ballpark

Also - when you take out your hard drive, you can buy this caddy 9 5mm SATA 2nd Hard Drive Disk HDD Caddy Adapter for Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P Y510PT | eBay i have that exact one and it works great in the ultrabay slot when you want to use it for extra storage

^ that's definitely what i'd do, IF you can still change out your regular ssd for an msata. If not, i followed this guide

for transferring my old hdd onto my new ssd - as far as dealing with the cache, i haven't done it but it might be as simple as uninstalling lenovo expresscache, or if you don't have that, then disabling acceleration in intel rapid storage management. i'm not 100% that's all there is to it though, or whether once you've done that the ssd is free for general use. but the 24gb is pretty meager anyway.

i have an oldish cooling pad i use on my lap with one large fan. typically my ultrabay card will hit 98 pretty quick playing skyrim or warcraft but with the cooling pad i can often times stay in the low 90's and never have it throttle down. i'm gonna repaste it anyway though.

its ashame whitelisting an innoculous item such as a wireless card.

it would be great if lenovo just listened to the people and allowed us to modify our hardware after we paid for it.

yep. checking now still no bios update, i'd be shocked if one was actually coming. i can't see why they'd put a whitelist in in the first place if they just planned to remove it in an update later.

not sure if you'll read this, but this is probably a driver problem, unless you installed the new vbios and then pulled the ultrabay card out simultaneously or something weird. i updated the vbios with no issues, though the first time i restarted my y510p after removing the ultrabay video card it did all sorts of weird stuff but eventually if you re-install the nvidia driver it will get itself together. also in my experience a lot of times optimus will hide your dedicated card in some ways and make it harder to see that it's there.

and one more question - would you all say that the intel 7260 linked here Amazon.com: Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HMC: Computers & Accessories is still the best wireless card for this laptop? i'm unable to find if there is an update or one will be coming out soon. i don't have super high wireless needs, but i'm going to try to setup a synology home network soon and it might be nice to be able to transfer to it quickly

sorry if this is asked and answered but it won't let me do a search for the word, but does this bios mod let you change fan speeds?