Lenovo Y470 and Y570 Official Owners Thread

You need to use the free Gparted boot image to do the realignment, then it'll break the MBR on your Windows 7, then you'll need to fix it so it boots again. Does that make sense?

 

I've been searching high and low. No extended battery for our Y470 yet. On ebay and other shops they range from 57WH to 62 WH. That small of a difference usually just means aftermarket vs OEM (62Wh). I'm on the verge of hacking my battery and looking to add another 30-40% more capacity.

 

Yep, I see where it references that now. Makes sense. Thanks!

 

Physically hacking? I don't know what you do in your spare time, but most people wouldn't have the wherewithal to do this safely and successfully. Just saying.

 

I want to ask you people whether Lenovo Y570 is good for gaming?Doest it have heating problems?

 

It really depends on what games you're running. I can run NBA 2k12 max settings and FIFA 12 (medium) at around 60 Celsius with thermal disspation with max performance on. If you want to play it safe, go with a cooling pad. (which is something I've been wanting, just in case.)

Yes, it should be, with a nVidia 555, i7 quad core, and 8GBs of ram.

 

It's bad for everything. It overheats, it stutters if set to maximum cpu performance, and it has been known for a long time and lenovo isnt going to do anything about it, it has static noises if using headphones and many people report it's right speaker to go crackling after some time.

Go check lenovo official forums and see hundreds of threads about y570 problems.

 

I haven't had any problems with my Y570 (other than a hardware failure that was fixed by Lenovo). I'm at level 47 on Skyrim now.

But like Crabbycrab said, lots of people reported problems with theirs. It's hard to say whether it's ALL or even most of the Y570's though, because it could be that only the people with problems hang out on forums like that. It would be interesting to see if the HP, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Asus, etc forums have a similar percentage of bad units.

I'm still perfectly happy with mine.

 

I personally own a Y470 (basically a small Y570 with a GT550M instead of the GT555M)...I have owned since last August and has been pretty amazing to me so far...My computer only messed up once when my charger port died and lenovo fixed it..My only problem with Lenovo is their customer service sucks imo..When I was giving my y470 fixed, when I called for an update, I always got incomplete answers but shipping your device for service is free (If you have a warranty)...It took a month to get it back but it has been amazing since..I did get the infamous BSOD because of the nvidia card issue but I fixed it when a clean install of windows (YMMV) and installing the latest update from the Nvidia website...The machine stays cool for me, the only games that really heat my machine are Battlefield 3 multiplayer (with the newest nvidia drivers, my system stays pretty cool even after 2 hours) and skyrim (after long hours, probably 2 or 3 lol)...My Y470 can play all the current games I have at medium to high settings (Battlefield 3, Skyrim, NBA 2k12, FIFA 12 and Batman Arkham City) and the Y570 has a slightly faster GPU than the Y470

I feel Lenovo gets to much bad press on these forums and Lenovo Forums but I think this machine is awesome. Every PC has its share of issues and this is my 2nd laptop I ever owned ( I owned a HP pavilion previously and it had horrible battery life and heating issues)...I have had the Y470 with i5 since august and I can still get 3 hours 30 minutes + with surfing on the web and some office applications opened.

p.s. Sorry for the long post...Off-topic, does anyone have suggestions on a fast internal 1 TB hard drives (atleast 7500rpm) for our laptops...I currently have 30 GB left on my 750GB hard drive since I have a lot of games (Batman, Skyrim , RE5, Battlefield, Madden, Skyrim etc) and several movies and TV shows on my machine...I hate external peripherals but does anyone have any good suggestions on my request?

 

This: Amazon.com: Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003: Computers & Accessories or this: Amazon.com: Seagate Momentus 7200 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive ST9750420AS: Computers & Accessories.

Plus this: Amazon.com: Acomdata 2.5" Tango USB/eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure Kit, Obsidian Black (TNGXXXUSE-BLK): Electronics.

Plus this: Amazon.com: StarTech 3-Feet Shielded External eSATA Cable M/M (ESATA3): Electronics.

I recommend putting a seagate momentus hdd in an acomdata enclosure. The acomdata enclosure above has an eSata port. Hook that up to the y470 and you'll get great speeds. I found the eSata to be faster than the USB 3.0 when testing both on my y470p. Still, you can find lots of USB 3.0 portable hdds, such as this: Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Black): Electronics. Personally though I would stay away from the western digital products and just build my own external using the acomdata enclosure. Having used both, I've been more satisfied with the latter.

 

Hello, im new here, i just want to ask, how i can play HL2 on thelenovo y570, i has to change everything in the nvidia control panel and with nvidia inspector, but it didnt work, anyone have solutions? the game play with integratted graphic processor, not the nvidia one. thanks before
_______________________
- LENOVO IDEAPAD Y570
Intel core i7 2670 QM 2.20~3.20Ghz | Ram 4GB | Nvidia GT 555M 2GB GDDR5 |

 

right click on the game you want to play and choose run with nvidia graphics. This is all from memory and could be worded differently on your pc.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I hope a 1TB or 1.5Tb version of momentus comes in the next few months...good reviews from what I read so far but I need more storage than 750GB..

 

Hey everybody, another satisfied y470p owner here (other than the resolution of course ).

I've been having issues with the graphics card. I have it set to switching between power-saving and high-performance depending on whether it's on battery or plugged in and it works fine for the most part. However, if I plug it out and put it on standby, it's also on the Windows 7 Basic theme with Aero disabled whenever I start it up again. This doesn't change even if I plug it back in afterwards. I always have to go in manually and turn on Aero, so I'm wondering if anyone else encountered this problem and knows how to fix it.

 

Hey peeps, I just got placed a order on a nicely spec for the price 470p

i7 2670
HD7690
8GBram
750GB

go it all for $883 CAD after taxes. but I didn't get the extended warranty, I'am now curious can you extend the warranty at a later date?

 

The extended warranty for the Canadian version is like, triple the price compared to the American one for some reason. I didn't get it.

 

interesting with the price differences, but I changed my order and grabbed a lenovo U400 and the extended warranty for 2 years depot was only 29$ more.

 

May be a dumb statement but I spent almost 2 days with the same issue. On the front right of the laptop just next to the wifi switch there is a silver switch. That switch enables the Nvidia GPU. When it's enabled you should see a white LED light on next to the switch. Once I enabled it, my steam games issues were resolved and BF3 kicked up in FPS majorly.

 

hey guys, I noticed something a bit strange with my switchable graphics option ever since yesterday when I upgraded to the latest nvidia drivers - 296.10. I'm not able to see streaming videos (like from youtube or nba.com) with that same sharpness that I used to see with the previous drivers. I checked the little nvidia gpu icon, and it does indicate that it is active..but videos have lost its sharpness. I also cant seem to set VLC player to run with nvidia graphics with these new drivers, but I recall being able to with the old ones...

anybody know what might be the problem? It obviously has something to do with the new drivers...any suggestions?

 

So, I have the y470 i5 model with 4GB RAM and 550m.

But my framerate for CSS is low (it hovers around 24 usually). This laptop should destroy CSS...and under the Nvidia GPU activity, it does show that the 550m is running CSS, not the integrated intel graphics.

Any tips? Could it be running off of the integrated graphics even though it says differently? I've already set up the nvidia control panel to use the dedicated card with CSS...so I don't know what's up.

 

I posted my Y470 review. So, for those who want to get one more review in before the Y480 comes out be my guest :

Lenovo Y470 Review by PixelSmashers.com - YouTube

 

sorry to sound noobish (which I am when it comes to hard drivers) but can you make a tutorial or link to me to a video on how to completely replace my internal hard drive (my slow 5400rpm 750gb) with the momentus hard drive (32mb momentus 750gb)...thank you and have a great day

p.s. I also need a suggestion on a good hard drive cloning software

 

Picked up a 470 (refurbished) from the outlet with i3 and 550m for $469 today. Basically free when you consider that's about the going rate of an i7 y560 on eBay these days. I plan to swap the CPU to an i7 myself, do these new models still have an easy access panel on the bottom to get to it?

Also, I've never dealt with nVidia graphics before, is there anything like RadeonPro that will automatically force different settings based on what game I am currently playing?

 

I just cleaned out the thermal paste on my CPU. I was getting above 90 Celcius with 100% load. They sure did a crappy job of applying the original thermal paste, it was like someone dropped a glob of paste on the CPU then dropped the heatsink on it. I reapplied some Phobya Hegrease and my 100% load temperatures immediately dropped 20+ Degrees. It should be even better after a few days burn in.

 

Good to know , i had problems with heat on my Y470 too but i blamed it on the dust blocking the heatsink fins...next time i will reapply a good thermal past also then !

 

can you show a video or tutorial on how you applied the paste for out y470 because I might try in the future...

p.s. I game a lot so I might need it soon

 

I found for the longest time my gateway an asus notebooks card readers were brutal slow, till I did my annual windows reinstall and allowed windows to instal its' own generic card reader drivers, and the found data transfer times to be closer +/- to rated sd speeds. Try uninstalling the proprietary driver and rescan for hardware an instal the windows generic and give that a Try.

 

Hey guys. I have the original Y470 and I am having problems with the laptop locking up in Windows at various times during the day. I had Lenovo replace the hard drive and the problem persisted.

Do any of you know what might be causing this problem?
Possibly Software?
Lenovo is currently replacing the motherboard in my laptop, I'm hoping that fixes the problem.

 

Ehh, you probably don't want to do it the way I did, I couldn't actually take out the whole heatsink, I worked with a Centimeter gap in between the CPU and the Heatsink. Also drilled a small hole in my Laptop to access a screw. Didn't want to take apart the whole laptop just to access the heatsink.

 

I'm also getting heat temps in the upper 80s C and above 90 C when playing games. Cause for concern? I talked to Lenovo and they offered to check it out for me.

 

Hello, what sort of gaming performance are you getting on demading games like crysis 2 on the native resolution? And what are your setting like for battery and in the nvidia control panel. Is optimus a problem for u? Thanks in advance

 

My Y470 arrived yesterday and I'm finally getting around to setting it up today. The first step I'm doing is a clean install (after creating recovery discs), can someone tell me what I have to install to get Optimus working with the latest nVidia drivers? Keep in mind, the current state of the laptop has no video drivers whatsoever, integrated or nVidia.

 

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

This link is for the latest nvidia drivers and I am assuming you have the 550m ....Im currently on 290.53 since I did a clean install three weeks ago...I have no blue screen issues that came with the laptop when I first got the laptop last august... I haven't tried the very latest drivers because nvidia drivers can be iffy sometimes.

and all the drivers you need are in the lenovo (D) Drive....I would use the drivers in this drive for the intel to have the essential things working like intel display drivers and srs sound, etc...

p.s. the silver button in front of the laptop turns on the nvidia drivers when you have to play games (just in case you didn't know)..good luck

 

So really all I have to do is install the Intel drivers and then install the nVidia drivers separetely? No funky screwing around with them like ATI requires? Just making sure, as I've never had an nVidia GPU before, and that seems too... easy

EDIT: I have a LENOVO partition on the HDD (already took the thing apart and swapped in my SSD), but it's completely blank. Guess I'll be hunting around on lenovo.com for the drivers (which I was planning on having to do anyways).

EDIT2: What's the file size of your Intel GPU drivers? I see one on Lenovo.com that's 600+ mb and the others are more reasonable sizes. I don't know which one to download. Also, I'd like to set it up so that it runs on the Intel GPU when I'm on battery and the 550m when I'm plugged in. I was able to get this working with ATI graphics, can I do the same with nVidia?

 

EDIT: The intel display driver is 74.2 MB on my current system


is the partition still on the hdd...get an enclosure and install the drivers...yes, the intel and nvidia drivers are seperate...I use stock drivers for everything except for the nvidia drivers...

I have not used ATI before but you might need to adjust nvidia settings with the nvidia control for some programs to use the gpu like Skyrim and other programs...Skyrim and pcsx2 emulator are the only things I have used that don't recognize the nvidia card when the switch is on...you have to mess with nvidia settings for these two programs.


or

go here for updated drivers you need.... Lenovo Ideapad Support & downloads - Drivers & Downloads

 

The nvidia only turns on when the silver switch in the front of the laptop is switched to the right....A LED should turn on in the front of the laptop when the nvidia card is activited...I have not looked into that but Im not sure.

 

Figured it out - the 600-something mb file was for combined Intel/ATI drivers. It really was as simple as installing the Intel, and then nVidia drivers. Completely blows my mind, considering all the trouble I had getting ATI switchable graphics to work right after a clean install, though that was back in 2010.

 

Has anyone successfully gone from i3 to i7 in their Y470? I'm assuming it's possible, since all SB chips have an IGP and they shipped the 470 at one point with the 2630qm, but I'd like to know if anyone has done it, and if there are any instructions anywhere on how to take the laptop apart to do it. If I get a response on the Y460 screen replacement thread, I'd like to swap in a 1600x900 LCD as well.

 

just got the y570 for around 700 shipped new on ebay

anyone play sc2 on it? i figured the i7 2670 and 2gb 555m should be fine for gaming

 

I think I definitely need a new paste job, I finally got the opportunity to really test things out and when I run Prime95, the CPU gets up to 75-80 on both cores, yet the air blowing out the side of the laptop is lukewarm at best, which leads me to believe the heatsink isn't transferring heat properly. On my 560, the air blowing out the side was very hot by the time it reached these temps.

I hesitate to think what would happen when I add a GPU into the mix.

 

Are you worried about those temps? I think 75-80 on both cores under load is pretty good. I wouldn't really start to worry until you see sustained temps above 90, and even then the CPU should be able to handle that.

 

The reason those temps worry me is that I experienced them while stressing the CPU only; the 550m was turned off via the switch on the front. My old laptop hit 80-85 quite frequently while gaming, but while stressing the CPU only, temps were mid to high 60s (after applying ICD7). I'm worried about the amount of heat the GPU will add to this equation (they share a heatsink), I guess the only thing to do is fire up Furmark and Prime95 together when I get home and see where I'm at temperature-wise.

I am the proud winner of a 2630qm for $140. It should be here in a couple days. Are there any instructions on taking the laptop apart to replace the CPU?

EDIT: Ugh, Energy Management is giving me fits. It seems to not let the CPU go past about 1.2 ghz no matter what I have my settings set to. If I disable it and let Windows power management control the CPU, clockspeed scales with load as it should, but I lose the ability to control the fan.

EDIT2: Finally achieved the desired result of fan control without hijacking my power settings by enabling "Energy Utility" and disabling "Energy Management" at startup. With the fan set to "efficient thermal management," running both Prime95 and FurMark, the CPU temp slowly climbs to about 84-85 degrees before throttling itself. GPU temp does not exceed 80 even running at full blast. My old laptop had trouble running Prime + Furmark at the same time, too, so I think I'll fire up a round of BF3 and see what happens.

 

so heres is a question, does the y570 use optimus? as id like to have the latest drivers for the laptop

 

Yes, it uses Optimus. There is a switch on the front of the laptop that will disable the nVidia GPU entirely for best battery life, otherwise Optimus will intelligently decide when it's needed. So far it has worked flawlessly with FurMark and BF3, which is all I've tested with so far.

On a side note, I've completely solved my temperature problems. My 2630qm arrived today, so I took the plunge and opened up the laptop to install it. When I took off the heatsink, I immediately noticed the reason for the poor cooling I and CPU throttling I was experiencing previously - Lenovo went more than just a little overboard with the thermal paste.





Thermal paste does not equal cooling by itself, and when you've got that much of it glomped onto the heatsink, it's acting as an insulator and actually inhibiting heat transfer. On top of that, this stuff might as well have been the consistency of cement. I had to use liberal amounts of alcohol (applied to the laptop, not consumed by me) to remove all of it, and replace it with a more reasonable amount (used ICD7).



But, of course, the whole reason I opened the laptop up in the first place was to install my i7. That swap went as easily and as painlessly as could be expected, though a lot of that is probably because I didn't forget to hook the fan back up this time. Booted up to the BIOS, saw this, and everything worked perfectly.



Great, the CPU is recognized. Next step is to get to Windows (for some reason it forced me to re-activate by calling MS using the key on the bottom of the lappy) and run a burn-in test with Prime95. Before I did that, though, let's take a look at the idle temps:



Much nicer, and this is a 45W CPU. Of course, that doesn't mean anything when we're talking about idle temps, but my i3 was at 45-50 degrees already by this point. And now, after an hour of stress testing:



Temps have settled nicely to under 70 degrees. The i3, with 10 less TDP and half as many cores, was at between 75-80, and throttled itself down to 800mhz when I stressed the GPU. Thanks to the new paste job, my i7 is humming along quite nicely. The only time it broke 70 was with turbo enabled on all 4 cores; it disabled itself shortly after that and temps have remained rock stable. The air blowing out the side is hot, where it was merely lukewarm before, indicating that heat is actually being removed much better by the fan.

Running on a single core causes clockspeed to fluctuate between 2.5-2.8 ghz, so turbo is working as it should. If I ever need to, I've probably given myself the thermal headroom to install an xm-series CPU, though I don't expect to ever have a need for that kind of power. I'm quite happy with my purchase right now; for a total of $609 ($469 plus $140 for the 2630qm), I've got a 14" laptop that beats my old 560 in terms of power (both CPU and GPU) and vastly exceeds it in terms of battery life. I did get stuck with the smaller battery from Lenovo, but if it becomes a problem, there are plenty of 64 w/hr ones on eBay.

Next up might be a 1600x900 screen upgrade, as I don't care one bit if I lose my webcam and microphone (never use either one), but I still have no idea what to make of this 30-pin screen business.

Sorry, I don't have any instructions or pictures/video of the teardown, but I followed the repair manual and had no trouble. The process took me about 2 hours but that's because large hands aren't good for working with small parts.

EDIT: ...and, I have no sound out the speakers. Headphones work just fine, so I must not have plugged them back in properly. I'll have to open the laptop back up tomorrow and re-connect them.

 

thats nice to know you can upgrade to the current gen i7, i take it though ivy bridge isnt possible?

im also wondering on a higher res screen upgrade, maybe when the 580 comes out, we'll find out

 

Gaming test:

Playing BF3 on a 64-player map, CPU usage was ~60-75% across all 8 threads, GPU usage 90-100%. Temps hovered around 80 degrees, which is lower than my previous Y560 (they would remain high 80s and occasionally hit 90). No throttling of any sort, turbo maintained 2.5-2.6ghz with all threads loaded.

 

@Syberia: Nice job with the CPU swap and repaste. That's a frightening amount of thermal paste from the stock installation

 

Indeed. My 560 two years ago had a similar amount of goop to clean off, but the heatsink was under an easy-access panel on that one, so I didn't have to disassemble the entire computer. I'm guessing someone at Lenovo thinks that more is always better.

And I found out why my speakers didn't work - as I thought, I missed plugging one of the connectors back in. I did do, and I have sound again!

Now off to play some much-deserved BF3. Can't exactly do that on my desktop at the moment, due to a certain feline deciding to walk across my keyboard until the W key popped off (and the connector broke, so I can't simply reattach it). That's quite a significant one for gaming

 

So how challenging is getting the heatsink off and getting down to the cpu to do a repast job? is there any documentation on the disassembly?


Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

 

Unfortunately, you have to pretty much disassemble the entire laptop to do it. I think I linked to the repair manual a few posts back, which goes over the entire process.

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