A review of the Lenovo Y50 | i7-4700HQ | GTX860m | 8GB DDR3 | 1TB WD Hybrid HDD | Intel 7260

Is there a Y50 thread you haven't spammed this post in? :lol:

 

Do you think the Y50 will be able to handle the GTA V that's going to come out in Fall?

 

Will you try out the 4k variant? Someone back in the Y50 Thread just received it and said it was much much better than the non-4k (it's IPS as well!).

 

I'm sure its a much higher quality screen, but 4k is not a viable option for me given the state of windows display scaling.

 

Windows 8 and M$ software HiDPI scaling is fine, it's third-party apps that are a huge problem.

 

My biggest issue is not with third party apps, though they have obvious problems.

The real problem I have with windows display scaling is plugging in an external monitor that doesn't use the same dpi scaling (100% on an external 1080p display vs 200% on a 4k laptop display). If you set the 1080p display is set to be primary, M$ mandates you restart (or at least close everything and log out) else, the external monitor will scale to the default of the internal.

Perhaps I should have clarified: multi-monitor high DPI scaling is entirely unusable for me with Microsoft's method of implementation. OS X + my rMBP suffer from none of the multi-monitor problems that windows does. For someone like me who will dock my notebook to 4 external displays several times a day with programs running, restarting the machine every time I dock is not a feasible option.

An example of the Surface pro community suffering from this issue...
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/microsoft/62954-multi-monitors-sp3-terrible-3.html

 

Hi alaskajoel and thanks for your very extensive review. You put much effort into that and this thread in general. Very helpful! :thumbsup:

As i'm also quite interested in the Y50, please let me shoot a few questions at you, too.

1. Build quality:
You described the MSI GS60 to be better in terms of build quality, which worries me a bit, as i don't read so far, that the GS60 is a very well built laptop It's not bad for sure, but i don't assume the GS60's quality to be better than slightly above-average...
In its base configuration the Y50 is pretty cheap though, which also makes me wonder, how the build quality of this laptop can be at this price point...?

2. Fan noise:
You wrote a bit about that. But how would you compare and rate the Y50's (max) fan noise while gaming in comparison to the GS60?
I heard that the GS60 is relatively loud under load?

3. Throttling:
Maybe just a misunderstanding on my side, but i was a bit surprised when you wrote ' Once the GPU hit 81 it reduced the boosting clocks back to 1020. ', because although that maybe cannot really be called 'throttling' i nevertheless was surprised that already at 81°C the clock gets downgraded...?
Especially as you wrote about your GS 60, that you get no throttling (with undervolting/vsync), but while still getting temps up to 90°C... Does you GS60 also reduce boosting clocks at about 80°C or why ist there such a big difference with the Y50 'throttling' at such an early temp threshold? I thought throttling would be defined and controlled by nvidia and not the manufacturer and wouldn't start under 90-92°C?
Or do i miss here something?

4. Correlates to my previous question: When you overclocked your Y50's GPU did you still get those little drops in clockrate while hitting the 80°C threshold or does OCing lead to a rock solid and stable clockrate without any drops?
Short question to your BF4 testing with OC from your first post: You wrote high settings and no AA: Did you mean only no deferred AA but with Post AA (medium or high?) or absolutely no AA?

5. Screen:
As you decided to return the device i guess you did'nt change the screen, did you? I'm also reading at the 'Y50 Replacement Displays'-thread, but till now there is no single confirmation about a working panel. For me the screen is absolutely a dealbreaker (as i'm coming from a macbook pro) and for me the replacement would be a MUST... Do you have any further information about that?

Sorry for so many questons, but would be very appreciated, if you could reply to this. Thanks in advance, mate!

 

nice detailed review too bad pics wont load i get a Photobucket thing coming up
so from your review the things that would annoy me are as follows
1) any kind of flex as i am coming from an XPS l520x
2) if the sounds is worse than my XPS by a wide margin so can you please elaborate on speaker performance (bass response of sub woofer and so on plz)
3) the display Quality its supposed tob e a gaming machine kinda sucks that lenovo got cheap there im sure people would not have mind paying more if the machine had a better 1080P screen
4) No msata slot sigh
5) batter seems too short for me sigh i get 5 hours min on my XPS with 9 cell battery the lenovo has 4 cells at 7800 mah my XPS has an 8400 mah battery so i was expecting on par battery run times.

i would really like to see your pics and you can in box me here if you like thanks for the detailed review again

 

1. I like the build of the Y50. I prefer the matte finish on the palm rests to the finish on the GS60. With that said, I like the keyboard on the GS60 much better, and the body is flush all the way around rather than having a lip like the Y50 does. The only thing i like better about the Y50 is the lid is more solid, but it's a trade off. The MSI lid is much thinner. (The whole body is thinner) Another thing that frustrated me regarding build on the Y50 is the HDMI port and USB 3 ports are a little difficult to get things into compared to the GS60. I like the brushed look on the side of the GS60, and the bottom cover on the GS60 comes off very easily compared to the lenovo which is full of little clips on the vent side of the machine that are a PITA to get off.

2. The GS60 is louder at full tilt than the Y50, but it has a 100w GPU compared to the 45w GPU in the Y50. It hasn't been a bother to me, and the GS60 is silent at idle with the fan mod. The tone of the GS60 is slightly higher than the y50, but neither are offensive to me.

3. I should make this really clear: The Y50 never even approached 80 degrees when both of the fans were turned on. I got some much higher temps when I disconnected one of the fans for kicks and giggles, but I don't remember seeing anything over 70 on the Y50's GPU the entire time I owned it with both fans enabled they way they should be. It never throttled when the fans were both connected. Period. It was also very cool on my lap...the GS60 is scalding hot (even with their silly fabric mod on the bottom of the case). I have the GS60 clocks set to about 915Mhz. It does not boost higher than that because of temps, and it doesn't throttle less than that unless it goes to 93c, which I have yet to see with vsync enabled and the undervolt vbios flashed. Even at 915Mhz, it still out performs the overclocked Y50--especially in minimum frame rates. (870m FTW)

4. Once I saw the headroom on the Y50, it was always overclocked. There's no reason not to in my opinion. I never saw throttling on the overclocked Y50 until I started messing with the thermals (turning off fans entirely).

5. I never swapped the screen, but I'm very confident it is possible. The screen can easily be removed without motherboard disassembly, and there are AUO options that are much better and they're direct swaps to the other notebooks using this display.

 

Yeah notebookreview overworked my photobucket account. They'll be up by July 4.

I don't have any experience with your specific dell, so I can't easily comment on comparisons.

I should say though, the audio quality is really quite good. It gets louder than my GS60, and sounds a bit better in my opinion--it especially seems to have a wider sound stage than my GS60 (which really isn't saying much since at the end of the day, they're still laptop speakers).

I would have liked to see msata, but I'm fine with a 2.5" drive that's easily replaceable with a 1tb evo 840.

I was never able to reliably get more than 5 hours out of the battery even on power saver mode. It is a bummer, but reality. Don't expect more.

 

Okay kool thanks for the advice
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Tapatalk

 

Thank you very much for your reply, alaskajoel!

What about stability of the Y50? Does it feel relatively 'cheap' in your opinion? Would you say the overall build quality (display lid, hinges, base unit) was rather solid and stable or did you recognize the Y50's low price in it's build quality?

I think the 870m even has a TDP of 100w what i read so far...? So yeah, it's definitely a big difference in heat output and the reason why i would consider the 870m, which is a very attractive card indeed, only in a thicker notebook like a clevo P150SM.

Regarding Point 3:
Thanks for clarifying this, i was aware that the 80°C were arising from only one fan plugged in though.
But for me the point of the matter is, i don't understand why the Y50 reduces clockspeed already at such a low temperature at all considering your GS60 doesn't throttle until the GPU hits 90 or 93°C, does it? I don't assume you would get your mentioned 915Mhz already at 80°C as well, do you?
I thought throttling would occur only at a temp threshold defined by nvidia at between 90-93°C, but on temps below that the clocks would run at full speed? But why does the Y50 already start reducing clock speed at 80°C?
Quite happy about the low temps under load, but if Lenovo would let it throttle already at about 80°C that would mess the thermal headroom up..

Background is, i'd like to OC the 860m to the level of something like a Palit 750Ti, which has nearly 1300 Mhz on the core. Although OCing seems to work quite well on the Y50, i'm sure this won't be achievable without a slight overvolt (and a modded vBios of course).
In that case we actually could benefit from the Y50's great cooling system and therefore big thermal headroom getting maybe around high 70s to low 80s, which still would be normal and good temps. But if it throttles already at 80-81°C it would 'destroy' my plan, wouldn't it?

EDIT: As the photos of your review are now available, i saw that the Y50 stood on a cooling pad. Just to be sure: The temps you measured were without the cooling pad, right?

 

I differentiate between the GPU ceasing to boost and actually throttling. The GTX870 (which, you're right is 100w) stops boosting well before 93c, but it actually starts throttling down to ~350Mhz at 93c. I have it set at a steady 915 and never see boost clocks, but it also doesn't throttle.

The 860m will continue to boost (even overclocked) the entire time both fans were on, but it stopped boosting at ~81c (never saw throttling below baseclock). IIRC, you can turn off boost in nvidia inspector yeah? So if you mod the vbios, you should be able to just use base clock overclocking, since it didn't throttle in the low 80s...only stopped boosting.

And yes, I had the Y50 on a cooler master cooling pad, but the fan on the cooling pad was not turned on. It was just being used to elevate the Y50 at a more comfortable level.

Clarification: My 870m base is downclocked from 945Mhz stock to 915Mhz and has a -70mv undervolt. I overclock the memory up to ~5500Mhz effective to compensate for the decrease in core clocks. This is just to try and keep the 870m under 90c.

 

Thanks again for your reply.
I guess even with undervolting your GPU temps wouldn't drop into low 80s under load, but would you assume, that already at 81°C your GS60 would downclock to 915Mhz as well? If this threshold for "not-boosting" would be defined by nvida as well as the throttling threshold at low 90s, then every notebook should disable boosting or at least underclocking a bit at around 81°C...?
Never noticed that though. If not that would be a Lenovo thing? Just curious why the Y50 downclocks at such relatively low temps, as i would consider values up to 85°C still to be fine with full clock speed...

If i understand correctly that means:
1. OCing in standard range of max +135 with stock vBIOS is no problem because you never reach that 81°C and therefore have full boost + 135Mhz?
Btw. what is full boost on the Y50 including the +135Mhz?

2. If going higher than +135 you need a modded vBios and because of slightly higher voltage needed for higher clocks and therefore higher temps you would need to disable boost to not run into this boost disabling thing when hitting 81°C ?

 

Sorry missed your build quality question earlier. I don't think it feels 'cheap', but it doesn't feel luxurious either. The bottom is some type of plastic composite, and the top feels like fake metal. The soft touch matte surface gives it a more premium feel, and the hinge feels more durable than the GS60's hinge, but the lid is also thicker.

My Razer Blade Pro 2014 (with 860m Maxwell) also stops boosting until it lowers to 81, so it's not just the Y50, but seems to be a Maxwell thing (since I don't think Kepler 860m stops boosting until 85-86). My max overclock on that machine (with unlocked vbios) was +280Mhz core and +510Mhz (1020Mhz Effective) memory. Prema was able to mod the bios for my machine and remove that throttle limit, but I sold the machine before I was able to try it out.

1. I was mostly in the mid to high 60s even with the overclock (BF4 was an exception, I think I saw it hit 70 once after several hours with the machine on my lap rather than the laptop stand). It is always hitting boost clocks (1232Mhz Overclocked compared to 1097Mhz Stock).

2. Yes, you'll need an unlocked vbios to clock past 135Mhz, but several other folks (including myself on the Razer Blade) have had no problem hitting +200Mhz without an overvolt. If the Y50 is the same, That would equate to 1297Mhz boost on stock voltage. With the overvolt on the Razer I was hitting +280 (1377Mhz Boost) and It was always maintaining boost clocks. (maxed at 79C)

One thing to note, when I went over 300Mhz on the core in the Razer it wouldn't boost properly even when temps were below 80c (it was overvolted to 1.2v). Either way, if 1300Mhz is your goal, you could certainly do it on the Y50 with a modded vbios and never see 80c. The cooling in the Y50 is better than the Razer Blade Pro I had (IMO). The Hynix ram in the Y50 is also a great overclocker (I had +500Mhz easy)

 

Yeah, in meantime i read this review about the G750JS to research if this '80°C - Boost-throttling' would be common on every machine. As you can see on the screenshot while stress testing with full load on CPU and GPU, the 870m hits 88°C while still remaining its full boost clocks.
Therefore you could be right that being a Maxwell-thing...?!

Thanks again for your help. Very appreciated, mate.

 

Hey man thanks for the review, I was looking to buy the Y50 in europe but I can only find it in Germany for 999 euro, so Im still thinking about it.

Anyway I wanted to know what is your coolermaster notepal, it looks nice, im a big -fan- of notepals so could you tell how has it worked for you and some opinion on it (like compare it with another one, I have had a few of them).

Thanks again!

 

@alaskajoel - for this momement reading so much bad thing about display and keyboard od y50 I decided to not buy it. So I started looking at somewhere else. So gs70 interested me but in version with 860 (without pro). I thought that You bought this version and we could talk about tempa and Boise but tour gs60 is pro. I couldn't found reviews so I don't want to buy totally blond.

 

hello guys.si o need some help.i m about to buy this lenovo or the asus nj550.i dont want it gor a gaming laptop,but for use it as a daw,as i am a dj.my only problem is the audio latency.i d be REALLY GRATEFUL TO YOU,if you could run the latencymon and give m a screenshot of the results.thats how suitable is this machine for real time audio.the asus has good results,but no win7 drivers,as i want to downgrade it,the y50 70 has win7 support drivers,but i need to know the latency mon results..!please help me so i wont buy a useless laptop for my work.thanx a lot!

 

Hey Joel! I skimmed the thread; thanks for the review. I just unpacked my Y50 today, and have been busy removing the bloat and unnecessary start up apps. I see that you were going for a repaste on the CPU and GPU, but I either missed or you didn't post the temps post-repaste. Care to enlighten me as to whether it's worth the time to do?

 

I got the Y50 with the 4K screen and top specs(16 gb ram, ect.) and on civ 5(after setting my windows resolution and civ resolution to 1920X1080), I get a lot of lag from late game on the earth map huge to continents duel. Even when I have set all of my video settings in Civ 5 to the lowest, it still lags like before. After I play for an hour I also start to get warning messages to close Civ 5 due to memory being lost/overused, when civ only uses 5gb of ram, and it repeats every hour. Now what surprises me the most is that I get stellar frames and performance on BF4 when playing in ultra....... So is there something I can do to fix this cause I love Civ 5. Also as a ost note, I have not taken off any of the lenovo bloatware.

 

That seems like an interesting screen!
What screen did you buy and where?

 

I have not experienced a problem like that with Civ, and it's by far my most played game. With everything on the highest settings, it was still very smooth, even into turn 400 of an epic game. I've also never seen Civ take up that much memory before. I would suggest a repair / re-install, but I imagine you've already tried that at this point.

 

Ha now that I own a Y50 I know why the cpu temps are so great.. it doesn't turbo boost for too long before clamping to 2.4ghz :/ Ugh.

 

ThrottleStop

 

hi very nice review. I wonder if newegg all models come with the chi mei panel?. my y50 (59418226 model) come in 10 days. please answer. sorry for my bad english

 

Yeah, but it's pretty lame we need to use ThrottleStop to prevent this.. Other Lenovos i've had like the Yoga 2 Pro with i7 will turbo boost forever.. I guess Lenovo thinks the chassis can't handle the extra heat (but it seems it can)

 

yes because there's only one heat pipe cooling the CPU and it's also shared with the GPU. the dual fan also doesn't work as efficiently as other dual fan setup because they are connected, which makes them work more as a larger single fan instead

 

Probably too lazy to reprogram the EC to remove the CPU throttling when GPU exceeds 65C, which has been there since the Y500/400 or almost 2 years now.

The Y2P has a gimped ULV dual-core i7. This has a full voltage quad-core i7 with higher clock speeds and more cache to boot. Big difference.

 

Not gimped, it's a ULV, it's how it's designed.. I'm not talking about TDP anyways, you act like I don't know the wattage differences between all Intel CPUs.. I practically live and breathe the Intel ARK. I've seen many ultrabooks throttle like crazy or not turbo boost like the Y50, however, if designed properly, Intel designs their CPUs to run turbo for days.

Anyways, my point is that everybody's money is worth getting a full speed, not crippled i7 processor in the Y50.. and it's more gimped in quad core form than it is how Lenovo uses their ULV cpus.

 

That's the point though. ULV CPU's aren't designed by Intel to Turbo Boost indefinitely, especially if you throw something like Prime95 or LINPACK at them. That's why I called them gimped. No need to get upset at what I said.

As for the Y50, it's not the CPU that's crippled, it's the programming in the EC that's making it throttle, and that's Lenovo's fault. If it were socketed and you dropped an i5-4210M in there, it would do the same thing.

 

as you mentioned Throttlestop: does it work with the Y50? and what are the temperatures while gaming with Throttlesop in use?

the throtteling is the most annoying feature of the Y50 so far. the mediocre/bad display can be dealt with, but the throtteling (or the thermic behaviour of the NB) is something not to be solved so easily.

 

It should work. Wouldn't hurt to try. Post any questions in the main ThrottleStop thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

On my Y500, CPU temperatures while gaming go up by 5-10C with ThrottleStop enabled, not a big deal though because I only max out around 80C. The Y50 seems to have even better thermals, so it should be able to handle it just fine.

 

Joel, it looks like you broke some of the clips that connect the cover to the case, near the monitor. I just took my cover off and all 4 clips broke. It didn't say anything in the manual about those clips. Have you noticed a gap at the back of your computer?

 

I've actually taken this unit apart several times now, and it doesn't appear any of the clips are broken? It certainly doesn't sag near the back, and every time I take it apart, I have to use a plastic spudger to pop the clips. I do have to slowly ease the back panel off by pushing it off the chassis rather than pulling it straight up and off.

 

Also, I noticed my photobucket account has gone over the bandwidth allocation again. I'll try and move over to another host.

 

Hi, im new here and also newbie when it comes to OC etc. Can you help me, what should i do? im playing ac4 and i notice some micro lags. what should i install to prevent this and improve the gaming performance of the pc

 

Hey there! Thanks for the detailed review!

I need some advice concerning the Y50, since I don't know much about computers and I'm afraid to buy the wrong laptop for what I need...
I'm an architecture student and I do a lot of 3D modelling, rendering and graphic design and a few people recommended me the Y50.

Now I'm a little torn between getting it with 1TB HDD with 3840x2160 resolution or 256GB SSD with 1920x1080 resloution (512GB SSD is a little over my price range). I also wanna get a desktop monitor and would need a recommendation.
As far as I know, the display of the Y50 is a dealbreaker for many users, but I'm worrying more about the hard drive, since I'm getting a monitor too. I'd get the one with the SSD, but then the resolution is bad and I'd have to buy an external hard drive. On the other side, the HDD comes with better resolution and speakers and an external DVD-Writer but might be too slow. The display is bad-ish anyway... Should I just get something else instead?

 

Get the UHD with the HDD, buy a SSD from amazon, and swap it in. It's actually a pretty easy, painless process. You get the best of both worlds, buy have to pay a little more for it.

 

hi, I would be interested in this pc. the model has 8gb, i7 4710hq, 860m 4gb, 1tb hdd, video fhd. I would like an opinion on how your computer behaves this. Thanks a lot

 

I'm wondering about this i7 4710hg and i7 4710mq.. Except of slight differences in internal multipliers and a little more frequency for internal gpu for 4710hq seem to be almost the same processors.. My question is.. which socket is more perspective ? BGA-1364 or Socket G3 ?

 

Do you have the computer?

I bought a Y50-70 with nothing installed, got it cheaper but i'm looking for Dolby drivers + the lenovo settings you are talking about...

Do you have any setups etc ?

 

HQ processors are soldered on the board (as are all other Ball grid array socket processors IIRC). The Pin Grid Array based G3 will allow for a replacement if you decide to do so.

Also, I tried a while back with a few other folks to extract the Dolby / Lenovo settings setup files so others could use them. We were unable to find a way to do so.

 

I've done a clean Win8.1 on the y50.

Dolby drivers are included in the audio driver package. Can't find a download for lenovo settings but I'm only after the battery conservation mode which is available in energy manager.

 

Did you delete the driver partition prior to installing clean copy of Windows? If not just install the Intel integrated graphics chip drivers and it includes all the power options for this laptop.

 

Is it necessary to use Throttlestop if I did a clean install on my Y50? All bloatware and Lenoir software was removed.

I guess the throttle limitations are bios related or software related?

 

Yes, those throttling problems originate from the BIOS.

So drivers alone won't fix it. And even if you can ist throttlestop, the laptop will get way warmer because it's this.

 

Been using Throttlestop to hold CPU at 3.4 and I get max temps of 75°

If I hold it at 2.7 the temps lay around 65°

Ive found using Throttlestop and keeping the CPU locked at a steady speed keeps the games smoother.

The bios likes to take the CPU speed up and down randomly.

 

GTA V in ultra settings in lenovo y50-