krwilson

I have a Plextor 256GB SSD mSATA in my Y500. Boot times are around 8-9 seconds on win 8.1 (everything loaded and ready to go). I can only recommend slapping a SSD into your laptop. They really speed up... well... everything.

Like Wujtas mentioned, get one as an addition to cleaning and repasting cpu/gpu. I recommend the ones with more features such as adjusting the laptop height, on/off button(maybe a fan adjustment button as well), adjusting the fans positions, etc. I have this one and I recommend it. Can't vouch for its durability since I've only had it for three months but so far the pad works great, keeps my Y410P cool, isn't noisy, and enables me to use the laptop monitor as a second monitor when at the workstation since it's now aligned in height with my external monitor.

Dan

You may have left it too long at this point but what if you try to SYSTEM RESTORE to the farthest date you can get. If nothing else take a look at the programs you have installed along the way when a RESTORE POINT was created to provide some insight into what may be causing your issue.

I moved from a Corsair F60 to my current Samsung 840 Pro 128 and I will a test that the load speeds are very noticeable. Loading any game and especially starting up Firefox is a quite fast compared to the 1Tb platter drive that came in the y410p....even when it is a Momentus drive.

Any thoughts as to using a cooling pad? I find my y410p really winds up the fan when playing games. Would a cooling pad be of any use? If so a recommendation would be appreciated, thanks.

Why would you upgrade in 1st place ? I think it would be too expensive, and I would add a lot of upgrades before considering replacing the 4700mq

Exactly, why would you? An SSD and going to 16Gb of decent RAM would give you an amazing performance kick...and be a lot lighter on your wallet too!

One other thing I found after I had some issues with my system intermittently freezing after using the Samsung 840 Pro for a while, was to install Samsung's "Samsung Magician" software to help adjust the settings for the SSD. Since I did this and moved it to the Sata 6 position is has been running right up to Samsung's posted specs, a few speeds are a little higher too. Very pleased with the SSD!

I have the Samsung 840 Pro 128 installed on my y410p. Originally I made the mistake of putting it in a caddy in the DVDRW bay....only to discover my mistake that it is only Sata 3. So I moved the terabyte drive to the caddy and put the Samsung in the terabyte spot and now have SATA 6. Boot time into WIN8 is 11 seconds.