Replacement Motherboard for Gateway FX6800-01e

[Grandmaster B]

I have searched the internet high and low for an answer to my question, but I have come up empty.
My Gateway FX-6800-01e has given me a few years of both pain and pleasure. Overall it has been a pretty decent system, but has given me trouble as of late.
I have done several upgrades:

Corsair 650TX PSU
Sapphire HD 5850 GPU
Added 3GB DDR3 PC3-8500 memory (matches stock memory - picked up off ebay - 6GB total - 6 x 1GB sticks)
Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade from Vista HP
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

This has made it a decent gaming/daily use machine, but it has been getting more and more twitchy over the last year. First of all, it takes around 5 minutes to fully boot up to the point where it is responsive to any actions at all without locking up. It also locks up randomly when surfing (explorer not responding), and crashes quite often while playing games. We are talking mostly Left 4 Dead 2, which should not give my system any issues due to fairly low system requirements. Basically, it has become overall quite slow and unreliable. One should expect more, even from a 1st gen i7 system.

Windows has been reinstalled, but the problem does not seem to go away. All I can figure at this point is that the stock Gateway TBGM01 (I believe) motherboard is the culprit. After reading multiple forums, mostly here at tom's, I am too fearful to try a Bios update for fear of bricking my PC all together.

What I am wondering is if anyone out there has done a motherboard replacement/upgrade to a decent name brand board? I realize that if I wish to keep the existing Gateway case, I will have to go with a Micro ATX board. However, if a full ATX board would be my only option I would gladly buy a new case and swap everything into that. My major concern is that a straight swap out of the existing board will not allow the new board to be recognized due to the existing Gateway Bios causing a conflict. I have no problem with swapping out hardward, but when it comes to highly technical Bios/software installs I don't have much faith in my abilities.

X58 LGA1366 motherboards appear to have gone the way of the dinosaur, and my options are extremely limited, but I have found a couple on Amazon that are decently priced:

MSI Motherboard X58M 601-7593-01S Core I7 LGA1366 Intel X58 DDR3 Microatx Retail ($129.99)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051XISSW/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3EEXTUSWX65VP

MSI LGA 1366 Intel X58 3 PCIEx16/2 PCIEx1/1 PCI, USB 3.0/SATA 6 GB ATX Motherboard X58A-GD45 ($129.99)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EQ6ZOQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1BVYXEL822RF0

Naturally, I don't want to spend a fortune on a new motherboard. I just want to limp my existing PC along for a couple more years until I can afford a new build. And no, I will NOT be buying a prebuilt ever again. Live and learn.

Does anyone have any hands-on experience with my dilema? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[cin19]

1) If you want to keep the case, then make sure the "Front Panel I/O Connectors" can fit with the new MB. You can check it to see it is the 9-pin whole piece or they separated, becasue some of the OEM use the whole piece.
2) What version is the win7? It is OEM version, because you change the new MB, then you can't use the old OEM OS.

Here is other X58 http://www.amazon.com/Intel-LGA1366-CrossFireX-Motherboard-BOXDX58OG/dp/B004FPYKPM/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Or call Gateway to get the replaced MB, that maybe cost you less to fit.

 

[smorizio]

i worked on a lot of pc..mb will work or they wont. most times from age the ps will zap a mb or part of the mb chipsets will fail. (sound/ethernet/sata/ide).
when people say there rigs are slow to boot and run..it points to a hard drive having issues. run hdtune to read the drive smart info and run drive vendor tools. if both look good i would see if a friend had a spare drive. i would unplug the drive that installed and then plug in a test drive and put the factory image onto the test drive and see how it runs.

 

[Grandmaster B]

1) If you want to keep the case, then make sure the "Front Panel I/O Connectors" can fit with the new MB. You can check it to see it is the 9-pin whole piece or they separated, becasue some of the OEM use the whole piece.
2) What version is the win7? It is OEM version, because you change the new MB, then you can't use the old OEM OS.

Here is other X58 http://www.amazon.com/Intel-LGA1366-CrossFireX-Motherboard-BOXDX58OG/dp/B004FPYKPM/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Or call Gateway to get the replaced MB, that maybe cost you less to fit.

The PC came with Windows Vista HP 64 bit pre installed. I purchased a Windows 7 HP 64 bit upgrade disc and did an in-place upgrade myself from Vista to 7. It worked well for several months, then the system crapped out on me about 18 months ago to the point where it would not even boot into windows. Frustated, that is when I bought the new 1TB hard drive and took it to a local computer shop to have them do the work. I brought in my Windows 7 upgrade disc so they could reinstall the OS. I am not sure, but I beleive they did a fresh install using my code for the Windows 7 upgrade. I don't know if it is keying off of the original Vista install, or the fresh 7 install.

 

[Grandmaster B]

i worked on a lot of pc..mb will work or they wont. most times from age the ps will zap a mb or part of the mb chipsets will fail. (sound/ethernet/sata/ide).
when people say there rigs are slow to boot and run..it points to a hard drive having issues. run hdtune to read the drive smart info and run drive vendor tools. if both look good i would see if a friend had a spare drive. i would unplug the drive that installed and then plug in a test drive and put the factory image onto the test drive and see how it runs.

I appreciate your feedback. However, I ran into a problem after downloading HDTune. It somehow snuck in and added Claro-search as some sort of search enging add-on, as well as their worthless toolbar. This is malicious and I have not found any way to completely remove it from my computer. I did manage to finally change both IE and Chrome back to Google as my search engine, but what a pain. Hours of frustration. I would warn anyone who tries this program to be very careful.

 

[smorizio]

malware bytes if there spyware from it.

 

[itgoeswhere]

fx6800 01h owner here .It is a micro x58 motherboard built from foxconn.You can try their website.Wish i could help more.