Shigg

I already have the chip is the thing. I got it a while back when I was planning on upgrading my Yoga's wireless card, but couldn't gain access to it.

Well, I can understand the frustration, but my experience with any gaming laptop has been somewhat similar. Without the underclock, the laptop zaps its battery fast as hell. It was the same with my G73SW, and my custom laptop before that. I actually got my Y510P to replace an i5 Yoga, which had pretty good battery life as an ultrabook. Part of me wants to go back to the Yoga, but while it was easy to take to meetings, it was annoying as hell to type with, and I wouldn't really use it for anything else. At least with this the keyboard is good, and I can use it as a spare rig for LAN's (or primary if I am not hosting and do not want to bring my main or backup rig). But really, with any gaming laptop, you should always carry your brick with you, else you will run out of battery mid way through the game anyways.

Are there any alternatives to the default 6 cell battery that ships with the Y510p? I have looked around online and I have not seen anything for that model aside from the same 6 cell battery. Are there any other compatible batteries? Larger cell batteries with the same form factor, but listed under other units?

Depending on how big your HDD is, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to just format the primary partition, and install your own OS of choice. Keep the recovery partition where it is and give up the extra few gigs it takes up. That way you have your clean os install, but have the hidden partition as a backup. It can serve as your oh-shit backup solution, or if you need to ever send it back in to Lenovo and don't want them rejecting it for whatever reason.

My Y510P has the 24GB SSD. Is this the M.2 SSD? I am considering trying to get a 128GB or 256GB SSD and throwing it in there, and moving the OS over there. That, or make it basically an app ssd drive (Steam, etc...). Any links for compatible drives?

I noticed that most of the people in this thread are trying to install the Intel AC card. I am attempting to just get a dual band wireless N card in. Will this still be compatible?