ever since I got it) It does come with some Lenovo power software, such as having the option to maximize battery health. This feature will discharge your laptop to %60 percent and keep it there while its plugged so as to not ruin your battery. You can switch back to maximize battery life to charge it to a 100% to make sure it runs longer when unplugged. Also the laptop can run without the battery inserted. (Since this is my first laptop I wasn't sure what the procedure is with using your battery for the first time. I got it turned on without the battery and found out that the battery comes preconditioned so you don't have to do a full charge/discharge right away, though it's still recommended)


So that's all I can remember off the top of my head right now, if you have any other questions before buying, I can try to answer them.

Also a few questions of my own: Has anyone successfully dual-booted Ubuntu 13.04? (without any issues switching between windows 8 and ubuntu and without Ubuntu GPU issues) If so can you give me a rundown on how you did that? Also, if you have done that, what kind of battery life can you get out of Ubuntu? and what about underclocking cpu/gpu? Has anybody successfully done that to help improve battery life? If so, how? Thanks

My overall verdict: A great buy! (given that the SLI GPU is released) Compared to rivals such as the alienware 14 or MSI ge40 or razer blade this laptop has the most bang for the buck. The Alienware 14 starts off with a gt750m with 1gb (upgradeable to gt 765m) and a 1366x768 screen for $1200. The ge40 has a similar price, but with a better screen and 2gb 750m (upgradeable to gtx765). The Razer blade is arguably in a different category as an ultrabook, which is part of the high price, but once again has a gtx 765m and a 900p screen. The Y410p should be upgradeable to a SLI 750m, making it equivalent to a 770-775m. That upgrade should also end up costing less than either the starting price for a ge40 or a m14x.

(speaking of SLI ultrabays, I have been talking to Lenovo chat reps and I have gotten mixed answers: Nearly all of them told me mid-september release date. One told me late September and another told me never. I have consulted with them multiple times and they have said that it will be released and that the rep who said never was incorrect. Either way, if it does come out, then I will definitely keep my laptop. If it doesn't, I might be returning mine and upgrading to a y510p)

And speaking of upgrades, the y series seem to have been finally upgraded to a gt755. How do I overclock my gpu to get the same speeds? Does anyone know if the gt755m will be SLI compatible with the 750m? I might be returning my laptop if I can find a similar deal for one with the 755m chip ;D

Note: actually, only the y410p has the 755m

 

GT755M is practically an overclocked GT750M. Both has the same boards. We can easily achieve that with our GT750M with no effort, using the modified BIOS or overclocking applications.

 

@jugermaut yeah I know. I'm just making an observation that they bumped up the GPU on those models, perhaps to move leftover mobo stock since those two models sold like hotcakes last sale (IIRC only the one with the Blu-Ray drive had the GTX755M in USA before)

 

@EmberV

Since the 755's do not support SLI (according to Nvidia), this further cements that the Y410p's will not get SLI

 

True, except 755 doesn't support SLI.

Folks, avoid 755's. Stick with the 750's and OC them instead, so you can possibly add SLI later on.

 

I don't know where you get these ideas from. The y410p removable graphics is all ready out in China but has not yet released here for whatever reason. Be patient.

 

Dude, GT755M editions of the Y410p will *NEVER* get SLI, look at the OFFICIAL NVIDIA PAGE:
GeForce GT 755M | Specifications | GeForce

Theres a difference between 750 and 755!!!!!

 

So what, that website doesn't mention SLI support for 650M and 750M either.

I would take the specs listed on GeForce.com with a grain of salt, as it is a common practice for notebook OEM's to tune their GPU's to fit specific TDP and cooling requirements. Notice how this page for the 650M says "up to 900 MHz" and "up to 80 GB/s":

GeForce GT 650M | Specifications | GeForce

A good example of this is how the 650M in the Y400/Y500 runs at 790/2000 @ 64 GB/s while the 650M in the Retina MacBook Pro runs at 900/2508 @ 80.3 GB/s.

Also Lenovo is the only OEM to have SLI configurations of these GPU's. I'm not surprised that GeForce.com doesn't have this info.

 

Someone told me that it's possible that the antenna has been unseated from my wifi card. (Can this even happen on the y410p?)

I do not think that this is a hardware issue, but what would the best way to check if this has happened? (Obviously opening it up, but I am not very good at that so I would need good instructions, adding ram was hard enough.)

I would really appreciate it if someone could help.

 

My bad, i used to take that site as seriously as i would take Intel's ARK

 

If it is really unseated, that means it will have a poor reception. Even without antenna, a WiFi card could still maintain a stable connection if the WiFi router is close enough. Sooo, you might want to put your router reaaaallly near your laptop just for the sake of checking it

 

Doesn't sound like the problem then, because I can still see a few neighbors wifi's.

 

Has anyone undervoted their CPU's yet using the unlocked BIOS? I'm wondering if we could lower temps and increase battery life.

 

I ordered mine 4/9 and its gonna be shipped 16/9 I don't know why its taking them such a long time ? ( lest expensive model )
I also wanna know if this laptop good for CAD/3D programs? I personally use Sketchup and lumion, what do guys think?

 

This is not a good laptop for professional CAD. All laptops with Nvidia 6xx/7xx GPUs are not made for CAD. However, this is a good laptop if you need lots of CPU performance, and i don't think Sketchup is a very intensive program overall.

 

I have decided to take the plunge and order from the mini-laptop-accessories site for the y410p GT750M card after talking with them over e-mail. I will let you know how it goes.

 

If you get a 650M (which i bet is what will happen), call them back immediately and demand a refund. On their site, it says you have 15 days to return the product for a full refund:

Warranty & Return