I purchased a Gateway FX541S SLI 680i q6600 about a month ago... what a mistake... nice rig but it wont run FSX very well no matter what vid card I have in there. I have added 2 9600GT's, 4GB ddr2 6400/800...and with most of the start up programs killed I still cant get past 1/2 way on the sliders without having frame rates below 20... most of the time way below. I was thinking of oc'ing the q6600 but everyone tells me the mobo is a not one to OC.....and wait untill you see this mobo...... it does not look like any of the replacements that I have been looking at.... the CPU is sideways...what kind of heatsink do you put on that? And it mounts on the LH side, and the pci slots are front to back matching the ram.... so if I change it means a new case. Do I just swap the q6600 for a bigger cpu...thinking of 2 speeds faster 2.66 or more if I can afford it, or use the guts from the new gateway, get one of the 700 series sli boards , a new case and another cpu? Darn... for a few more bucks I could have started from scratch! What would you do? Budget needs to be 400 bucks or so. Thanks! Tim
Here is the link for the board....scroll down to it. Do they make aftermarket heat sinks that will fit this? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=G180-1002
Here is the link for the board....scroll down to it. Do they make aftermarket heat sinks that will fit this? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=G180-1002