Gateway FX 6800-01e BIOS Update from Gateway Unsupported

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I haven't tried removing that one yet, but if the fit appears to be a problem, then I would measure the surface of the North Bridge to see what size I would need and either get a cooler that would fit or get a piece of copper cut to size to make a shim, taking care to make sure it's absolutely flat with no imperfections. Then I'd use the copper shim between the North Bridge and the Cooler with Arctic silver on both sides of the shim.
 
I haven't tried removing that one yet, but if the fit appears to be a problem, then I would measure the surface of the North Bridge to see what size I would need and either get a cooler that would fit or get a piece of copper cut to size to make a shim, taking care to make sure it's absolutely flat with no imperfections. Then I'd use the copper shim between the North Bridge and the Cooler with Arctic silver on both sides of the shim.


I ordered this thing. For $7, I thought I have a look at it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103155




 
From the looks of the reviews, you may just be using the fan on the existing Heat sink unless you can get some better thermal tape to use with it.

Either that, or you may just be better off finding a better cooler with hold downs so you can use Arctic Silver instead.
 
Haven't been able to do much lately as I have a bunch of bills to pay this summer. But after the bills get paid, I'll be able to do a few upgrades to my cooling and hopefully my case..

What I have done since is this:

- 1) Removed the plastic bottom of the case and the front (plastic) bezel.
- 2) Laid the system on it's side, on my desk.
- 3) Removed Liquid Cooling Radiator - Attached it externally so it is raised up above the side of the system.
- 4) Cut back edge of side panel so it could easily be attached and removed with radiator in place.
- 5) Removed Hot-swap Bay & cables - Enlarged hole for larger cooling fan.
- 6) Cooling fans in front and on cooling radiator set to draw air from front to back.
- 7) Moved Cooling fan on side panel inside and set it to draw air into system.
- 8) Moved video card from bottom PCIe socket to next one up.

The immediate result of this was that the temp of the North Bridge shot back up to the original temps from before any Mods were done to the system.

Installed an 80mm Flexi fan blowing directly on the North Bridge at an angle so the air still flows to the rear of the system, brings the temps back down to more comfortable levels.

Most days during the summer months, I run the Air Conditioner to keep my home cool. So having the fans draw the air front to back helps with the cooling as it's drawing air from the AC in.

---------

The Hot-swap cables can still be used externally as all I need to do is make a couple of cuts in the side panel and mount the connectors on the inside edge of the panel to use them.

This way, if I need to access another drive using one of the connectors, I can just set a drive down on it to connect it.

----------

Doing things the way I have it this time, it's more like having a 4U rack mount system on my desk.
If ever I did go all out and setup a Rack Mount system as I would really like to, I would most probably never hear the end of it from my wife.

Currently, I have 6 drives sitting on top of my system to one side along with a Thermaltake Drive station which I have been using for backups and other stuff.

I just use a dust cloth, one of the newer ones which grabs the dust so as to keep my desk area along with the surface of my system, printer and other stuff dust free. Then every few days, I use compressed air to blow the dust out of the Cooling Radiator from my system.

----------

For now, this setup will do till I get all the annual bills paid including Heating oil for the upcoming winter.

Once everything is paid, should there be enough left over, I hope to be able to start purchasing some upgrades for my system. I just don't know if I'll be able to install them as I go or wait till I have everything I need.

----------

As it is, we are currently experiencing some family problems which are causing us to start looking into the possibility of purchasing a house. (We currently live in a condominium "old townhouses")

But being on a limited budget and being tied to the local area, we really can't relocate either. So we're basically looking for a Ranch style home with a finished basement and a quarter to one third acre of land. Preferably one that has been foreclosed on and reduced in price so as to make it more affordable. We can't afford anything super expensive or especially something where the property taxes are going to be sky high because of the appraisal value.
 
hey guys been reading this thread for a while now thanks for all the info provided. I am wondering if the ATI Diamond HD 5870 is going to fit into the Gateway FX 6800-01e case. I also removed the hot swap cable for a little bit more room for the card it is 11 inches length wise. to me it seems like it would barely fit, but I am unsure does anyone have this card?



 
My 5770 card is about 9 & 3/4" long with no problems.

For the FX 6800-01e case, I'm fairly certain you'll be OK with an 11" card.

The bottom slot should clear the card entirely and the next slot up should still provide enough clearance just beneath the hot-swap bay should it even reach that far.

I completely removed the hot-swap bay by drilling out the rivet heads, then I made the bay hole larger using the space for the front fan below it so I could install a larger fan to draw air through the system.

As it is, I don't mind chopping up my Gateway case to modify it as I plan on buying a new, better case when I can. 😀
 
Thanks for the info just wanted to make sure, as for the bottom PCI-E slot I don't think it will fit there because of the cables at the bottom of the motherboard. height measurements is at 1.5 inches.

Product Dimension : 11.0 X 3.9 X 1.5 inches
 
See my following (after the fact) reply posted before this edit. :)
[strike]Then the bottom slot will be out of the question as mine left little room for air flow in that slot.[/strike]

One other thing..... having the air flow front to back puts less of a strain on the Video card.

The reason I say this is cause the air flow for the Video Card cooler exhausts the air to the rear of the system and if your system has a high rate of air flow Back to Front, then it'll put more of a strain on the card which may result in higher temps than you would have with the air flowing front to back.

I have tried both ways with my system and I have tried multiple setups with cooling fans to get my system the way it currently is, using HWMonitor to keep check on the temps.

Also, using the ATI Catalyst Control Center, I generally generally keep the GPU fan running at 80% using the Manual Fan Control in the ATI Overdrive section.

Just be careful if you mess around with the Overdrive settings as you have to unlock them in order to use the Manual Fan Controls.

BTW....

When I replaced my Power Supply, I found that the Factory supplied PSU was a measely 450 Watts.
 
OOppssss.........

Spoke too soon. I was thinking that 1.5" was wider than my HD5770
But in fact, my video card is 4.2cm thick which makes makes YOUR card an 1/8" thinner than MINE.

So your card should fit in the bottom slot.

You just might have to move some wires around or if some SATA cables are in the way, use some longer SATA cables so you can tie them to one side.
 
Yeah first thing I did when I got this pc was upgraded the PSU to a 750W Corsair, and then slapped 3 more GB of DDR3 ram. This is the last time i buy a pre assembed PC it's just not worth it, reason i got this was because i was lasy to build one frome scratch.

Cool to know that it will fit in the bottom I'll let you know how it goes when i get it. Still waiting to see if prices go down heh, as for the airflow I'm thinking of getting a new case+mobo I really like this case http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IJwtgX8cWI

 
Hey everyone, I also have the FX6800-01e. Mine came with the two slot 1gb hd4850. I have been experiencing a slight constant hitch in the graphics almost on a regular basis. It usually hitches every 2-3 seconds and isn't very noticable but can be when you are looking for it. I have upgraded my system to see if it would fix it. I now have a 1000w psu, XFX radeon 5770, 8 gb of Crucial DDR3 ram and I have added a couple fans to the case. I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this hitch in the graphics or is there a way i can fix it. I also swept my system of all gpu drivers and installed the latest 10.7. It seemed to fix the hitch temporarily. But it came back recently.

Btw, this hitch doesn't seem to happen when I run any type of movies or anything on the pc. Only with games.

Also I noticed through CPU-Z that my channels number in the memory tab says dual, yet i have triple channel memory in it. What is this issue?


Thanks,
Chris
 
If as you say, you are running 8 GB of RAM, then that may be why your memory is running in Dual Channel Mode instead of Tri-Channel Mode.

To run in Tri-Channel Mode, you need to run configurations of 3 or 6 sticks of Matched Memory.

By saying Matched, I mean that the CAS (Timing) should be the same to prevent problems.
 
Thanks renegade, that worked. I am no computer whiz and am still getting down the basics but my question is, is having 6 gigs in triple channel going to be faster than having 8 gigs in dual channel? I noticed that on the memory tab the only thing that really changed was the size (obviously) and the channel number to triple. The timings have always been 8-8-8-19 with 59 clocks and a command rate of 1t although it was 2t for awhile then i messed around with something and it changed to 1t. But the NB and DRAM frequency remain at around 2120 Mhz and 533 Mhz respectively.

Btw, the hitch seems to disappear with cooling my card. I manually set the fan for around 65% and under load that keeps the card under 60 degrees. I also added a 120mm case fan to the side pointing right at the card.
 
Your memory is not the speed of your system although you do want a high Freq rated, low CAS MEM.

But it does make a big difference and having more memory is good for memory intensive programs or even for running multiple programs which does eat up more memory too.

This system can take a maximum of 24 GB (4 GB per slot) of memory as that is the design of the X58 chip set.

If you have been reading from the beginning of this thread, you might just want to start from this end of the thread instead as there are a lot of posts and the most recent information is on this end of the thread. :)
 
I have a Gateway FX6800-03h it has a TBGM01 motherboard with Intel x58 Chipset bios R01-B0 I have just installed two seagate 1tb drives that I set to Raid0 in the bios. I then installed Windows 7 Home premium on the raid drives. No problems all has gone well. But now when I go to Control Panel/Device Manager I have the yellow ! on Other devices...Raid Controller. Windows does not recognize it just says Raid controller/Manufactorer Unknown. I have searched the Gateway site for Raid Controllers with no luck. What drivers do I need?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
 
Do not use drivers from the Gateway website.

Instead, always get the newest drivers directly from the driver Manufacturers.

In this case, you will need the newest Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver 9.​6.​0.​1014
(used to be called Intel Storage Matrix Driver).
 
I am having trouble locating a proper guide for the TBGM01 X58 motherboard that came with my 6800-01e. I bought a new case and installed that mobo in it and was wondering where on the motherboard do I plug in the reset 2 prong connector and the HDD LED 2 prong connector. I have the power 2 prong in the spot that it came with. Also I noticed the front microphone and headset connector does not key correctly to the motherboard like the last one did. Any suggestions?

Thanks
 
There is no service manual available for this motherboard, at least none that Gateway (Acer) has released. Even their techs don't have access to the motherboard manual.

The motherboard itself though from reports I've seen and from what I've seen on my own system, appears to be manufactured by FoxConn.

So you might be able to get a general idea by going over the specs of various FoxConn motherboards to see the pinouts used for them. Just be careful to pay attention to the pinout as this motherboard uses a (if I recall correctly without opening my system) 14-pin layout with one pin missing.

The layouts you look at may be the opposite or may use a 10-pin lay out and the missing pin may be in a different location.

So good luck figuring it out.


 
Thanks for all your inputs here.

Unfortunately I am quite a sad FX6800-01e user, since the beginning.

I had so much problems with my ATI HD4850 1GB VGA card, it was freezing exactly after windows start-up sound, or during when it plays that sound. That time I had to reset 4-5 times to get windows working.

It was same at stock Vista 64bit and also Windows7 Pro/64bit. I tried almost all available beta and stable ATI drivers. Later on people suggested me that the PSU is week on this setting and I should buy something more powerful. I did it, I got a 650Watt Antec PSU.

It didn't help at all. 🙁 It was a waste of $60.00, I just swallowed it.

I replaced my stock ATI card with a $15 Nvidia 7600GS card. It still works flawlessly, no problems during the boot up.

Right now, my biggest problem is with "sleep" function. Whenever I try it, I get a BSOD then I restart my PC again. I tried many fresh Win7 installs, didn't help either.

My last comment is about the drivers, should we install anything manually on it, or you recommended leaving all control to windows 7 update???

MANY THANKS once again!
 
Well you didn't waste your 60 bucks the stock psu is under powered. After months of playing with the 4850 I never got it to work right everytime. I pulled it and went with an nvidia card and have never had an issue and as far as sleep funtion I have never had any luck with it on any version of windows on a desktop now a laptop for whatever reason works fine. So I wouldnt use sleep for anything if your going to be away for a long while shut it down. Oh and mines been running pretty much 24/7 since I bought 2yrs ago it gets shut down every 3 months for a cleaning. As far as drivers when I loaded up win7 I let it load everything and then manually loaded the couple of things Renegade posted.
 
I always recommend a clean installation of Windows, free of any Gateway (Acer) crap.

Any specific drivers which may be needed such as the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver (used to be called Intel Storage Matrix Driver), the ATI Catalyst Driver or the RealTek HD Audio driver you can download from the specific driver manufacturer and install manually.

Windows Update can and will take care of the rest.

As for the Creative X-Fi MB software, I don't bother with that package as it really isn't worth it and it's nothing more than an OEM software solution.

As for problems with your video card, it could have been a bad card, maybe it became damaged from being under powered or the firmware on it might have been infected. I have no way of knowing.

But the most important thing is to always keep your system and ALL software & plugins on it completely up to date so as to secure it from any known security exploits in the system or the installed software. Also it is very important to keep the system clean and not to run anything that might possibly pose a risk to your system such as keygens, cracks or other such stuff. Not suggesting you've tried any. :)

As for Sleep, don't even waste time with Sleep or hibernation as it's a waste of time. Just use shut down as that's best for the system anyhow.

I do recommend using a DNS service such as OpenDNS.com to help protect your system & network as a first step.

A good site with a lot of information would be Spywareinfoforum.com Forums. Check out the Security Warnings sub-Forum and the Software Update Announcements sub-Forum.

The Security Warnings sub-forum has enough info there to ah heck your mind and make you paranoid as all's hell if you're not already paranoid about the internet and the threads there are updated periodically depending on the news. :)
 
Thanks a bunch!

I got mine as a refurbished unit. Tried to solve all those problems by myself, but couldn't achieve much.

I did a memory upgrade, right know I have 6x1GB DDR3 memories.

My biggest complaint is slow response of the Win7. It is completely freshly installed several times.

If I copy files between my drives, and happened to open an EXEL file, it takes 1-2minutes to open a simple file. 🙁

I am considering to change my motherboard, I am wondering if I buy any X58 chipset mainboard would it be a problem or as long as it is in ATX format it will be a perfect fit?

I am considering to get an EVGA X58 SLI board.



 
From the sounds of things, you either have something running in the background taking up system resources or you are possibly running too aggressive an Anti-Virus or maybe your heuristic settings are set too high.

Then again, slow I/O operations could also be a sign that something is seriously wrong and needs looking into.

As for motherboards, if you read through this thread, a few posters have replaced their motherboards successfully with this system.

This is one of the motherboards that has been used and it comes in two flavours.

ASUS Rampage II Extreme

ASUS Rampage II GENE

Any motherboard you decide to purchase, you'll either need to pay close attention to the size of the motherboard and the number of slots it has or you may be better off purchasing a new case along with the motherboard for your system as this one doesn't exactly have the best cooling.

The X58 chipset is designed to handle a total of 4 GB per slot.

I'm currently running 12 GB until the 4 GB memory sticks come down to a reasonable price :)
At that time, I'll upgrade my system memory to a full 24 GB.
 
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