Gateway FX Disassembly Guide (Covers all 17in FX Notebooks)

Thanks TANWare!!! Is the x9100 a quad?

The other thing I was wondering about, if one is to get a 79xx motherboard will everything inside the 7811 fit onto that board?

 

The x9100 is non quad but C2D. The P78 series is relegated to C2D's only. The P79xx's can probably do a quad, my generic board accepted it fine and there ws a guy selling a used p7908 on ebay he upgraded to a QX9300 ES. So there is a great chance most P79's are upgradable.

Unless you REALLY need a quad though for those extra cores the C2D's are really the way to go....................

 

Hi; sorry to bother you and put this post here, but I have a question regarding my P-7901h that I hope someone can assist with.

I've been having overheating problems the past month, and I figured this was a result of sending the laptop back to gateway for a video card issue and them having only resat the processor. I was going to open her up and replace the TIM, but you gave a warning about this on your guide.

I've never had to do such a thing before, so I don't want to render myself laptop-less. I was initially going to use a TIM remover/surface purifier kit from AS and an AS ceramique compound. Is this a bad idea?

If you have any suggestions for prolonging my laptops life span, I'd forever be in your debt. I'm taking a bachelors degree in visual arts and require my laptop to do 3d and video rendering, but as it stands it overheats and turns off immediately. Ideally I need the machine to last at least another year.

 

I prefer ICD as a TIM. As you can see from my Avatar I can overclock quite a way and keep it cool. The warning is for those planing a quad core upgrade. The copper plate when you pull it will not cover the entire two cores. That is yet another good reason to use ICD.

If it overheats that rapidly they may not have cleaned and applied new tim, just reused the old. To be sure though the CPU fan does work too.....................

Edit; an advantage of ICD too is that it is thicher than standard TIM's, therefore it will not "Boil Out" AS5 and others over time will do the application will last much longer under extreme conditions.

 

Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification. The P7901h already comes with a quad core, so this shouldn't be a problem -- right?
The only reason I was planning on using AS over anything else was that the closest store to my house only sells AS and zalman TIM. I'll look and see if I can find any ICD7 elsewhere. My fans work, as far as I know, but I'll double check.

Thanks TAN. Have you had any heat problems with your P-79? Do you have any idea what could cause my laptop to go from 50C to 100C 3 seconds after beginning a video render? I'd like to do all I can to help dissipate the heat; redoing the TIM was just the only idea I came up with. You folks are much more versed than I am.

 

that kind of heat acceleration on the CPU is either a fried CPU or severly lacking tim application. AS5 will work better than what you have so try that NOW. Overheating like that is a recipe for disaster and should be looked at ASAP.

If you stay with AS5 look to re-apply evey 6 months or so or as soon as you see an issue.................

Edit; While I can't mimic you ststem expactly with Prime95 down clocking to 2.0 GHz and 1.2250 vCore this thing gets up there, in the 90C plus catagory pretty quickly. Now with TS I can undervolt to 1.0500. With Prim95 I only see 80c and the fan kicks on just once in a while.

My suggestion then is to use RMClock or some other utility, even with new paste, to undervolt the CPU. This will help the system runn cooler and make it draw less power as well...............

 

Sorry missed the question, yes the board just replaces the original one. Of course there are alot of screws but take your time and you should be fine. Jut be absolutely sure everything fully plugs back together. It is easy with the small connections not to get them all the way connected and have a no boot..................

 

Thanks for the advice, TAN. I went and got the AS5 and applied it.
There was a thermal pad that was partially torn and stuck to the heatsink. I took it off and replaced it with TIM, but I'm not sure if this was a good idea. Should I try to replace it, or apply a thicker set of TIM?
Sorry for all the questions.

edit; scratch all that. I took the heatsink off again and saw that the TIM wasn't thick enough to contact, so the pad went back on. Not much I can do about that.
I tried to undervolt, but had to cancel my initial stress test due to my first core reaching 90C. I went ahead with the undervolting procedure, dropping .100v, but I again had to cancel the stress test when my core reached 90C. I'm at a loss.

edit2;
another thing - my motherboard temperature is now reading ridiculously high. My cores will all read 40-60, but my motherboard will fluctuate between 70-100. I feel like I understand nothing anymore.

 

One word, undervolt! You are talking about the TSZ0 I believe, I noticed with mine it just shoots right up at the high vCore under load. I can get mine to 1.0500 volts 100% stable running Prime95, try to get it as low as possible and still be stable.

Also once you get the ICD it is a thick paste and you can use a large drop to replace the heat pad.

 

Could there be something wrong with my temperature sensors? I initially tried undervolting to 1.2500v from 1.2625. I cancelled the stress test at 90C. I just tried again from your encouraging, down to 1.2250v, and it immediately reached 103C and shutdown before I could react. Am I just really bad at this or does this sound fishy?

 

you can't go lower? I ask as I have no issue getting to 1.050 even at 2.6 Ghz.

 

My lowest option is 1.1625v. I figured it wasn't safe to drop it that low, and since every stress test has overheated my machine very quickly, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to continue testing it in that way. If you suggest this, I'll give it a try.

It's very strange how it behaves. Idled it will stay at around 45-50C, which is normal and what I would expect. The cores themselves can sit from 35-45C. Occasionally and seemingly randomly it will spike to 70-80 - sometimes including 90C, upon which I lift the laptop up and attempt to cool it down faster before it shuts off. Once its done its temper tantrum, it returns to idling at 35-45C just as quickly.
I reset the BIOS to default in case something I had tried to overclock something, but it didn't help either.

 

lower volts shoud make for a cooler system, not hotter. more than likely it is throttling to 1.6 GHz to cool down or lower and the vcore then drops too..............

 

I must not know how to use RMclock, then. I used the undervolting guide on this forum but if there's another resource you'd suggest to me I'll look it over. Thanks for all your help with this, I hope I can resolve the issue without replacing the motherboard.

 

I use Throttle stop both to over clock and undervolt, haven't used RMClock for quite a while.............

 

Noted. I downloaded ThrottleStop but I'm a little wary on how to set it up. This screenshot is of throttlestop, realtemp, coretemp and speccy - I feel bad continuing to clutter this thread up with my problems and my ineptitude, but I'd appreciate some help in trying to lower the temperatures here. As you'll see on the image, I went from 99C to 41C in three seconds. The 99C was from an XS bench on real temp.

[Link to large image]

If you would prefer to contact me in a PM to try and work this out, or on an IM, let me know. I definitely don't want to be seen as spamming the disassemble guide.

 

You can start a new thread, not sure without an Extreme CPU TS will do anything for you though...........

As side note, I went to 2.0 to 2.4 native with TS and 1.1625 vCore and ran prime 95 on the q9200 without a hitch.............

 

If you just want to open it up to check for dust, do you have to start from step one and go all the way through? Or can you skip to a further step and start from there in order to see dust around the cpu & gpu?

With the heat coming from this thing, I suspect a dust build up, but I am not confident about going inside a laptop and want to minimize the amount of disassembly. I wrecked a Thinkpad several years ago by going inside (it was old and on its last leg anyway) and don't wish to have a repeat experience especially with this otherwise awesome 7811FX.

So please point out the steps I need to follow in order to go inside just to remove any packed in dust. Thanks!

 

you do not have to remove the actual main bord but you do need to get the bottom pannel off........

 

Thank you. I just went back and re-read the disassembly steps. Maybe I'm slow, but I still can't tell which ones are necessary for just being able to remove caked up dust and blow out dust bunnies with compressed air. I'm assuming by "get the bottom panel off" you mean follow all of the steps in the 1st half (before flipping laptop back over so keyboard is facing up like normal usage) and that will give access to removing dust?

 

you do not have to pull the main boiard unless you are planning on replacing the TIM. I would suggest if you had gone this far though to replace the old TIM with ICD on the GPU and CPU.

So if notreplacing TIM then up to removing the main board.

 

So if notreplacing TIM then up to removing the main board.

Huh?

 

correct................

 

I have a Gateway P-6831FX and I originally opened up my laptop (before seeing this guide) to clean out the fans because the fans would kick in really high, overheat, and shut down occasionally. I was able to clean out the fans and get a ton of dust but when I closed everything back up, I ran into a bigger problem - None of my fans turn on anymore.

I've disassembled my laptop several times since and the fans never turn on anymore. I realized how bad it was when I turned on the laptop to see the CPU temps up at 89 deg C within a couple minutes and the laptop would shut off due to fail safe after being on only a few minutes.

I'm not really sure where to start with this so any help would be very much appreciated. I find it hard to believe that both fans died the moment I opened up the laptop and closed it up. Is the problem with the fan control circuit? Do I still need to replace the fans or heatsink? I do intend to replace the old, crusty TIM with ID7 on the Northbridge, CPU and GPU but I have a feeling that the reason the fans aren't turning on is because of something else.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

be sure the fans both turn freely and ae not siezed up. Also pull the connections for the fans and plg them back together carefully...........

 

Well, I got the Ultra-Chill Diamond Thermal Grease and have applied it to both my CPU and my GPU on my P-7915u FX laptop... and... it works great! I've never heard my laptop run so silently, and, the temps are down way low... even when I keep the GPU at full power! I haven't yet tried to keep the GPU at full load while at full power by playing WOW or something, but plan to. I do, however, have one problem. Upon reassembly, not all of my keyboard keys work anymore. In fact, most of them do not. While I was disassembling the laptop, I noticed that mine didn't have that brown bar holding the keyboard ZIF Socket in place. Perhaps that's a difference with my particular model. Anyways, it required some force to even get the ZIF Socket to release. When it finally did, it flew a few inches! I've tried to somehow put it back on there, but it won't stay in place. Now, when I say the ZIF Socket, I'm referring to the thing that slides in and out to secure the ribbon in the socket. I've even tried using electrical tape to secure the ribbon in the socket, which has worked, but only resulted in making some of the keys on my keyboard work. Have I totally screwed up my laptop ever using an onboard keyboard again? Fortunately, I have a spare wireless usb keyboard/mouse combo that I'm currently using. Please advise... I'm hoping that possibly just the keyboard ribbon end got stripped, resulting in the only certain keys working.

<EDIT> Nevermind, I got it working again... It was simply a different kind of ZIF socket than I had experienced previously. So, my laptop is once again fully functional, and, running much quieter and cooler!!! My next planned upgrade to the laptop is the Q9100, when money permits... 8)

 

Just a big thanks to author azrickster - I've done it before and found it a torture. Thanks to this tutorial it was much more in order and was much easier not to use a screw behind.
Just one thing in genral: it was easier for me to lever the hinges cover first and then corner cutouts, when removing media bar. Author does it in reverse order.

 

Hi, I know this is an old post, but I just used it to do a takedown - reassembly of a 7811 that I got for cheap, so I wanted to add my thanks for this guide!.

I also wanted to add the following two notes in case others ran into the same problems I did.

1. This is REALLY important. When removing the keyboard ribbon, the keyboard connector clip (that's its actual name) only moves a TINY BIT UP before it releases the cable. The clip is secured by two hooks, one on either side, and they are INCREDIBLY FRAGILE. Apparently someone else had taken this comp apart and removed the clip entirely, breaking the hooks in the process. So only go a touch up at a time until the keyboard connector releases - if the clip comes free, you have broken the hooks.

Here's a link to a guy who has the scoop on how to release it correctly, and also, thank god, how to work around a broken keyboard connector clip.

Laptop Repair Help How to fix broken keyboard connector on laptop motherboard

Not that I'm plugging for his pocketbook, but if his fix works for me, he's collecting a donation for sure. I can't find replacement clips anywhere.

If that doesn't work, the last post here - clip on keyboard connector broken...ideas? - said you could use a piece of plastic cut from packaging (the clear tough kind you need scissors to get through) to wedge between the cable and the pins to hold it in place. That sounds like it would create enough pressure on the pins to make contact, and adding a piece of tape to keep it in place would probably finish the job.

2. You can access the front of the motherboard, where the wireless switch and bluetooth are, by skipping most of these steps and:

• removing the hard drives and the screw in the hard drive bay that connects to the top cover
• removing the two screws from the bottom that hold the media bar in place
• removing the bottom screws that hold the front of the laptop case secured,
• removing the media bar and keyboard (but not the cables, there's enough room to work with them attached) and the two screws under the keyboard in the center - right section that secure the top and bottom parts
• popping up the top cover using a really thin-bladed tool. You can start popping it up anywhere, just apply gentle pressure and wait until the clips start coming up one by one, and move along.

Tada! The top cover flexes enough so you can get a good couple of inches of work room if you're careful. That's enough to reach the wireless switch and install a bluetooth module if you want, and without removing a single connector cable or otherwise doing something risky.

 

I have a million screws missing after all the disassembling and assembling - it flaps about when I move it. Would I be able to pick up replacement screws from a standard hardware store?

 

I just have a quick question about TIM.. my cpu has some kind of thermal paste connecting it to the heat sink but my gpu, instead of thermal paste has some kind of silly-puddy type of reusable material connecting it to the heat sink.

I plan to use the ICD paste on the cpu, but would I be able to replace that reusable stuff with ICD too, or is it necessary to keep it?

 

you an use ICD on the GPU. Never reuse paste even in puddy form on a chip.

 

This an awesome guide. Even an idiot like me was able to take apart my laptop.

However, needing to reset the CMOS, i can't for the life of me find the jumper. Does it even exist on this motherboard?

 

no cmos jumper. you could remove the cmos battery and power it on. battery is under the wireless card...............

 

excellent thread.

 

Just wanted to say thanks to rickster/OP for the great job he did posting the step by step with pictures on taking the P-78 series apart. My 7805u just had a CPU fan failure and successfully replaced it based on these instructions.

THANKS!
daggerNC

 

Is there a guide to disassemble the LCD part of the laptop? I think I have some dust that got behind the LCD and whatnot so even if I wipe the screen I can see the matted speckles after I turn the laptop on.

 

you just have to take the rubber pads out and unsrew it... peace of cake)

 

So by the rubber pads you mean the four tiny rubber circles that add as padding against the keyboard chassis?

 

yup, but there are 6 of them...

 

Including the two longer strips?

 

my p-7805u is currently in pieces in my garage... my dremel died... so making the copper shims for it is on hold until my new dremel arrives... hopefully tuesday... knowing the mail, most likely thursday/friday...


Of note, in accordance with the OP's post (i wasnt able to search the whole thread about it), no TIM at all on the VRAM modules or even the PWM modules... really frightening stuff IMHO...

BUT to add to the OP's post, there is also no TIM on the OTHER SIDE of the board for those VRAM modules as well..

I know they often go unnoticed, mirrored on the other side of the motherboard are the other 4 VRAM modules... also with no TIM of any sort (although its between the top assembly of the motherboard and case) at least on my old HP they had thermal pads...


Needless to say, I got myself some PK-1 for this entire project, and found an old pure copper heat sink from my old MSI MEGA 865 HTPC... things a beast!

Wish me luck

 

no, there are 6 round ones: 4 on the corners of the screen and 2 closer to the webcam... you just unscrew them and take the front bezel out.

 

Firstly thanks for the guide. I used it about a year ago to clean my laptop's fans. Yesturday I took my laptop apart again to clean it, but after I put it back together again it won't turn on - I've tried using the battery and power cable.

I did not completely take it apart, I only removed the keyboard and top part in order to get to the fans. I was a bit worried to remove anything else.

Is there another way to turn on the laptop besides the power button?

Btw I have the 7811, but judging from the pics they are all virtually the same. I have gone through all 25 pages and havn't managed to find an answer, so I will appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

 

If you pull the cmos battery with all other power not available it will loose the DST. Some computers then with power will auto turn on to get to bios to set up the system. I haven't found another way without the power button, not saying there isn't I just don't see it.

Did you double check all your connections. I know those small flimsy connections are a pain ubt one slight missalignment and there will be no power up....................

 

Can someone throw me the ID number and maybe a link for the revision of the VGA heatsink that has the integrated fan?

I happened to break my VGA heatsink (dont ask) and instead of getting the same one, wanted to look into the one with it integrated.


Thanks


EDIT: also anyone else notice that the CPU/Northbridge heatsink unit doesn't have copper fins for heat dissipation but the VGA heatsink does... that SUCKS imho...

 

Right!

so I got the VGA heatsink with integrated fan.

First glance: the heatpipe is bigger, almost 2x bigger, I noticed on my old heatsink that the ram parts for the bottom ram set was 2x higher then the left side modules, on the integrated one they are the same (meaning I didnt have to fiddle with thermal pad or paste). The added bonus was also an extra extension to cool the PWM modules on the right side of the GPU. SWEET! Also noted that the heatpipe was connected to the top of the copper fins instead of the middle, didnt like that to much for dissipation sake, but its still covering more area on the fins then before...


This all being fine and dandy... its been over a month since I disassembled the laptop, and while I separated the screws on a magnetic strip (low mag, never been an issue in the last 5 years I have used it for desktop/laptop/phone screws), they werent labled... and while the pictures help, eff all i remember which screw's go where (there are long screws, medium screws, short screws, silver screws black screws...)


Has anyone disassembled their laptop lately? Remember'd this detailed information... Or planning on it LOL! I am going to attempt to remember the order in which I removed them... but any help would be appreciated in case I decide not to fubar things...


EDIT: im done for tonight... I think i got most of them done right... but I seem to have 3 extra screws (one medium, one tall, and one tall and skinny), as well as somehow missing one of the silver ones for the keyboard... Im going to drink, and hope for success in the morning... im burned out now...


notes: I swear if I have to take this apart again after fully assembled, I am going to do a full dis-assembly/reassembly video... it may be an older laptop, but ill be damned if it isnt important!

 

Hi all, I've had my P7811-FX for a couple years now, and I've lost the ability to play games on it because my GPU fan won't run. Play anything that uses any graphics card capability and my GPU temp runs from 49 idle to 80 in 2 minutes, 90 in 3, and it keeps going up. Anywhere from 90 to 105 or so my whole computer will shut itself off (or the screen will go dead and the keyboard/mouse become unresponsive while the sound continues and the laptop stays on). This is with the laptop on a raised cooling pad with 3 fans.

The fan won't turn on during any of that. I've updated my BIOS, turned in-game video settings to their absolute minimum, but no good. It seems like something is blocking the fan, because using compressed air from the exterior I can't get the fan to turn, either.

I saw the Gateway 17" disassembly guide. It looks like you have to go through the whole thing to get to the GPU fan, but I could be reading it wrong.

Any suggestions? Is there an easy way to get to the fan? Once I do, can I actually replace the fan if it's broken? What would I need?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

 

In order to get to the GPU fan you have to take it apart completely, you need to remove the motherboard to access it. Yes, you can replace the fan. You'll just need to get the part, shouldn't be too expensive. I don't actually know the model number, but I'm certain either someone on this forum knows, or you could Google it.

 

First, much thanks to azrickster for the original post here. I've had my p7901h for about 2 years now and recently diablo3 pushed the hardware to auto-shutdown.

Last night I did a complete tear down following the guide in the OP, replaced the dried and cracked stock TIM with AS5 that I had, put it all back together, and everything is much cooler now.

Furmark GPU temps:
Before - ~95C and up.
After - 73C max

My CPU temps have experienced a similar drop.

I have some advice from my own experience with this tear down:

- Have some white paper ready. This is used to keep track of screws you take out of the laptop. At each step of the guide, you remove the screws as instructed, place them together on the sheet of paper, and draw a box around the screws with the step labelled. For example, if you've just taken out the keyboard in step 9, then you should place all 5 screws from step 9A together on the sheet of paper, draw a box around those screws and write down Step 9A inside. Obviously this only works if you place the sheet in a place where it won't be disturbed or moved.

- Pay attention to cable orientation. This goes double for the ribbon cables as it may not be immediately obvious which way it should go into the connector. Just before you take it out, you could use a post-it to indicate the top of ribbon.

- Before you start, read thru the entire guide, look at the of the posted pictures! This will help you get an idea of what is coming each step.

- Do the tear down near another computer. Being able to quickly search for something is invaluable.

- If you are not comfortable with the idea of taking a laptop apart, I would suggest that you either get someone who is comfortable OR you find someone who is comfortable dealing with mechanical things and do the tear down with them.

- Before you replace your TIM, I would suggest that you take a quick read through here to get a better idea of what it is you are doing and why you are replacing the TIM.

Lastly, TAKE YOUR TIME! This is certainly not something to be rushed.

 

I shall be taking on this challenge tomorrow!

Will be the first time I've cracked open my P7805u in 4 years!

Will be replacing the GPU TIM, CPU&TIM, HDD, RAM!

Wish me luck!