Y580 Questions

[TGR_15]

Hello! This is my first time on the community and I know this place has some awesome people here. Basically, I bought a new Lenovo Y580 from the Lenovo website with a 32 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. I wanted to optimize the computer to being very efficient and running the quickest as it can. The laptop came with Windows 8 as well. I've also realized that the BIOS for this computer is limited for some reason Are there any ways for me to make this very good for a few games I play such as Team Fortress 2 on Steam without paying money?

 

[TGR_15]

Oh and I currently have my drivers in my SSD and the "Windows" folder along with the Program files in my HDD.

 

[tsnor]

You picked an excellent laptop for gaming. Games need video. The Y580's video chipset is not changeable. It is what it is. Nothing much will change your results.

You have a NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX660M, which is more than decent for a laptop. You should be able to game fine with it. There is not much you can do to make it game faster. With the right tool you can mildly overclock the video, but you will run into heat problems doing that in a laptop especially as you build up dust inside the laptop over time.

The guys at notebookcheck do a good job reviewing, here is your laptop reviewed. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-Y580-20994BU-Laptop-Review.78974.0.html

Here is team fortress on a gtx660m. Very playable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1I9CS-xXPg

 

[TGR_15]

Thanks tsnor! I have a few questions and I need to clear some things up. It turns out that the SSD that came with my computer was actually used to cache the HDD so my bad. The drive I was looking at in "My Computer" turned out to be a partition used to hold my drivers and possibly, some other things for some programs that came with the computer.

Also, yes, I know about overclocking the video card and I think I will be planning to do so. Until then, I will have to find myself a decent cooler. I have a few question though, and yes, I have read through most Y580 posts about clean installing, etc. PLEASE DO NOT REFER TO ANY LINKS IF POSSIBLE as I'm likely to have already read them.

Basically, I want to know how should I throw away my HDD for a SSD in order to do a clean install? If I do so, will the Windows 8 OEM still work which is under the laptop? What happens with the mSATA SSD that is used to cache with the HDD. What do I do with it? How will I put it to the most use, if possible? I really want to keep all my functioning buttons working such as the "One Key Recovery" button, etc.

If you actually do find a guide or make one that helps with me replacing the HDD for a SSD (also keeping the buttons on my laptop working) and a comprehensive answer/guide to what to do with my mSATA SSD after I split them apart using RapidTool.exe since the mSATA is used to cache with the HDD, THAT WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED

 

[TGR_15]

At this moment, I don't really mind if I lose all my data because I actually use very little space I just want to get myself a SSD in place of a HDD+mSATA caching solution as it suits my needs.


EDIT: I went to search more and I actually found this in order to upgrade:

You can install the SSD in place of the hard drive in the laptop's drive bay with no issues. The original hard drive should come in some sort of bracket, just remove the hard drive and install the SSD into that bracket and plug it into the laptop.

Then you just have to transfer the software onto the SSD, which ships blank. A cloning utility can be used to clone the original contents of the hard drive.

If this is correct, what cloning utility would you recommend in order to get the things on my HDD onto a SSD?